TRIGGERED: A Romantic Suspense Bundle (5 Books)

by Evie Nichole

  “It’s my new favorite food and I’ll never eat anything else,” Zoe said in a total monotone.

  “I actually kind of like it,” Monica said, taking another bite.

  Zoe rolled her eyes, her arms crossed across her chest. “Well, you guys found each other, didn’t you?”

  They all laughed.

  ***

  “It is not the same!” Jason threw his hands up, incensed.

  “How? Tell me how!” Zoe shouted, sitting up on her knees so she could tower over him as he leaned back on the couch, shaking his head.

  “Reality television is scripted and it’s stupid.”

  Zoe gasped in mock horror. “How DARE you?!” She thrust a finger dramatically into his face. “You take that back!”

  “Nope,” he said, crossing his arms and staring straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge her finger.

  “Zo, I think he has a point,” Monica said from her place on the floor, where she’d been doodling in her sketchbook.

  Zoe rounded on her. “You’re just taking his side because you think he’s cute!”

  Before Monica could answer, Jason piped up, “To be fair, and I mean this in a purely platonic way, but I definitely think you’re cuter than me. Objectively cuter.”

  Zoe turned back to him slowly, trying and failing to conceal her smile.

  “Oh really?” Her voice was high in mock disbelief.

  “That’s an interesting point you make, sir,” Monica said, setting her sketchbook aside and turning to face them. “Please, both of you look this way.” They both turned their faces to her and immediately started making exaggerated modeling faces, pursing their lips and sucking in their cheeks. Monica lost it when Jason moved his arms into some kind of outlandish twisted pose above his head.

  “I don’t know,” she said, trying to regain her composure. “I just can’t tell without a full-body evaluation.”

  “I’m not getting naked for you,” Zoe said, as if it weren’t an outlandish notion, just merely inconvenient.

  “Shut up, butt head. I want to see both of your very best runway walk. Jason?”

  Jason stood and did a walk that involved a lot of horizontal hip movement.

  “Not bad, not bad,” responded Monica, giving him a golf clap. “Zoe.”

  Zoe stood, walked to the furthest corner of the living room, slouched so that she was almost bent completely at the waist, held one hand up with the wrist limp, and tiptoed, as if in very tall heels across the room, squinting until her eyes were basically closed the entire time.

  They both burst into enthusiastic applause.

  “The winner by a landslide!” Monica stood, clapping in Zoe’s direction. Zoe straightened her spine, lifted one arm gracefully into the air, and gave them a very deep ballet bow. Then she fell over laughing so hard she had to clutch her stomach. Jason and Monica had no choice but to join her, though she was the only one who actually rolled on the floor with laughter.

  Monica sighed, smiling contentedly. “I haven’t laughed or smiled this much in, like, years,” she said, looking at them both appreciatively.

  Zoe sat up, trying to catch her breath. “Me too,” she said in all seriousness.

  “Me four,” Jason agreed, and they all burst into laughter again.

  ***

  “Monica, we paid two different establishments to prepare our food today. It is my professional opinion that adding a third to that number would be just plain criminal.”

  “Fine,” Monica said, throwing up her hands in defeat. “I just don’t feel like cooking.”

  “That’s why I’ll be cooking,” he said, turning away and walking confidently into the kitchen.

  “Oh, Jesus, he can cook, too?” Zoe scoffed. “Are you sure he’s not still lying to you? I’m not. He’s definitely too good to be true.”

  Monica just grinned at her. Zoe’s face relaxed, and she smiled back. “You look really happy, babe.”

  “I feel really happy.”

  “Good,” Zoe said, as if her work here was done, but, of course, it never was. “Now, let’s walk through this presentation you’ve got tomorrow. These underlings of yours have got it into your head now that you’re either dying of the plague or had some sort of mental breakdown. You have to go in there and show them that, not only can you survive a mental breakdown and-or the plague, you can do so and still give a kick-ass presentation.”

  Monica chuckled. “You make an excellent point.”

  “Good. Now show me what you’ve got.”

  ***

  Zoe didn’t leave until eleven. When Monica closed the door behind her, Jason muttered something about needing to get a change of clothes for work the next day. Neither one of them wanted him to leave, but they were both too committed to career priorities to give into their desire to stay in bed together for another week.

  “I need to get up early and make sure I’m prepared for my presentation,” Monica conceded.

  “You’re going to kill it,” he said, taking her by the waist and kissing her. “I’ll, like, text you and stuff,” he said, teasing.

  “Cool. I might answer if I’m not too busy.” She looked at her nails and rolled her eyes pompously. They both chuckled.

  “This was a lot of fun,” he said, disbelievingly.

  “I know,” she agreed, just as equally disbelieving.

  She held the door open for him. When he stepped into the hallway, she said, “Hey, Jason. If you can’t reach me on my phone, you can use that tracking device I know you probably implanted in my foot last night to find me.”

  He shook his head in irritated amusement.

  “I’m never going to live this down, am I?”

  “No,” she said plainly, and he knew she wasn’t kidding.

