by Kelli Walker
“I should’ve seen the signs,” Alicia said. “I have a fucking Psychology degree. Maybe Langley was right. Maybe I’m not smart enough to-”
“You stop that shit right now,” I said. “I don’t want to hear another word of it.”
“Why? Because it’s true?”
“No. Because it’s a load of shit. Manipulative men have been manipulative all their lives. He was probably raised by a manipulative parent and he’s had his entire lifetime to perfect his craft. You even said it yourself. Red flags in the beginning you simply didn’t see. It wasn’t you, because in the beginning he didn’t know you. It was all him, right from the start. None of this is your fault, Alicia. It is never the victim’s fault.”
“You sound like Becca.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Becca. A friend of mine. Actually, the only friend I’ve got now. I met her my freshman year of college, too.”
“What’s her last name?” I asked.
“Reece. Rebecca Reece. Why?”
“I’m going to have my guys run a background check on her.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s standard procedure. When we take on a new client, we pull basic background checks on anyone closely associated with them. Have you been in contact with Becca lately?”
“Yeah. Earlier today,” she said.
“It’s only protocol. We want to make sure she’s not working with Langley or anything like that.”
“You’re insane. Becca wouldn’t do something like that. She’s my best fucking friend.”
“I’m keeping all my options open,” I said. “That’s all.”
“Becca isn’t doing this. Langley is.”
“Alicia, you have to trust my methods.”
“I can’t even trust you! How can I trust some bogus methods?”
I sighed as I leaned forward in the chair. I knew this was overwhelming for her, but I knew this was also the best course of action. Men like Langley are good at what they do and that’s what makes them dangerous. Dangerous for women like Alicia who didn’t have a job or money or any means to defend themselves.
But I was more dangerous.
And if I could convince Alicia to keep me around, I knew I could keep her safe.
“Look, I know this is all overwhelming.”
“Oh really? And what would you know about overwhelming?” she asked.
“As a former Navy SEAL? A lot.”
Her eyes whipped over to mine and I watched something flash behind her eyes. I was used to that look. The look of awe twinged with a bit of sympathy. I hated that look. It was why I never told people about my military past. They wanted to thank me for my service or buy my dinner or shake my head or take a damn picture. All because I killed people to get others back.
Took lives in order to save others.
There was no honor in that.
No honor in killing on command.
“I know I can keep you safe,” I said. “And you need it. Your lawyer made it seem as if you reached out for this service, but even if you didn’t, the evidence is overwhelming. You're in danger, and until we can find Langley this isn’t going away. I can provide some security. Protection, if things go south. And with the pictures I saw in your file and the police report I was able to track down, he’s got some resources on his hands.”
“Money, mostly,” Alicia said.
“And money buys a lot in New York City. That’s probably how he found you. I’ve got one of my guys looking into the P.I.’s around here. Seeing if any of them might’ve been hired by your ex.”
She grimaced at the word as I sat back in my seat.
“If I were to agree to your service-- which I haven’t yet-- what are my options? What… what would you do?” Alicia asked.
“Do you want a rundown of all of them? Or just the ones I would employ for this particular situation?”
“Is that supposed to impress me?”
“What makes you think I’m here to impress you? I asked you a question so I could tailor down what you’re looking for. My company offers a variety of services. If you want me to rattle all of them off, you might fall asleep before I’m finished.”
“I see your pride hasn’t changed at all.”
“Not pride. Simply fact. Now, which would you like?” I asked.
Alicia’s eyes fell hard onto mine and I could see that spark of light in them again. The smallest glimpse of the strong girl I remembered from high school. She was still in there, aching to get out. Aching to be free of a scenario she probably didn’t know how to get out of all these years. Strong women didn’t fall prey to men like Langley because they were idiots. They fell prey to men like Langley because they were manipulated. Strong women still wanted to see the best in people, and that attribute was preyed upon. It was the same attribute that drew Alicia to me back in high school. She saw the best in me when no one else would, and I wanted to thank her for that. Every damn time she pressed her lips against mine and called me hers.
Men like Langley took advantage of that. Exploited that personality trait to try and condition the people around them. There were many men like that in the business world. Men who sat on their thrones and swam in their pools of money and charmed the people around them like vipers before going in for the kill.
It was why I kept my head out of those types of circles. I rose to my own billionaire success and kept my fucking social calendar clear.
“Fine,” Alicia said. “Assuming I take you up on your offer, what services and tactics would you employ for my particular circumstance?”
Alicia
“I can sit outside of your apartment and case it during the night. I can come up here and sit with you in your apartment while making sure he isn’t accessing the building. I can put cameras up and watch you from a remote location if you don’t want me around. I can follow you to your destinations to make sure he doesn’t attack you in public. I can be a personal chauffeur and I can case places you’ll be in for long periods of time. If you think he’s going to go after your friend, I can put a guard on her, too, in order to keep her safe.”
