Cass, Calder, and Sebastian all look at me like I’m talking nonsense, but Den lifts his cup in salute, a smile tilting his lips. Setting his mug down in the sink, he approaches Sebastian and me. “I take it the hospital is secure?”
“As it can be,” Sebastian says. “According to Theo, the person slit his arm on their way out—the demented fucker. He never did see his attacker’s face. The police will conduct an investigation, but we’ll be doing our own, starting with going over the camera angles. Cass and Calder will scan one video and Talia and I will take the other. I’ll let you know what we find, if anything.”
Den looks at me. “I’m assuming we’re going to the hospital tomorrow to check on your aunt?”
I nod and Sebastian says to Den, “Two guys from the office will already be at the hospital first thing tomorrow. Talia and I will meet you there at nine. Go get some rest.”
Once Den leaves, Calder shrugs out of his jacket, then pulls my aunt’s phone from his pocket, handing it to me. “I cleaned the case, but haven’t had a chance to get this to Elijah. I know you said you wanted to check her phone for any additional info she might have about being stalked. Maybe you could try to get past her security code first before Elijah has to brute force his way in.”
“Thanks. I’ll try.”
I follow Sebastian and Calder into the kitchen, where Cass hands me a mug of tea, ordering softly, “Drink, Talia.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Sebastian reaches under my hair and massages the back of my neck as a I take a sip of the warm tea. “Have you eaten yet?”
“I’m a bit tired, but I haven’t eaten since brunch. Lets have an early dinner, then we’ll dive into the videos.”
After we all eat together, Sebastian insists that I go lay down and he’ll come watch the video feed with me.
While he, Cass and Calder clean up the dishes, I make sure the blinds are fully open so we can enjoy the last bit of natural light of the day, then open my top dresser drawer and pull out the gift I’d gotten him.
Sebastian winces against the sun when he walks in a few minutes later. Picking up the remote to the blinds, he pushes the button to close them completely. “How are you supposed to rest with sunlight in the room?”
“I find it relaxing,” I say, tucking his present under my pillow.
Turning on his nightstand lamp, he says, “Calder and Cass are hanging out on the couch to watch the other feed on his laptop.” Pausing, he asks as he opens my laptop on the bed, “Did you have any luck so far?”
I pick up my aunt’s phone and shake my head. “The code is six digits. I tried winery, dinner, supper, Charlie without the ‘e’. I know my aunt and she would use words, not a word with numbers.”
“What about 825426?”
“What’s that?” I say, punching it in for kicks.
“TaliaM.”
“Ah, M for my maiden name. Nope, that didn’t work.” I try once more and fail. “Penname TALone didn’t work either.”
“Keep trying.” Sebastian queues up the video feed. “Okay, ready to watch this?”
As I lean on my elbow to fluff the pillow behind me, my locket slides across my chest. When I reach up to make sure the black and red entwined hearts on the front are facing outward, another thought hits and I quickly type in a different password on my aunt’s phone. “Got it!”
Sebastian lifts his finger from the fast forward button. “What was it?”
“Amelia. Aww, she misses her as much as I do,” I say, then grip his thigh at the blurred image that pops up on the screen once the password’s accepted. “I think my aunt might’ve caught her attacker on video.”
Rewinding the saved video back to the beginning, I hit Play.
At first all I see is the outside door and my aunt mumbling about needing a flashlight and not knowing how to work hi-tech smart phones. Then the viewfinder lifts and we’re looking at the inside entryway with street sounds in the background.
The door closes, cutting off outside noises and my aunt quickly walks forward, obviously heading for the stairs. Knowing what’s coming, my heart twists and I grip the phone tighter.
The camera suddenly tilts to the right. I wince at the sound of something hitting my aunt and her subsequent gasp of pain. The viewpoint wobbles as she swings the light toward her attacker. “Stay back,” she orders and you see her purse swinging in the air as she tries to hit, defending herself.