  Chapter 15

  Monica nailed her presentation at work on Monday. She knew it even before Mr. Johnson and several of her teammates came up and told her so. Everyone had brought in ideas, and she felt excited about a lot of them. She was on a high as she left, envying for once Zoe’s seemingly chaotic life of freelancing. Coming up with her own project and laying her own parameters was miles away from working on a specific project that someone else was dictating. She had always loved her work, but she loved it more than she ever had today.

  She called Zoe first, singing her praises for all the help she’d given her.

  “I’m picking up our next two bar bills,” she said, and Zoe responded with a “Woohoo” so loud that Monica had to pull the phone away from her ear.

  She called Jason right after she hung up with Zoe. She hadn’t heard from him all day, despite texting him “Good morning,” and then “Wish me luck,” right before the meeting. She was in such a positive mood now that she couldn’t even be worried about his lack of reply.

  His phone rang and went to voicemail three times.

  “Hey, just wanted to tell you how my meeting went. And…um…” she faltered, doubts slowly creeping into her mind, “see how your day’s going. Talk to you later.”

  Maybe he had left her apartment for the real world and realized that being with her wasn’t for him. Calm down, Monica, she chided herself; he’s a guy you had fun with. You like him, you know he had fun with you, and if he’s changed his mind, you’ll be okay. Better than okay. She smiled to herself, appreciating her now more positive inner monologue. This was how she thought and felt most of the time, when people weren’t throwing plot twists at her left and right and keeping great big unbelievable lies from her.

  She sat down in her cubicle, sifting through the sketches her teammates had handed her. She pulled out a stack of post-its and started marking them with notes. She jotted a few ideas down in her sketchbook, which lay open on her desk. After about half an hour, she glanced at her phone again and saw a text from Jason.

  “Can’t talk right now. Will call around six.”

  She felt tension enter her spine, but she took a deep breath. It’s not going to be as bad as you want to think, and if it is, you can handle it.

>   She nodded to herself and continued to sort through the ideas for the revamp. She made some sketches that combined a few of her team’s ideas together. She sent an email to the web designer that had been assigned to the project about sitting down to talk logistics about online ads and the specific work they should and could do to the website.

  At five thirty, she headed out, waving goodbye to a couple of her coworkers and then Mr. Johnson, who always stayed until the last employee left. She stopped before she got to the door and turned around, poking her head into his office.

  “Mr. J.?”

  He looked up and smiled when he saw her.

  “You nailed it, Monica. Fantastic job.”

  “Thank you,” she said, bursting with pride. “That means so much.”

  “I’m really proud of you,” he said without a trace of condescension.

  “Okay, you’re trying to make me cry again, aren’t you?”

  He chuckled. “Just telling the truth.”

  “Well, I just wanted to say that I really appreciate everything. You know, with the project and with everything last week and with, you know kind of mentoring me since I got here. I really appreciate it. All of it. So much.”

  “You make it easy, kid.”

  She smiled at him, at a loss of what to say next. She nodded at him and headed out the door.

  ***

  She didn’t know why she didn’t want to go home to wait for Jason’s phone call. It was probably because of the voice inside her head that was worrying about all the possible ways everything could come crashing down. That voice was saying that it would be pathetic to wait at home for a boy to call and that—if it were bad news (like the voice was convinced it would be)—she wouldn’t want to associate it with her own apartment.

  She bought a smoothie from a little shop near her office and walked until she found an abandoned bench. She pulled out her sketchbook, deciding to work on an old-fashioned landscape, sketching the tree-lined street with its mix of modern and antiquated architecture.

  At one minute after six, her phone rang. She answered on the third ring because that voice was also telling her not to look too desperate. She laughed internally at the worrying voice, aware of its penchant for overreaction.

  “Hey,” she answered brightly. He didn’t need to know she’d been worrying, even if it was only a little bit.

  “Hi,” he sounded tired and frustrated. The worrying voice immediately piped up but she shushed it.

  “What’s up?” She tried to sound casual and smiled at the irony.

  “Can I meet you somewhere? We need to talk.”

  Before the worrying voice could get a word in edgewise, she sighed, shifted the phone from one ear to the other and said, “Okay, you know what that sounds like. Now, if it’s what it sounds like, I would like to know now so I’m prepared and I’ll still meet you, you have my word. And if it’s not what it sounds like, I would like to know even more so I don’t have to worry about it until you show up.” She tried to sound playful but bitter coldness crept into her voice anyway.

  “It’s not what it sounds like. It’s about the case.”

  She closed her eyes, relieved, and mentally sticking her tongue out at her little voice of worry.

  “I’m by my office, sitting on a bench.”

  “Text me the cross streets. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  He was there in ten.

  She had still worried while she waited, unable to concentrate on her sketch, her mind racing through all the possible versions of bad news he could have to tell her about Alan’s case. Had he been working on this all day? If so, why? He wasn’t supposed to be on the case anymore.

  Give him the benefit of the doubt. Don’t assume he lied to you just because—he did before.

  She shook her head, conflicted. Her legs were crossed, and the dangling foot jiggled restlessly, nonstop.

