The Enemy Inside (The Captive Series Book 1)

by Penelope Marshall

  Adam only lasted a few months, since my reclusive lifestyle made him stir-crazy. Eventually, he asked to be reassigned to someone who had a little more action in their life.

  When Clay called with Adam’s replacement, he said he had the perfect guy for me.

  Perfect guy, huh?

  He explained he was going to send over Zander Smith, a former SEAL who had just come home from the war in Syria as a contractor to help out his father, since his mother had just died from cancer. He thought that since we had both suffered a loss, it could act as common ground. I agreed to give him a chance. After all, I couldn’t handle another day without some sort of protection sitting outside my door.

  My phone began to ring, which brought me back to reality. I picked it up to see it was my cousin, Maria, who lived about an hour away. Exhaling, I swiped the ignore button, sending her straight to voicemail. Maria was the only relative I really kept in contact with, but lately she had been hinting at a visit. Although I loved her, and we still exchanged birthday and Christmas presents via the internet every year, I hadn’t actually seen her since before my parents died.

  A text message came through a few seconds later.

  Maria: Hey Z. Call me. I miss you.

  I shook my head as I reread her words a few times.

  Kenzi: Maybe tomorrow.

  Maria: I’m gonna hold you to that. Don’t make me have to come out there.

  Kenzi: I won’t let you in.

  Maria: We’ll see…

  I threw the phone on the couch as I made my way through the dark living room toward the kitchen.

  Opening my father’s liquor cabinet, where he kept the good stuff hidden from my mother and me, I reached for a hundred-year-old bottle of scotch and a scotch glass he bought especially for the bottle.

  I slowly wiped the dust from the label and gazed at it for a few moments.

  “I miss you, Daddy,” I said, opening the bottle, and pouring the aged perfection about one-third of the way up.

  Lifting the glass up to eye level, I swirled it around then placed it under my nose, just like my father had taught me, to take in the sweet aroma. It was smooth and reminded me of the way soft brown caramel felt in between my fingers; the sip immediately transported me to the last evening I saw my father, sitting at the dinner table as my mother served him his evening dessert.

  He slapped his belly and laughed. “Oh, no, honey, I need to walk off dinner before I dive into this treat.”

  My mother laughed. “Of course, my darling,” she said, kissing him on his smooth, dark mocha cheek before she headed off to get her warm gray evening coat from the closet.

  “Do you want to join us on the walk, my dear?” he turned to me and asked.

  “No, Daddy, I’m so lazy from shopping all day. I think I’ll stay behind and clean up the dinner table, if that’s all right,” I replied, as I started grabbing at the dishes.

  “Don’t you dare touch my dessert, Kenzi, or I’m cutting you out of my will,” he warned.

  “Oh no, sir, I wouldn’t wanna eat a ten-million-dollar piece of Dutch apple pie.” I chuckled as I stacked the plates and headed toward the kitchen.

  He walked over to me, giving me a peck on the cheek. “Goodbye, my sweet girl.”

  I pursed my lips together, making a smooching sound, and replied, “Daddy, I’ll see you two in a bit, silly.”

  “We’ll be back, darling.” My mother waved as she and my father disappeared through the door.

  I nodded to them and continued on into the kitchen, placing the dirty plates in the sink.

  Little did I know that would be the last time I would see either of them alive. If only I had known; I would have given him a tighter hug, and told him how much I loved him. I would have listed all the things I had ever learned from him, and how he was the first man I ever loved. If I had only known it was their last evening, I wouldn’t have just nodded at my mother. Instead, I would have thrown the dishes to the ground and kissed her on her forehead and her cheek, hugging her until she told me the display of affection wasn’t proper in mixed company. I would have told her how much I appreciated the time she took to groom me into the woman I was.

  But I didn’t know—and wasn't that the crux of it? We never know when our time is up.

  “God, I miss them,” I muttered to myself as I toasted my glass to the sky and finished off the glass.