The more he kept rattling off, the more apprehensive I became. I didn’t want this man around me all day every day. I didn’t want him tagging along to the places I went. I didn’t want him watching my apartment from a damn car like the creeper Langley was becoming.
Especially not when it was Ryder.
And not when he looked as good as he did.
It was hard for me to look at him with the fire percolating in my gut.
He was a big boy in high school, but he sure had filled out. His shoulders were draped in muscle. Cloaked in them, really. His entire body tapered into a thin waist, with hips that jutted into chiseled thighs. His shirt was tight enough for me to see the outline of the dip in his chest. Teasing my eyes to the strength that sat beneath. He still had that brooding black stare and that thick head of brown hair. And his skin.
It was pulled taut over his entire body. Like sun-dried hide stretched over a rippling surface.
I threw my gaze out the window. Desperate to keep my eyes away from his. But I kept catching his reflection in the window.
The way his legs spread as he leaned back into my chair.
“Do any of those appeal to you?” Ryder asked.
“I don’t know if you’re going to be guarding me yet,” I said.
“I’ve known you to be stubborn, Alicia. But never unreasonable. Is our past that hard to get over.”
“Clearly, it was for you.”
My eyes looked past his reflection, the pain in my chest too much. Losing him in high school hurt. But it didn’t simply hurt. It felt like a betrayal. He graduated, and I was with him every step of the way. Every failed test he had to study and retake and every day he was expelled for fighting or causing a ruckus. I brought him his homework so he could keep up with things and tutored him in every single subject he was failing.
I was the reason he graduated.
Then,
he vanished.
Stopped taking my calls. Stopped returning my texts. Didn’t answer the door when I came knocking.
He vanished without a trace, and I was left behind in the wake of his devastation.
I looked across the street as the pain trickled into my gut. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t afford anymore tears to either of these men. I’d allowed them to control my emotional state for so long. I had allowed myself to dream and get swept up within its current. There I was, the ashes of a once-independent, once-headstrong, and once-intelligent woman. Reduced to nothing but a common housewife in hopes of having something better.
In hopes of getting help and achieving something better.
Thinking it was my fault.
Thinking I was the one who needed to shoulder that burden.
My eyes caught a figure across the street and I furrowed my brow. The unwavering figure was blurry through my tears, but the moment I blinked them back my blood froze. I could never forget that stare. The empty, stoic stare of a man not fully existent. His blonde hair blowing in the wind and his tall, lanky form standing confident on the edge of the road.
“Oh my gosh,” I said breathlessly.
“What is it?” Ryder asked.
“It’s… it’s… he’s…”
I couldn’t even say it. All I could do was point and shake. Ryder rushed to the window and looked out onto the street, then whipped his head back around to me.
“Stay here,” he said. “Don’t open this door for anyone.”
He barreled out of my apartment and I ran to the door, shutting and locking it before I ran back to the window. He was standing there. Staring at me. Hooking his fierce gaze onto mine. I could see the anger in his features. I could see his fists clenched at his sides. I knew what he was thinking. Me, with another man in my apartment. I could hear him screaming in his head. Formulating how he was going to get to me and what he was going to do once he did.
I felt my knees growing weak before he got into a cab.
The cab drove off a few seconds before Ryder’s boots hit the pavement. I was looking down at him, bracing myself against the sill of the window. I was going to be sick. I could feel the bile creeping up my throat. My hands were shaking and my elbows were giving way, and I fell to my knees and pressed my head against the wall.
This wasn’t good.
None of this was good.
I fell into a space where sound and time didn’t exist. A place where the world stopped turning and the ground beneath my feet was rolling. I planted my hands into the floor, willing it to stop undulating. Begging it to stop spinning.
I closed my eyes and took in deep breaths as I felt a pair of hands fall to my shoulders.
“No! Stop! I’m sorry!”
I whipped around and grabbed a wrist and tried with all my might to fight back. My feet were kicking and my arms were flailing, and I tried to scoot past. The wrist yanked from my hand and I felt a strong presence press against me. I felt a pair of hands press my back into the wall before a pair of knees scooted between my legs.
“Straighten your back. ‘Atta, girl. Deep breaths through your nose. Close your eyes. No, no, no. Spread your legs. Don’t cave your diaphragm. If you can’t stand up, you have to spread your legs and straighten your back.”
I felt my heart rate settling down as my head fell against the wall. Breathing was becoming easier and my eyes were no longer drowning in salted water. My vision focused and all I could see were those dark brown eyes. Speckled with a hint of hazel and filled with concern.
Concern, and worry, and determination.
“Can you hear me? Nod your head.”
I nodded my head and a sigh of relief pulsed against my face.
“Ryder,” I said.
“It’s me. I’m here.”
“My… my door was-”
“Navy SEAL. I can pick any lock you throw at me,” he said.
“Right,” I said breathlessly. “Right.”
I fell back against the wall and he moved his hands away from my shoulders. Only, a part of me didn’t want him to. A part of me wanted him to stay close. To block my view of the world and stare at me with those comforting eyes. He scooted from between my legs and he took his heat with him. His radiating heat from his chiseled muscles that my body seemed to still be weak against.