The camera’s light shines on a set of surprised brown eyes right before a gloved hand holding something metal covers the lens. Grunts ensue, like they’re struggling, and then the phone goes flying, the imagery all blurred. A loud clunking sound—probably the phone hitting the radiator and falling inside—drowns the background noise. But when it settles and only blackness remains, the sound of my aunt getting hit over and over while her muffled cries beg the person to stop, are clearly heard. Tears in my eyes, I look at Sebastian and continue to listen for any clues until the phone goes dead.
“Talia.” Sebastian cups my jaw. “I know that was hard, but try to separate your feelings and stay focused. Now we know that her attacker was holding some kind of weapon, like an expandable baton, and had brown eyes. Too bad he had a scarf around his mouth and the eyebrows were in the shadows. Did this person’s eyes look familiar to you at all?”
“I don’t know.” I furrow my brow, thinking. “A little, I guess, but I don’t know why. Of course, now everyone I see with brown eyes could be guilty. Ugh!”
Kissing my nose, he pulls me close and tucks me against his side, then leans back against our propped pillows with the laptop on his lap. “Let’s take a look at the feed from the hospital. We may finally get a look at this bastard.”
Thirty minutes later, after tons of fast-forwarding, he rewinds the feed after he sees that Theo went from standing outside the door, to not there at all. Yet he never saw him walk off.
Hitting Play, we watch once more.
Several people walk through the hall. A few nurses pass and a couple of doctors too. Then a group of older men and women, some pushing IV poles, and a couple in wheelchairs leisurely stroll down the hall together. There’s at least thirteen that I can see.
“What are they doing?”
Sebastian looks at me in surprise. “You mustn’t have seen this yet, but apparently, there is a group of senior citizens who come down from an upper floor to get another view during their daily walk of the hallway. It’s technically against policy, but no one has the heart to stop them.”
“I think that’s how the guy got one over on Theo,” I say. “He had to have shuffled in as part of that group. They took up most of the hallway, which allowed him to get very close to Theo.”
Sure enough, once we rewind and stop focusing on the crowd, we see Theo starts to crumple as the group passes. Then the person hefts Theo into the room and closes the door with no one the wiser.
Sebastian’s phone rings and he puts it on speaker.
“Did you see it?” Calder says. “It happens right around four p.m.”
“We’re watching it from our angle now, Cald. Were you able to get a picture of his face?”
“No, our camera angle was from their backside. Saw the black jacket and navy hoodie. That’s about it.”
Sebastian frowns. “Keep watching. Maybe we’ll see his face once he comes out.”
I hold my breath and squeeze his arm. “There he is. Damn, another hoodie and scarf! He never looked in the camera’s direction. Instead, he went the opposite way after he left the room.”
“This bastard’s slippery, but at least we’ve got a description of what he was wearing.” Picking up his phone, Sebastian dials a number. “This is Sebastian Blake. Can you put me through to Bill Danvers.” As he waits, he mutes the phone and looks at me. “Bill and I have worked together before. Hopefully that’ll make for a smooth collaboration.”
A man speaks and he takes the phone off mute.
“Hey, Bill, it’s Sebastian Blake. I know this hospital case isn’t what you
normally investigate, but I’m glad you’ve been assigned it. To save your people some time, I’ve got a description of the guy who attacked my man from BLACK Security.”
Bill speaks and Sebastian shakes his head. “We don’t have his face, but we know what he was wearing. The description should make checking the other camera feeds in the hospital go much faster. The hope is he shows up in one of those and we’ll be able to ID him.”
I hear the cop’s deep voice rumble, then Sebastian says, “He appears to be around five ten or so. Slight to medium build. He’s wearing a thick puffer coat, a hoodie over his head and a scarf around the lower part of his face. The coat is black and the hoodie is navy blue...”
Sebastian looks at me, and mouths, “What color was the scarf?”
Why is he asking the scarf color? It suddenly hits me why. He must not be able to see red now either. Why didn’t he tell me? “The scarf was red,” I say, my heart aching for him.
