Mastiff Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  It was a tedious game. Zola concentrated so hard that her focus was completely on the puzzle pieces themselves. She didn’t see the blood dripping until the end of the game as she stood beside Gunner, handing him pieces and coaxing him on. Only one of them could work on the puzzle at a time, and they’d decided ahead of time that Gunner was the best choice. His mind was quick. He could look at a shape and know exactly where it went within seconds. She had to think about it a little harder. And it was working in their favor. They were several minutes ahead of the other two teams.

  The blood was thin and diluted, dripping from under the sleeve of her jacket. She ignored it as she waited for Gunner to finish, assuming it was a scratch from the sharp debris that had been stuck to the puzzle pieces. But as she and Gunner rushed to push their button to see if they were correct in their puzzle’s design, a wave of lightheadedness rushed over her.

  She never felt lightheaded.

  Still, she ignored the injury, holding her arm behind her back as they watched, victorious, as the other teams finished. When she grew dizzy simply standing there, she leaned against Gunner. He put his arm around her, thinking she was only being affectionate. It wasn’t until the last team, Josh and Lesley, finished that she fell to her knees.

  Gunner knelt beside her, his hands on her shoulders.

  “Zola?”

  That’s when she pulled back the sleeve of her dark jacket and revealed the deep gash in her arm. Gunner paled and turned, calling for a medic in a voice that was near panic.

  Durango came running over, a white towel in his hand. Her first thought was that he should have brought a different color. This towel would be ruined. He pressed it to the wound, turning his head to search for the paramedics who were usually close whenever they had a comp. Zola recalled seeing Felicity and Cillian rushing over along with most of the production crew. The rest of the housemates were there, too. It was like déjà vu, transporting her back to the day Gunner was hurt.

  “We need to call an ambulance,” Durango announced.

  “No, the medics are here,” Cillian said.

  Zola looked up at him, noting that his jacket was bright red. Was it irony?

  Gunner wanted to stay with her when they loaded her into one of the trucks—was it the same one they’d sat on the tailgate of—to get her to the local hospital. Durango took him aside and said something that eased the concern on Gunner’s face. And then they were moving, the bumps and jerks of the vehicle jarring her arm and making the pain she hadn’t felt until the flare.

  “When did you get cut?” Durango asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I was so into the game that I didn’t notice.”

  “When did you first see the blood?”

  She shook her head again. “A little before we finished the puzzle.”

  “You didn’t feel anything?”

  “I didn’t realize it was that bad until I pulled my sleeve up. I thought it was just a scratch from the twigs and things that were on the puzzle pieces.”

  “It had to have been one of the other contestants.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see . . .” She tried to think, but she honestly couldn’t remember. Her hands and arms were soaking wet from the water, and the cold wind made them freeze right away. She was numb from her fingertips to her elbows. “I don’t know.”

  “It almost had to have been Lesley or Jessica. They’re the only ones who got close enough to hurt you.”

  “Or Gunner.”

  She hated to say it, but it was a possibility.

  They arrived at the hospital, and she was immediately taken to an exam room. Her wound was cleaned and sewn, taking twenty-five stitches to close. The doctor wanted to admit her and administer IV antibiotics, but she refused. She needed to get back to the house.

  “I think we should take you out,” Durango announced. “It’s getting too dangerous.”

  “I’ve been in more dangerous situations,” she scoffed.

  “You could have bled out. If they’d cut you just an inch lower—”

  “But they didn’t. If they had, I might have noticed sooner.”

  “I can’t put you in that kind of danger, Zola. We can finish the case from the outside.”

  “If you take me out, there won’t be a case anymore. The show will have to end by default.”

  His eyes narrowed, but she could see that he knew she was right.

  The door opened, and the executive producers walked in. Cillian’s red coat set off alarm bells in Zola’s head, and it took her a minute to figure out why. When it did, her heart sank.

  She had a good idea who’d cut her. And why.

  “Do we have any idea who did this?” Felicity demanded. “Was it Brian? Or Gunner?”

  Durango threw up his arms. “It could have been any of them.”

  Felicity’s face tightened as she stared at Zola. “You didn’t see who cut you?”

  “No. But I have an idea who it was.”

  “Who?”

  “I need . . .” She hesitated, her eyes moving to Durango. She needed him to understand that she needed to figure this out on her own.

  “We need to put her back in the house and let her do her job,” he said, reluctance very clear in his voice.

  “And if someone dies?” Cillian asked. “It’ll ruin us!”

  “No one’s going to die. And, if I’m right, the person doing this will have no reason to continue very soon.”

  Cillian tilted his head. “You think the culprit is a contestant?”

  “I do.”

  He glanced at Felicity. She shrugged. “We had our suspicions.”

  “That certainly narrows the suspect list,” he agreed. “But do you really think you can get evidence? We can’t just go around making accusations.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

  The two producers exchanged glances, then Felicity nodded. “Do what you have to do to make this stop. But, promise me, you won’t allow anyone else to get hurt.”

