Still Not Into You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Snow, Nicole

  “Who?” she demanded, her voice breaking, high and sharp with desperation. “If it’s not Harmon, if it’s not one of his shitface friends, then who?” She takes a shaky breath, her face crumpling in this mixture of grief, fury, and hopelessness that cuts a hole in my heart. “I can’t start at ground zero, Gabe. Jesus Christ, I –”

  “You don’t have to, darlin’. You don’t.” I'm quick to reassure her, pulling her close, wrapping her up close with the note still clutched in my fist. She feels even smaller than usual against me, this fragile hollow shell lighter than air and frailer than brittle glass. My throat feels tight, but I try to keep my voice soothing as I say, “This letter’s a lead. We can turn it over to the police, and they can dust your door and the letter for prints. Handwriting analysis, too. Looks like they tried to fake it, but that leaves markers. They’ll be able to tell us something.”

  “Like ‘middle-aged white male’ is going to narrow anything down. Gabe, that could be almost anybody!” Her voice is muffled against my chest, bitter. Her fingers curl into my shirt.

  “Yeah, but prints will tell us who that middle aged white male is. Any prick sloppy enough to pull this is gonna be sloppy enough to leave tracks.”

  I nudge my knuckles under her chin, guiding her to look up at me with those heartbreaking blue eyes. When I’d wanted to see past the icy surface, I never wanted it to be like this – ice cracked to leave raw liquid pain seeping through the fissures.

  This girl’s got more heart than anyone has any right to, and all this pain is wringing that precious heart dry. I'm not gonna let it empty into a desert.

  “Call it in,” I say quietly. “We’ll talk to the cops, and then I want to pack you up and take you to my place for a while.”

  Her eyes flash. “Your place? But –”

  “It’s not safe here.” I gotta get this out fast, before this stubborn little firecracker has a chance to start a real argument with me. “They know where you live. They know how to get to you if they want to do something more drastic. Me, they’d have to follow me, and I’d have caught them. You’re safer with me. Sky, don't fight what we both know.”

  “I don’t want to be safe!” she flares. “I want to find Joannie. And if that means being here when her kidnapper comes for me then –”

  “Then tell me how you're gonna help Joannie if you’re in the hospital, or dead?” I shake my head. “Don’t make that choice, Sky. We gotta do this smart. Use patience, use our heads, not our anger.”

  Her lashes tremble, and for a second, I can see the moment when she hovers on the verge of bursting into primal fighting tears, furious and wild. Her Navy discipline comes out at the last second, and she takes a deep, slow breath and releases it before fishing her phone from her pocket.

  “Fine,” she says. “Whatever.”

  I catch the three numbers she types on the screen before she turns away from me, glaring mutinously past the house and toward the beach.

  Okay. I'll take my 'whatever' with a side of 'fuck you' if it gets her to listen.

  She can be as spitting mad at me as she wants, just as long as she’s safe.

  After a brief, muttered conversation with the cops, she stalks inside to start packing. I wait outside, smoothing the note carefully.

  Don’t want to smudge any prints.

  I read it over and over again, but I can’t get anything new from it. It’s a cipher, all right, but it’s the first real confirmation we’ve gotten that there’s somebody besides Harmon involved. No way he could’ve done this from behind bars, and I don’t think he’d waste his one phone call getting some goon to pull a prank to scare Sky off.

  This screams amateur, which doesn’t make sense.

  Amateur...or some jackass pretending to be.

  Who the hell’s gonna be smart enough to evade Sky and the cops for months, but dumb enough to pull a newbie move like this?

  We must be getting close.

  I got a picture in my head now. Somebody who's never done nothing wrong before except maybe littering, jaywalking, skipping out on a traffic ticket.

  Shit. We ain’t looking for a criminal mastermind. We’re looking for someone upstanding, smart enough to be an outlaw, but without the guts. He's planned this for months. Maybe it’s specific to Joannie, or maybe it’s any kid will do and he planned the place, but not the kid.