“Abram. Yeah, it’s me. I want you to pull the traffic cam footage from the apartment I told you I was headed to. Yes, that’s the one. Send me everything from 5th and Spartan to 5th and Ainsley within the past half hour. Yep. Straight to my phone. Thanks.”
I went to go get off the floor and I felt his strong arms underneath mine.
“Easy does it. Panic attacks are no joke.”
“Panic attack,” I said. “That’s what those are?”
“Have you had them before?”
“Throughout the last two years of my marriage,” I said, snickering.
I saw Ryder’s fists clench and I tried not to take it personally. This was his job. His chosen profession after his apparent stint in the Navy. It wasn’t personal. He wasn’t doing this because he wanted to.
Was he?
I didn’t like it, but I was going to have to keep him around. Especially now that Langley had seen him with me. He would come after me for being with another man. At least, that was what he would think. That Ryder and I were together somehow. And if Langley was still lurking even before he knew someone was here, then it made sense to keep Ryder around anyway.
But I still wasn’t sure about him following me in public.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll hire you.”
“It’s pro-bono, remember?”
“Whatever,” I said. “You got the job.”
“I’m staying with you tonight. As an expert, now that I’ve seen him outside your place with my own eyes, I can’t let you stay here alone.”
I gritted my teeth, already feeling caged after escaping one by the skin of my teeth.
“Fine,” I said. “Let me give you the grand tour.”
Ryder
“You’re sitting in the living room. Over there’s the kitchen. It sits right against my noisy neighbors who enjoy their fetish for walls. If you follow me down the hallway, you’ll get a glimpse of the smallest bathroom ever to exist as well as my room that holds my full-sized bed I got off the street and absolutely nothing else.”
The bitterness in her voice was angering. Her apartment was small. And not in the best part of town. My shoulders were two inches away, at best, from scraping against the walls of her hallway. And I had to turn sideways to get into any of the rooms. The walls were had been damaged by leaking water from the ceiling and the walls were paper thin.
It was disgusting, her staying in a place like this.
“It isn’t much, and it isn’t home, but you can help yourself to whatever you need. Though you’re bigger than I remember. You know, in the… everywhere. So we might have to hose you off out back if you get dirty.”
I grinned down at her as she shuffled past me in the hallway. Her body squeezed against mine, and I was thrown back into the past. Into a time when her soft curves cradled against my body instead of trying to smooth past him. A time when her hands slid up my chest instead of pushing it away.
A time when she would’ve given anything to feel my naked skin against hers.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. I’m going to bed,” Alicia said.
I watched her as she picked up her cell phone and her eyes glanced over at me.
“I wasn’t joking when I said help yourself. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Sleep wherever you want.”
I could sleep with you.
I shook the thought away and walked back over to my chair. I sat down in it, praying it couldn’t collapse from underneath me. Honestly, it felt like the entire damn apartment was about to cave. Just come crashing down on our fucking heads from all the water damage her ceiling had seen. I lo
oked around, taking in the weakest parts of the material and making sure I kept her away from it.
The last thing we needed was the damn ceiling caving in and killing her.
I watched her walk down the hallway and took in the way her hips still swayed. Deeply and reverently with each stride she took. She was wearing these baggy fucking clothes that did nothing for her figure, and for all I knew that was what Langley wanted her in. Clothes so another man wouldn't even look her fucking way.
My want to kill the man grew with every second that passed.
I could hear Alicia talking on her phone to her friend Becca and I resisted the urge to listen in. To walk down the hallway and press my ear to the door. I resisted telling her that I did technically have the ability to listen in on her calls. Plant a device in her phone that would enable me to listen in case someone was working with Langley and trying to get to her. But I was still trying to convince her I needed to around during the nighttime hours.
She sure as hell wouldn’t go for me listening in on her phone calls.
I brought out my phone and decided to pass the time with a bit of research. The more I could find on Langley, the easier that son of a bitch would be to track. I’d need my laptop for a more in-depth analysis of his life and his finances and shit like that, but my phone would do in a pinch. I pulled up my email and saw the files Abram had sent me. Traffic footage and photos that showed Langley fucking walking down the damn road towards her apartment.
But he had slipped into a cab that had been waiting for him.
Where the hell had he flagged that cab down?
I sent Abram an email and told him to go back further. And to widen his search. Langley walked to her apartment, but suddenly had a cab pull up he didn’t have to flag down in order to ride away. It was clear as day in the damn video. The cab pulls up, stops without him raising his hand, and he gets in and drives away.
I sent that particular video to Yoake. To see if he could find a way to identify the driver of that cab.
I used a few of my connections and dug a little more into Langley’s personal history. And I found a laundry-list of police reports with his name embedded in them somewhere. But the ones I was really interested in were the domestic calls made to an address that matched the one given in Alicia’s file.