  “I won’t.”

  Decision made, they stepped out of the room while a nurse came in to give Zola a penicillin shot in her ass. They were on the way back to the house a few minutes after that, everyone silent and lost in their own thoughts.

  “Promise me you’ll be careful,” Durango said quietly as he walked Zola through the back gate of the house’s backyard.

  “I promise.”

  He touched her arm, stopped her from going inside. “You know who it is, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “If I’m right, this person will do everything to make it look like someone else was responsible. It was a risky move, a little too obvious. And, like Cillian said, it’s now a very narrow suspect list.”

  He moved closer to her, close enough that she could see the individual hairs of his thick, long eyelashes. “If you get to the point where you think you need help, look at one of the cameras and say, ‘rainbows.’ Understand?”

  “Understood.”

  He touched her cheek lightly. “Okay. Good luck.”

  Zola walked toward the back porch, feeling much better after the IV they’d given her filled with fluids, and the pain medication that dulled the ache in her arm. She was pretty sure it was the tight bandage that was bothering her the most now, not the cut that was stitched up underneath. And the exhaustion that always came after a competition.

  The entire house was out on the porch, curled up in chairs, under blankets, whispering to each other. Gunner spotted her first. He came off his chair so quickly that it tipped over and made a commotion as it hit the ground. When he reached her, he brushed a piece of hair out of her face as he stared into her eyes. The others barked questions at her, but he slipped his arm around her and guided her into the house, ignoring those who’d treated them so badly since the team switch.

  “You’re okay?” he asked the moment they were behind the locked door of their bedroom.

  “I’m okay.”

  He touched her arm, running his fi
ngers slowly over the bandage, a storm of emotions rushing over his face. She wondered if it reminded him of his sister, of the day she committed suicide. It had made her think of her mother even though her chosen method of death was hanging. Didn’t everyone think of sliced wrists when they thought of suicide?

  “How did it happen?”

  He asked the question in a low, quiet voice. He’d clearly been thinking about it for a while. She wondered if he had suspects in mind.

  “They’ve already grilled me, Gunner,” she said. “I’d rather just lay down and get some sleep.”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  He led the way to his bed, not even considering allowing her to lie on her own. They stretched out side by side on the queen-sized bed, his arms snaking around her waist as he pulled her back against his chest. It was a long time before he fell asleep. She never really did.

  It was a little before dawn when she slipped out of bed, her thoughts on the bathroom first. She needed to brush her teeth desperately. But then she knew that she had to find it before anyone else did. And she knew exactly where to look.

  Everyone kept their toiletries in one of the two bathrooms. There were little lockers that had been set up for that purpose, but there were no locks, no way to protect a person’s things. It was just an organizational practice that everyone had followed, apparently since the beginning of the game. Zola’s things were in the small locker beside Gunner’s, the locker where Lesley had once kept her things. She ran her hand over the door to his locker, sending up a little prayer that she would find . . . But she wasn’t sure what she wanted to find. If it was there, it meant he hadn’t done it. If it wasn’t . . . It could mean almost anything. That he did it and hid it in someone else’s things, or that he hadn’t done it, but the real culprit hadn’t been smart enough to set him up.

  She didn’t know what she wanted. She just knew she wanted to believe he wasn’t the one who’d slashed her arm.

  Zola opened the locker and stared at Gunner’s toiletry kit for a long time. It was a classic bag, one of those men in old television shows carry around. She pulled it toward her and popped it open, her eyes closed for a long moment. When she opened them, a gasp slipped from between her lips.

  It was there, right on top. A box cutter with the blade still exposed, her blood dried on the tip.

  That had to mean he didn’t do it. It had to mean that he was innocent.

  Or he hadn’t yet had time to get rid of it.

  She wanted to believe the former because she couldn’t believe the latter. Not if she wanted to keep her sanity in this place.

  Chapter 14

  Chicago, Illinois

  The Set of Stranger’s Retreat

  Even though Gunner and Zola were both injured, they managed to win enough comps to put them at the top of the point board by the end of the week. Gunner stood at the door and watched as Josh and Lesley left the house.

  “I can’t believe she’s gone,” Jessica said in a breathless moan.

  Zola slid her arm through Gunner’s and pulled him back toward the living room. He followed, limping a little in the heavy boot the doctor insisted was better than anything else he could have prescribed for him. He’d never injured himself before, not like this. To have his first real injury while he was playing this game was a terrible insult to everything he was fighting for.

  He sat down and swung his leg up, his eyes moving to the tall monitor on the wall.

  “Should be an interesting week.”

  “For you, maybe,” Brian said as he threw himself onto the other couch. “The rest of us are going to feel it’s a little anticlimactic after I win.”

  “We, you mean,” Jessica said, taking a seat beside him; she was all prim and proper in the way she crossed her ankles, and he was sprawled like a child.