  Probably set up all his contingency plans, then laid in wait till he saw his moment. Eventually, it was time to make a move. Snatch the kid, then disappear, lay low.

  Everything’s going just fine. He's got her. But just in case he keeps an eye on the headlines and gets to know more about the family he's done broken.

  Starts stalking ‘em, learning ‘em.

  That’s the thing with people who do shit like this. Even when they don’t fit the profile of psychos, they still gotta insert themselves in the investigation because they gotta know what’s going on.

  The difference between this guy and a classic psychopath is that he doesn’t need to be known to law enforcement or the victims. He’s just gotta know what’s going on. It’s about safety, not ego. He needs to keep one step ahead.

  Only, when his plan goes south, when the usual suspect turns up clean and he knows now we’ll be looking for someone else, he panics. All his carefully crafted escape routes are falling apart, right when he thought he was gonna get away with it.

  He’s acting on impulse. He's running on fear.

  Before he had months to plan, but now he feels like he’s got seconds to get away and the Feds are breathing down the back of his neck. Worst thing he’s got to worry about is a little spitfire woman who will fucking gut him alive if she ever gets her hands on him. She’s the dog with a bone, the one who won’t let go, the one who’ll find him.

  She’s the one he’s got to get rid of.

  She's the one I have to save from his lunatic ass.

  But he doesn’t have the balls for anything deeper than kidnapping, so he’s gonna try to scare her. And that’s his mistake.

  Because I know Skylar Szabo, and Skylar Szabo don’t scare.

  She just gets madder.

  One thing's for sure: Mr. Dumbass is right to be afraid.

  I can see all that in the letter, like I’m building a criminal profile, but one thing I can’t see is a face. Somebody like this wouldn’t have a face. It’s a stranger, probably, unknown to the Szabo family while by now he’d know everything about them. I’m seeing this as a crime of opportunity.

  I just need this fucker to slip up one more time and fill in that blank where a face should be.

  * * *

  There’s still something bothering me about the letter.

  Something about the phrasing. I've been sitting here thinking, working every bit of my grey matter, for the last half hour.

  The note feels forced, artificial. It ain’t right. The term is let sleeping dogs lie, not let dead dogs lie. You’re supposed to let sleeping dogs lie because if you wake ‘em up, they might bite you. That’s enough of a threat, but this one’s saying let dead dogs lie or Skylar’s gonna join them.

  Leave a dead body alone, or you might end up dead too.

  Dead body.

  God, don’t let this fucker be implying Joannie’s dead.

  Of course, I’m gonna keep that thought to myself.

  Sky stays in the house till the quick burst of sirens, on and off again, alerts us right before two cop cars come pulling around the bend. We end up with three nearly identical uniformed officers, same dark hair, same crew cut, same tired we really don’t want to be here look, and one forensics guy with a small case and a hard-put-on stare. I can see Sky’s about to get herself arrested for assaulting an officer with their lazy indifference, so I run interference and do the talking as much as I can.

  It’s the most frustrating hour of my life, while they ask her about potential witnesses and then follow up with questions like it’s somehow her fault she lives off this little track with no one around to see, as if she’d moved
into this house just to make it hard to trace a potential crime.

  Bullshit. They're just being thorough, probably, but it pisses me off royally.

  I’m about ready to risk disorderly conduct by the time they’ve put the note in a sealed evidence bag, dusted the door and frame for prints, inspected around the house, shut their damn yaps, and concluded there’s no other signs of forced entry. Nothing the perpetrator left behind that could be useful.

  They promise to call back once they’ve processed the evidence, but it’s not hard to see from the slump of Sky’s shoulders that she doesn’t have much hope, or faith.

  I don’t blame her. There was an undercurrent with these cops.

  Like they knew this lead wouldn’t go anywhere, and they weren’t gonna even bother to try.

  They were just going through the motions.

  Skylar’s silent after they leave. I wrap my arm around her shoulders and squeeze. “Come on, darlin’. Get your things, and let’s go.”