  Grabbing the neck of the bottle, I turned off the kitchen light and headed toward the foyer to climb the staircase. I took one last look at the door before I turned and headed up the stairs, drinking gulp after gulp straight from the bottle, drowning my sorrows in alcohol. My mother would have been mortified, and my father would have had a heart attack if he saw I was treating his scotch like cheap bar whiskey.

  Almost to my room, I stopped in the hallway, smack dab in front of my parents’ bedroom door. It was a room I rarely stepped foot in, leaving it just as they had left it. The beige chiffon curtains matched the beige claw foot sitting chair in the corner of the room. My mother had their bed handcrafted by the finest woodworkers in Malaysia and then shipped over in its very own metal shipping container. Everything my mother did was first class, that’s just the type of woman she was, and my father indulged her every whim, which was just the kind of man he was.

  Chugging down another swig, I leaned against the threshold, trying to remember them scurrying around in the morning, or lazily reading their novels before bed. I was so scared I would forget them one day. Forget the soft smell of my mother’s hair, or the safety of my father’s arms. If I forgot, then I would truly be alone.

  Reaching in to shut the door, I felt a cold breeze waft past me. The hallway was empty and the curtain still, so it couldn’t have been wind passing through an open window causing the breeze. I shrugged, eyeing the mouth of the glass bottle.

  “Maybe I drank a little too much of you,” I muttered as I pulled the creaky door shut.

  Making my way down the hall to my bedroom, I tossed back one last swig of scotch then set the bottle down on the nightstand. Changing into my black silk camisole with matching shorts, I crawled into bed, nestling my head on the pillow.

  “Not tonight, Mom,” I warned her ghost as my eyes scanned the room.

  My skin throbbed as the alcohol permeated through my bloodstream, lulling me to sleep. Before I knew it, I was walking through the park, the birds were chirping as the warm breeze gave me its usual hug. The clouds blocked out the sun and turned the skies dark. Suddenly, I was standing in the park looking down at the heavy black plastic tarp, and the crows began to squawk. Knowing what was coming next, but too paralyzed to run away, I readied myself for my mother to forcefully drag me under the tarp.

  “Kenzi!” she screamed in my face.

  Thud!

  And there I was again, face down in my dark room, except for the moonlight, which shone through the white silk curtains that draped the massive window next to my bed.

  “Fuck, Mom,” I cursed, pushing myself up from the ground, rubbing the flesh covering my hip bone where I knew a bruise from the fall would be visible by morning.

  One night.

  I just wanted one full night of pure unadulterated sleep, but that was probably too much to ask. My mouth felt dry, dehydration had set in from the sweating, so I left my room and headed through the long hallways, down the curved staircase through the huge foyer, past the living room, which eventually led to the kitchen.

  At this point, I was so used to walking around the house in the middle of the night I could probably easily get around with a blindfold on. It was a pretty substantial walk just to get a glass of water. In retrospect, I should have probably kept a glass next to my bed to avoid the journey altogether.

  Voyeur

  I flicked on the light switch, dispelling all the magic of the smooth marble countertops which glistened in the moonlight. Pulling open the door to the refrigerator to grab water, my eye caught sight of all the things my sweet tooth begged for. I reached out to grab a glas
s plate which held a slice of chocolate cake, when the sound of a revving engine zipped through the stark kitchen.

  It’s Ty!

  I pulled my hand away from the cold air of the refrigerator and shut the stainless steel door as I looked to my right toward the main dining room window. The sleep completely left me as I hurriedly made my way to the china cabinet to get my binoculars.

  Being a recluse and not wanting to leave my house was one thing, but I still longed for a life outside of these walls. I wanted to be a part of a birthday celebration or a mid-week movie night. My binoculars had become my window to the outside world, and my favorite pastime. Hours upon hours, I would sit in front of my living room window, watching my neighbors live their lives through the wood-grained binoculars.