  “Everyone knows who the winner will be.” Gunner held out his hand to Zola, tugging her down onto the couch beside him. “But you’re welcome to try again in six months.”

  Brian shook his head, his face flushing as he stared at the two of them. “You’re an arrogant ass, Gunner.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “Okay, boys,” Zola announced. “I think it’s been a stressful day. We all need to get a little sleep.”

  “In a hurry to be alone with your beau, Zola?” Jessica asked, the bitchiness hard to miss in her pretty face.

  “Jealous?” Zola asked, making Gunner laugh.

  They walked hand in hand to their room. Gunner lay down on his bed, glancing at the unused bed beside it.

  “We should ask them to take that thing out of here. We’d have more room that way.”

  Zola blushed. He liked that she was a strong competitor, an independent and confident woman, but she would still blush whenever he made even the vaguest reference to sex. But it was true. They’d slept together in his bed since she moved into the room a week ago. They hadn’t done more than kiss, but that was only because of the cameras in the corners of the room. If those cameras weren’t there . . .

  Zola lay beside him and rubbed at the bandage that still covered the stitches on her arm. They promised to take them out tomorrow, but, in the meantime, they insisted she keep it covered. Apparently, the comps exposed them to all kinds of germs that could lead to a massive infection. She just wanted it off, and he couldn’t blame her. It was a huge relief each night when he was allowed to slip his foot out of that damn walking boot.

  “When do they take you to the doc in the morning?”

  “They don’t. They’re sending the medic in to do it.”

  “That sucks. You don’t even get to see the outside world.”

  “What do you miss most about it?” she asked, leaning back a little to see his face. “The outside world?”

  “Hamburgers.”

  She laughed. “Me too.” But then she rolled onto her back, all serious as she stared up at the ceiling. “But seriously. Do you miss your family?”

  “Not really. My parents and I aren’t all that close.”

  “Why not?”

  He was quiet for a minute, wondering if she was truly curious, or if she was only playing for the cameras. Sometimes the producers would pull them aside and suggest topics to discuss with the other contestants. Gunner played along only when he thought it might benefit him. Did Zola think this conversation might benefit her in some way? Or was she just asking?

  “My sister died,” he finally said after deciding it didn’t matter. He wanted her to know. “We were really close because our parents weren’t around that much when we were kids. But we’d fought right before it happened, and my parents had this stupid idea that if we hadn’t, if she and I were on better terms, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “How could you be responsible for someone else’s death?”

  He ran his hand slowly over her belly, watching the soft cloth of her shirt bunch up under his palm, then smooth out again when he changed direction. The nightmare of that night was one he still lived with, one that would always be there, at the back of his mind. He’d been so angry, was still so completely angry. If things had been different, if he’d been different, if she had been . . .

  “She was in an accident in a car I bought her. I guess they figured she wouldn’t have been driving it, if I hadn’t given it to her, or if I’d been there to go run the errand she was running when it happened.”

  “Your sister died in a car accident?”

  “Yeah. A rollover.”

  Zola turned her face from his, her silence a heavy one. He touched the side of her face, wondering if she’d lost someone to a car accident. Why else would she suddenly seem so tense?

  “It was a year ago. Gretchen was a huge fan of these reality shows. We used to watch them together.”

  “Really?”

  “She wanted us to go on Big Brother together, be the last two and then refuse to play the final little bit. She always imagined the show would have to allow us to win together.” He sighed, blowing it out against her shoulder
. “When I heard the description of this show in the casting sheets, I knew it was something she would have loved. She would have been so excited. That’s why I applied, why I want to win. For her.”

  Zola looked over her shoulder at him. “That’s sweet.”

  “It was never about the money for her. Not for me, either. It’s for the strategizing and the comps and the friendships. She always loved the friendships that developed and then blew up on these shows.”

  “She sounds like an interesting woman.”

  “She was. You would have liked her.”

  “I’m sure I would have.”

  He kissed her shoulder. His thoughts filled with the past. He’d always made fun of Gretchen and her obsession with these shows. It was that obsession that had caused their final fallout. She applied to be on Amazing Race and put in an application for him as her partner without asking. She’d gotten a call for an interview, but he refused to go with her. He was pissed that she’d done it behind his back and had no interest in doing such a thing. Hell, he was supposed to be out of the country a week after she told him about it, a business trip that would keep him overseas for months. He wouldn’t have been back in time for the filming of the show. But she wouldn’t listen. She didn’t care about his life or his obligations.

  He’d been so angry; he didn’t see the obvious signs of the cancer that was ravaging her body. All he saw was his spoiled little sister who thought the whole world revolved around her. Whose fault was it that she felt that way? It was his. Had always been his. But he’d stop seeing the little sister he’d adored so desperately and began to see a pathetic, millennial who spent all her time watching television rather than going out and connecting with real people. Maybe he’d been the spoiled one, the one who struggled to see past his nose. Why else didn’t he see what she was going through, the struggle that was tearing her up?