  “Gabe?” she whispers, her voice soft, lost, disbelieving. “I'm...I'm gonna have to tell Monika the truth, won't I? I’ll never see Joannie again, will I?”

  Something breaks inside me, and I feel my own eyes burning. Leaning down, I press my lips to the top of her head and try to muffle the rough ache in my voice as I murmur against her hair.

  “We will, Sky. We will. You won't have to tell your sis a damn thing till her little girl's home. Mark my words.”

  We will see her again, I tell myself one more time. Just for good measure.

  Yes, we fucking will. No matter what I have to do.

  * * *

  It’s a miserable few days at my place, and they turn even more dark and hopeless with every hour the cops turn up nothing on that note.

  Sky’s not even up for the usual distractions, and at night she lies there like a wet dishrag in my arms pretending to sleep. I don’t even try to pretend.

  I just lie there and worry about her, but she doesn’t say a damn thing to my hangdog looks every morning when she gets up and slogs to work.

  I’m not quite sure when she snapped. I just know one night she doesn’t call, doesn’t come back. I tell myself not to call her. She doesn’t owe me a damn thing. What we’re doing is just temporary and I know that, even if there’s nothing temporary about the hooks she’s dug into my heart.

  They pull me toward her constantly, emotional gravity, hurting with every sharp point digging deeper and deeper into me.

  We don’t have the kind of relationship where she’s supposed to let me know if she’s working late so I can save dinner and won’t worry something nasty happened to her, with how dangerous her job is.

  But goddamn, part of me wishes we did.

  I can see it. I can see life in that little shack of hers, finally settling down, finally finding a place to stay.

  I can see sitting on her rickety back porch facing the beach, propping my feet up on the porch rail and taking in the sunrise over the waves, a Sunbeam stole from the heavens in my arms. I can see waking up before her, making her breakfast, and kissing her goodbye on the way out. I can see seven p.m. texts telling me she’s working out some knotty thing and won’t be home till after midnight, so don’t wait up, get some sleep, love you baby, goodnight.

  I can see myself waiting up anyway, a covered plate of jambalaya warming in the oven and drying out when we forget all about it because even when she’s tired and her hair’s a mess, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and all I want to do is kiss her awake before loving her to sleep.

  I want to write that in my book, but I’m afraid to.

  ‘Cause it’ll never happen. It just ain't in the cards.

  And I don’t want to get confused some twenty, thirty, forty years down the road when my brain ain’t right and the things in this book make me miss something I never had.

  Fuck.

  I can’t be letting my head drift like this. Point number one, right now, is finding out where Sky is. I’m still her bodyguard, whether she likes it or not, and that nagging feeling I’ve had since the note showed up is telling me something’s wrong.

  I try her cell, but no answer.

  Fuck again.

  A text turns up nothing after ten minutes of waiting for a response. Swearing under my breath, I dial Landon.

  “Hey,” he says. I can hear the sounds of something sizzling, probably a skillet. I’m interrupting dinner. Damn. “What’s up?”

  “Sky,” I blurt out. “She working late tonight?”

  I can hear the frown in Landon’s voice. “Nah, man. She went home before I did. Clocked out right at five. She’s not with you?”

  “No. She normally comes right back to my place after work, too. She’s not answering her phone or texts, either.” I try to keep my voice calm, level, even though I’m running my fingers through my hair fit to pull it out.

  Landon must be able to hear the edge of panic because his voice turns hard, focused. That voice I remember from hot days under desert suns, scoping mission parameters with our pal, Eden. “Do I need to mobilize a team?”

  “No. Maybe. Fuck. I don’t know.” I take a deep breath. “Let me do some checking around, and I’ll let you know soon.”

  I hang up the phone and rack my brain for where Sky might be. I should check her house first, then maybe hit up some of the bars where she’d been trawling for info on Harmon.

  Yeah. That’s a good plan.