  As he approached, she realized he was in his professional garb, as always without a tie. He looked, at least, like he’d slept, but his jaw was tense, and his brow wrinkled. As he got closer, she thought she saw the vein in his temple pulsing.

  She stood up and they hugged briefly, and he gave her a peck on the cheek. She shut down all the extraneous thoughts in her brain, knowing that they would do her no good at this point and that all she could do was listen and process.

  They sat, and she refused to let the silence linger. She was too on edge for that.

  “Okay Jason, out with it.”

  He looked at her, haggard but amused.

  “The guys made a lot of headway on the case this weekend. The confirmation about China let them draw a lot of connections we hadn’t been able to before. They got their hands on some correspondence both addressed to and from “M;” just “M,” but they’re convinced it’s the Mr. M. you were talking about.”

  She nodded, keeping up, and he continued.

  “To make a long story short, they need to know his name because that means they can finally pin down his real identity.”

  She noted that he was consistently using the word “they” instead of “we” and wondered if he was being careful to do so.

  “Jason, are you—?”

  “No, I’m not still on the case. We all, the department, we fill each other in generally, because of curiosity, mostly, but also on the chance that cases happen to overlap, which has happened once to me. And they were going to fill me in because I was on the case with them for so long.”

  She nodded, relieved.

  “But, they also filled me in because they have a plan for getting the identity of Mr. M. And it involves you.”

  Chapter 16

  She moved her hand to adjust her hair, only remembering at the last moment that she shouldn’t. Her neck already felt stiff from holding her head unnaturally still. She took a deep breath, refusing to look around her despite her paranoia, so that she didn’t look in any way suspicious.

  She stepped up two steps and pressed the buzzer marked “PH.”

  After a long few seconds, his voice rang out clearly, “Yes?”

  She took another breath and said confidently, “It’s Monica.”

  She’d been prepared to offer an explanation for her presence, prepared to have to fight him to let her in, but he buzzed the door open immediately.

  The doorman recognized her and waved her through.

  She studied herself in the reflective walls of the elevator, making sure nothing was out of place. Then she stood at the ready as the car arrived at the top floor, knowing that it opened directly into his apartment. He wasn’t waiting for her at the doors, which gave her a moment to relax and breathe. He was seated on his long, black leather couch, typing furiously on a slim, white laptop. She walked over to him, straightening her dress. She’d worn one that she felt she looked good in but that she also didn’t feel was obviously trying too hard.

  “It doesn’t look like I’m trying too hard?” Monica turned to check her angles in the full-length mirror.

  “No, it looks like you’re trying just hard enough,” Zoe quipped.

  “Zoe!”

  “Sorry. No, it’s great. You look good but like you just happen to look good and not like you made extensive plans to look good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Have I told you I think you’re nuts?”

  “Several times,” Monica said, closing her eyes in irritation.

  “Okay. Well, I also want to let you know that if you die or something, I’ll never forgive you.”

  Monica looked at her in the reflection. Neither one of them smiled. Monica felt pretty certain that she wasn’t stepping into that kind of danger, but they both had ominous feelings about the whole situation.

  Alan looked up, and she saw immediately that her dress had worked. He smiled mischievously and stood up, reaching out to hug her. Though hugging him was one of the last things she wanted to do right now, she did it anyway; the point was to get him to trust her, and making him think she wanted to get back together
with him was one way to do that.

  “How are you?” she asked, as they pulled away and he motioned for her to sit. She took the chair off to the side, and he resumed his place on the couch, scooting closer to her, however.

  “Stressed as hell,” he said, chuckling. “But what’s new. You look great, Mo, really great.”

  She smiled in return, remembering a time when she had actually felt pleased to have him say something like that. “Thanks, Alan. So do you.” She made a point of dragging her eyes down his torso, lingering on his crotch before meeting his eyes again. She knew that he had noticed. He leaned back, his hands behind his head, spreading his legs.

  Well, she thought, I don’t have to worry about being the most obvious one here, do I? She smiled to herself; he saw it, but seemed to take it as her approving of his…display.

  “What have you been up to, Mo? How’s that little job of yours?”

  How she had spent six months with this man was currently beyond her comprehension.

  “My job’s fine, it’s good. I think I’m going to get the next promotion they’re offering.”

  He nodded absently, sliding his eyes down her body and making a show of licking his lips.

  She leaned forward a little, causing her breasts to pop over the low neckline of the dress a little; he could barely keep his eyes off them. “How are you, Alan? How’s your work?”

  “All good, all good. The usual, you know. Assholes around the world like to make their own rules. Makes business more of a headache than it needs to be.”

  The next part of the plan had made her particularly anxious because she’d never taken any kind of acting class ever; she’d never even been in a skit as a kid. Zoe had told her to remember what it felt like the day he dumped her and she found out she hadn’t been promoted, and to throw in the night she’d found out that Jason had been lying for good measure.

  She stood up suddenly, clapping her hand to her mouth and turning away from him. She was able to give a few dry, but convincing sobs and then the tears started to flow.

  “Hey, hey, hey, baby, what’s the matter?” She heard him stand up and reminded herself not to tense up when he touched her, which he did, sliding his arms around her waist.