  Recluse. That dirty word. A word which I had grown to loathe as it made me sound like a crazy cat lady, which I’m sure was the opinion all my neighbors had of me. Peeping was the only way my mind could cope with the loneliness. I struggled between the urge to immerse myself in the world and the fear of what the world could do to me if I let it. The fear always won out.

  My mind would pretend I was included in Mrs. Anderson’s and Mrs. Fleming’s midday walks. Or that I was sipping high tea with Mrs. Harvish, who had the most beautiful glass ballerina statue perched on the side table in front of her living room window, which she wound up to twirl while she enjoyed her tea.

  Come to think of it, all that does sound pretty crazy, but it was how I dealt with my soul-crushing loss. No one I knew wanted to understand what I was going through, and frankly, I didn’t want to let them anyway, so this was it—my life. A recluse and a voyeur. I shook my head at the thought.

  I placed the binoculars over my eyes, panning the scenery with excitement. Although I respected most of my neighbors’ privacy when it came to intimate matters, I didn’t extend that same courtesy to my closest neighbor, Ty.

  My father had been a huge fan of Ty’s, following his career closely. So when he moved in right next door, my father almost had a heart attack, acting like a love struck school girl the day we met him. This, of course, was years ago, and I remember thinking how sexy it was he had overcome all the odds and achieved the American rags to riches dream by the time he reached the ripe young age of twenty.

  Life had dealt him a blow; orphaned at sixteen from an accidental fire in his family home, he was thrown into the foster care system and inevitably forgotten by the world. Luckily, he had a lucrative God given talent. The man could throw a football over ninety yards, and was the most sought after quarterback in the NFL, garnishing a two million dollar contract his rookie season.

  Of course, he was much older now, but time had not diminished his jet-propelled arm, nor his striking and overpowering good looks. When I met him, I wasn’t able to look away from the gravitational pull of his entrancing eyes.

  Ty was loved by men for his physical prowess on the field, and loved by their wives and girlfriends for his physical prowess in bed. The charming and quiet man the wives in the neighborhood had dubbed the MILF (man I’d like to fuck), had two totally different personas. What they thought they knew, and what I knew from watching him through his window, revealed Jekyll and Hyde.

  His money and fame weren’t what intrigued me about him. After all, I had my own. My wealth handed over to me on an obscure piece of paper that could have easily been a silly grocery list or spam mail offering zero percent financing if I transferred my credit card balance over. There was a bit of guilt and hatred toward the inheritance, especially when I contemplated its real cost―the lives of my mother and father. What really intrigued me about Ty were his nightly escapades. How he could be two different people, the sweet man he let the neighbors see, and the deviant he kept behind closed doors.

  Always well dressed, he would jump into his latest model convertible, this one was red, which had all the bobbles and gadgets a man who owned that type of car would want. After only a couple of hours out on the town, he would return home with a new woman, and there she was, just as reliable as the sun in the sky. Little did she know what was in store for her—but I did.

  Readying the eyepiece of the binoculars over my blue eyes, I waited for the show to proceed. The lights to Ty’s car flickered off and the sound of two car doors opening excited me. Ty was a ruggedly handsome man, with dark brown chocolate skin and light hazel eyes. He shaved his head bald every night, leaving a slightly scruffy goatee, which was just enough to be sexy, but not enough to be overbearing. His physique, young and hard, featured broad shoulders, full muscular pecs, and washboard abs with ripples and ridges that disappeared well into his jeans.

  All the wives in the neighborhood swooned over him when he came out in the morning, dressed only in a thin white wife beater and a loose pair of navy blue pajama pants to pick up his paper.

  Every night after all the other neighbors had gone to bed, I made it a point to look into his house. It seemed like all of the action happened through Ty’s windows. If my mother hadn’t woken me up with another of her tormenting nightmares, I would have missed this unusually timed tryst.

  Ty had returned home accompanied by a new woman again. He never brought home the same one twice. He was very reliable in that respect, and I often wondered where he would meet these women and how he charmed them into coming home with him on the first night. But my greatest question had to have been—why did they never come back?