  I don’t even remember getting in my truck. All I remember is peeling out of the driveway of my place and hitting the highway. I shouldn’t be this goddamn freaked, but after that animal busted her door in and left that note, all I can think about is every horrible, atrocious thing that could happen to her if I’m not there to protect her.

  It’s like my heart remembers to beat again, when I see her old beat-up Buick parked outside her place and the lights on in the window. I pull my Dodge in behind her car, kill the engine, and take a minute to just breathe so I don’t go barging in there like Tarzan, yelling myself all hoarse.

  I don’t even know what to say to her. Maybe I should just leave. I’m her bodyguard; I’m not her keeper – and she won’t take kindly to me trying to cage her.

  No. Fuck it.

  Maybe she’ll laugh it off as me being an overprotective lunk, kiss me in that way she has, and come home with me for dinner.

  I step out of the truck and knock on the door. I hear cursing from inside, and there’s a delay before she answers that worries me.

  When she opens the door, it’s barely half an inch. Just enough for one hard, wary blue eye to look out – and it doesn’t soften in the slightest when she catches sight of me.

  My intuition screams trouble. Trouble with a capital Sky.

  “What?” she asks flatly.

  “Well, good evenin’ to you, too, darlin’.” I spread my hands. “Not gonna let me in?”

  She eyes me up and down as distrustfully as if we’re strangers. Not people who know each other’s lips and how it tastes to lick sweat and heat and hunger from each other’s skin. Then she steps back, letting the door swing open on its own.

  “Fine.”

  She turns and stalks away. What the hell's going on here?

  I’m all kinds of sideways right now, but I follow her in anyway and shut the door, securing it with the chain. The latch and lock are still a mess of twisted metal and splinters.

  “You mad at me for something, darlin’?” I ask, as I trail her toward the bedroom.

  She tosses a look over her shoulder that says yes even when she says, “No. What would I have to be mad at you about?”

  “Dunno. But you didn’t come back to my place after work and didn’t call to let me know where you’d be.”

  “You’re not my father, Gabe. Or my husband,” she bites off. “I don’t owe you that. Can't I have a life without a babysitter?”

  Steam heats my ears. Something's got her riled up, and an ugly lead weight in my gut tells me I'm not gonna like what that so
mething is. Not one bit. Still, I've got to figure it out.

  “Right, Sky, but technically I'm still doing the job Landon hired me to do. Ain't here to treat you like a child. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

  “I’ll keep myself safe.” She rounds on me with a snarl, and that’s when I notice, as we step into her bedroom, that she’s got a half-packed duffel bag on her bed. “Frankly, I'm sick of being babysat, nannied, and flipping cockblocked at every turn. I'm sick of wasting time! I need to do something, before it's too late, and I don’t need you tagging along.”

  It hits me then.

  She’s leaving, and she’s already mad at what she knows I’m gonna say before I’ve even said it.

  “You’re going to Redding,” I croak, throat dry.

  With a seething glance, she flings her closet doors open and starts ripping clothes off the hangers and throwing them limply toward the bag. “Not that it’s your business, but yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to do something useful. Because I can’t let that asshole slip farther and farther away. Because I can't wait until it's really, truly too late.” She turns away from the closet and starts stuffing the flung clothes into the bag in messy wads, her voice thick and cracking. “A bunch of my Dad’s old biker friends are up there. I’ll twist their arms if I have to. Get them to put out more feelers and dig up more intel.”

  “Sky.” I reach for her, but she jerks away from me, rounding the other side of the bed, putting it between us and still attacking that bag. I let my hands fall helplessly. “Redding’s just gonna upset you more if you go there and wind up chasing your tail. Let it go. Let’s get out of here for a weekend. Relax, clear our heads. We’ll think better for it, maybe come up with something new, get right back at it with fresh eyes and find what we missed. A person can't run themselves down trying to force shit like this. The clues might be right under our noses, but we're too tired and burnt out and pissed off to see 'em. You need rest, focus. We could spend a few days in wine country...”