“The scarf was red.” Sebastian slides out of bed and walks into the living room still talking. “Thanks, Bill. Yes, I’ve got my team covering my wife’s aunt and my man who was hurt. You’ve got my number. Let me know what your team finds.”
While Sebastian speaks to Calder, updating him on his conversation with an old police colleague about the case, and then Calder tells him about interviewing the vets at his gym to see if any of them go to Ben’s clinic or know guys who do, I pull my husbands’ gift from under my pillow and stare at the special sunglasses I’d ordered in hopes that they might help improve his severely limited color vision. I knew there wasn’t any guarantees, but I’d hoped anyway.
As I hold the glasses, unshed tears blur my vision. If Sebastian is no longer able to see red now either, leaving him living in a whole world in shades of gray, this is the last gift my husband would ever want. Instead, it would be a painful reminder of everything he’s lost and his inability to get it back. Taking a deep breath, I start to put the glasses back in their original box, but then I hear Sebastian saying goodnight to Cass and Calder. With no time to make it to the dresser, I quickly shove them in the side zipper pocket of the hospital bag next to the door. Tomorrow, as he’s taking a shower, I’ll put them in the packaging they came in and ship them back to the company. I’ll just have to think of another present to give him.
Sebastian steps into the doorway just as I stand and push the bag closer to the wall with my foot. “I thought it was all packed?” He wraps his arms around me, teasing, “I honestly don’t think you can stuff anything else in there, sweetheart.”
“Night,” Cass calls to us from the living room.
“Night,” I reply, resting my hands on his chest. Once Sebastian pushes our door closed, I wrap my arms around his trim waist to keep him from walking away. “Is losing your ability to see on the red spectrum the reason why you haven’t always been present even when you’re here?”
He holds my gaze for a couple seconds, but before he can say anything, I continue, “I remember you telling me that if you ever lost the ability to see all colors, you wouldn’t be a fit man to live with.”
Giving me a wry smile, he kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry, Talia. I never meant to make you feel like I wasn’t present. For a while, reds had turned to the reddest black, but now…I think I’m just imagining the red because I know that’s what it used to be. I have to accept it’s going.” He glances toward the bouncy seat, his gaze lingering. “I can tell by the crazy designs that springy contraption is probably so bright it looks like a paint factory puked all over it.” I snort, nodding, and his mouth sets in a grim line. “I hate that I can’t share in the vividness of her colorful world. That I won’t be able to fully appreciate her crayon drawings or play colored blocks with her or fucking teach her about colors, period.”
My heart aches for his pain and I fall a bit more in love that he called our baby a girl. “You haven’t forgotten what colors look like, or the emotion they evoke, Sebastian.” His jaw works, but his gaze stays locked on the toy. “You can always speak to what they mean to you, like the colors red and black, for instance.”
His attention instantly snaps back to me, and I give a secret smile as I touch his jaw. “What you can teach our son is how to focus his senses so he can learn to do what you did today once you saw that wolf in the woods. That animal was completely camouflaged to my eyes, yet you saw him clearly. And if it weren’t for your ability to see detail where the rest of us just saw a pool of blood, you wouldn’t have found that syringe. Thanks to you Theo survived. You will teach our child things no other father can. In doing so, you’ll broaden the world around him, and for that I’m very grateful.”
Sebastian cups my face, his thumbs tracing along my jawline. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Little Red, but thank you for seeing exceptional instead of broken.”
Smiling, I fold my fingers around his strong forearms. “It’s all perspective, Mister Black. And from where I’m standing, you’re pretty darn perfect.”
His mouth covers mine and I sigh, then press closer for a deeper kiss. When his tongue slides past my lips, and a low feminine moan echoes in the room, Sebastian lifts his head, frowning. “Either you’ve suddenly acquired ventriloquist talents or—”
A masculine groan follows, the deep rumbling echoing in our bedroom, and I cover my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Pointing to the baby monitor on our tall dresser that Cass had set up, I snicker quietly. “Um, I don’t think Cass remembered that she left the other half of that on in their room.”
“I love my cousin like a brother, but this shit’s not going to fly.”