  I saw him in action almost every night, and there was no way I would rate his performance as anything less than stellar. He always delivered on his promise of a good time, if that is in fact what he promised to get these women to come home with him. Actually, thinking about it now, his looks would have been enough for me. He could have been a mute, and his dazzling smile would have been enough to get me to take my clothes off.

  Some nights he was accompanied by beautiful black women, dressed as if they had just stepped out of a fashion show. Other nights he brought home beautiful white women, or small, thin Asian women, and sometimes all three at once. Most of the women were drop dead gorgeous and complimented his looks well. While other nights, he would totally miss the mark and bring home semi-haggard women whom I dubbed undesirables. These women were neither slender, nor beautiful. If he had chosen a slender woman with a face that left some room to be desired, I could probably accept that. Even a beautiful woman whose body was less than stellar would have been acceptable, but these women had neither. They had nothing to offer Ty other than a negative space in which he could insert himself. The spectrum of women to which Ty was attracted confounded me and made me somewhat angry.

  Honestly, I was almost overprotective of the imaginary relationship I had built with him. Having to watch him with undesirable women meant I was also included in the scenario, which disgusted me. On those nights, I would put my binoculars down, close the curtain, and continue about my evening, playing out the rest of the tawdry affair in my head, of course replacing the undesirable with one of the beautiful women he had brought home on a previous occasion.

  In the last few weeks, Ty had continuously brought home undesirables, which left me angry and frustrated. I hoped he had brought home a beautiful woman this time. Catching a glimpse of them walking from the car through the front door, I began to pan the windows looking for the room he and the woman were in.

  “Fuck,” I growled. “Another ugly ass woman.”

  I threw down my binoculars and shut the curtain in disgust. Heading back up the stairs with my glass of water, I crawled back into bed and prayed my mother wouldn’t visit me again.

  “Just a few hours, Mom. Just a few hours, please,” I begged out loud as I nestled my face into the soft plush pillow and closed my eyes, falling right back to sleep as quickly as the nightmare had awakened me.

  A few hours later, the sound of the doorbell dinging jarred me from my nightmare-free sleep. The heat of the morning sun blanketed my face as my eyes darted about the room.

  Goddammit, what time is it?

  I look
ed over to the nightstand to see it was only 7:30 in the morning. Yawning deeply, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

  The doorbell continued to ring.

  “I’m coming!” I screamed as my feet touched the cold wooden floor.

  Before heading downstairs, I threw on the lavender silk robe I had on the foot of my bed, then stopped in front of the mirror to make sure I was halfway decent for Clay and Zander. Midway down the stairs, I could see only one shadow through the frosted glass window and wondered why Clay had come alone. Surely he wouldn’t have sent Zander by himself—he knew better. Swinging the door open, I gasped slightly when I found who was standing on the other side—my extremely hot and promiscuous neighbor, Ty.

  Oh no, is he here to confront me about watching him every night?

  A wave of heat rushed over me as I anxiously tried to look as innocent as possible of any wrongdoing.

  “Um, yes, may I help you?” I asked as I clutched my robe with one hand, trying to fix my hair with the other.

  As this handsome man stood in front of me wearing a crisp new gray suit with a thin navy blue tie and matching pocket square, smelling of an ever-so-manly cologne, I couldn’t help but be utterly embarrassed at my appearance. His smell wafted through the morning air, dancing around me, enticing me to come closer. I was ashamed to admit it, but just being that close to him was making me wet.

  “Kenzi, right?” Ty asked with a smile.

  “Yes, that’s right,” I replied as I shifted my gaze to my un-manicured toes, trying to curl them in to keep him from noticing the atrocity I walked around with daily.

  “I don’t know if you remember me—”

  “I do. I do remember you.” I looked up, interrupting him excitedly, but then realized how awkward my response sounded. So I stepped back slightly, hiding behind the door to conceal my embarrassment.