Sebastian picks up the handheld monitor from our room and starts to open the door, but I grab his hand and have to take a deep breath to stop giggling. “You can just turn it off in our room.”
Frowning, he opens the door and the monitor in his hand goes on the fritz for a second as he looks at me. “I seriously doubt Calder wants their entire evening broadcast across the airwaves to whomever happens to catch the show.”
“Ah, good point,” I say, sobering.
Halfway across the living room, he turns to face me and with an evil grin turns the monitor on full blast, then he pivots and continues until he’s holding the monitor up to their closed door.
The sexy sounds inside suddenly stop and Calder jerks open the door. Half naked in a pair of jeans, he glares at his cousin. “What the fuck are you doing?” His own voice echoing in his face, Calder looks at the monitor in confusion just as Cass joins him in the doorway wearing his T-shirt. With her hair a tangled mess, she begins to giggle uncontrollably behind her hand, but the instant her eyes meet mine and she sees the tears of laughter left behind on my cheeks, she drops her hand and openly cackles.
As the guys finally join in the laughter, Cass continues to chuckle as she unplugs the monitor in their room, then Sebastian and I say “goodnight” to them. Once we walk into our room, Sebastian reaches up to turn off the monitor, but then frowns and steps back through the doorway once more.
“What?”
Shaking his head, he puts his finger to his lips, then motions for me to go get Calder.
Heart racing, I quickly re-cross the apartment and knock lightly on their door. The second Calder opens it, this time I whisper, “Sebastian wants you. Something’s wrong with the monitor.”
Cass joins me and we watch Sebastian walk past the doorway once more with the monitor.
Calder jerks his head up at the crackle sound, then pulls his phone out of his pocket. Turning on the flashlight, he starts scanning. Thirty seconds later, he points to the edge of the doorjamb on the living room side.
Sebastian turns the monitor off and his expression hardens as he enters the kitchen to fill a glass halfway with water. Returning to the doorway, he uses his car key from his pocket to pluck the bug Calder found from the doorjamb. Once it drops into the water and hits the bottom of the glass, he walks back into the kitchen and twists the tap, running the water.
Once we all join him
in the kitchen, Sebastian lifts a livid gaze to Calder.
“Tomorrow I want a full sweep of this place.” Shifting his gaze between all of us, he continues. “Until then, we only talk about the case in low tones and only when water’s running or the TV’s on near us. Got it?”
Once we all nod, he inhales through his nose, then grates in a low voice, “How did that sonofamotherfucker get in here?”
Chapter Eleven
Sebastian
“It had to be one of the caterers from the baby shower,” I say, moving the glass far away from me so I don’t throw it across the room. My blood feels like it’s boiling in my veins. “They’re the only strangers, outside of family, who’ve been here.”
“Don’t forget your cleaning lady, and, of course, there’s also Ben,” Calder says.
“Enough snarking on Ben.” Talia furrows her brow at Calder as she steps into place beside him. “Didn’t spending time with your brother today teach you anything about learning to work together? I’ll bet you two are more alike than you realize.”
“Half brother,” Calder grumbles in a low tone, folding his arms. “I learned he knows a hell of a lot more about guns than I thought he would.”
“See, that’s great.” Just as Talia turns toward Calder, she sucks in a gasp and locks her wide eyes with me across the island. “Sebastian…I think my—”
“Her water just broke! Wow, that was a gusher!” Cass squeals excitedly before running off to our bedroom.
Rounding the island, my chest tight with worry, I watch as Talia suddenly grabs the counter. Concern knotting my stomach, I rest my hand on the small of her back as she bends her head forward and takes several deep breaths. “Isn’t it too early?”
Talia shakes her head and grabs her belly, taking another deep breath. “The doctor said the timing could be off by a week. I was just hoping he was wrong, considering everything that’s been going on.”
“Don’t worry about any of that,” I say in a firm tone. “Right now focus on you and the baby.”
Reddest Black: A Billionaire SEAL Story, Book 7 (In the Shadows) Page 11
