by Dale Mayer
That brought a wave of raucous laughter from the other programmers. Kai shook her head at Tommy. “Ice would eat you for breakfast.”
“She’ll eat me for breakfast, and I shall eat her for lunch,” he said with a smile, waggling his eyebrows.
Knowing he was just being one of the “guys,” a behavior likely learned from Warren, she sighed. “I should teach you a lesson and bring Ice here.”
Warren jumped to his feet again. “That wouldn’t be a bad idea. I wouldn’t mind meeting her myself.” He rubbed his hands together.
Kai stared at the men around her. “You guys have no idea.”
The thing was, they really didn’t have any idea. They didn’t understand how different Ice and the women in the compound were, the way they lived and showed others how to live. The compound was full of top-trained elite soldiers. Nothing less than the best would be acceptable for the partners. She understood most of the partners were weapons specialists and martial arts experts, although some she imagined weren’t. But each one would have something special to bring to the table. They were special men. Not one would accept anything less. She wished to hell she belonged there. Something about that atmosphere—well, it made her homesick in ways she hadn’t considered. They all had someone. They all belonged. And she wanted that for herself. She’d felt out in the cold for too long.
This stalker asshole was making the sensation worse. She felt increasingly isolated. The guys more laughed at it than worried about it. But, for her, a level of unease sat just under her skin.
Her future might be undecided, but every time she tried to think forward, this stalker asshole intruded. It was irritating. And scary.
What did he really want?
*
“Tyson, what did you think of the virtual-reality training program?”
He turned to Levi. “As somebody who hasn’t played many video games, it’ll take a little getting used to, but it was unique, different, and I think it has tremendous potential.”
“I’m not sure gaming experience helps anybody with a training scenario like this,” Stone said. “Our own real-life experiences are probably more helpful. I really like the idea of using different weapons. They all feel so different in your hands.”
“They still have the same weight in VR as in reality.” Rhodes studied the weapons on the table. “Looks like they’ve used the 3-D modeling program and then incorporated accurate weights to give us the same feel. It’s not quite there yet.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Ice said. “We don’t ever want to mistake these weapons for the real ones.”
Levi chuckled. “Hopefully our men will never have the real weapons in the VR training room.”
“We knew the room was being transformed into something, but nobody had any idea just what you two were up to.” Flynn grinned at Levi. “You do know how to keep a secret. And that’s damn near impossible around this place.”
Levi shook his head. “Kai and I have been in discussions for the last year. But only about three months ago did I realize the prototype was to the point where they needed some real-life testing.”
To Tyson it made complete sense. It also helped him understand how Levi had afforded this. It couldn’t be cheap. On the other hand, the security company was doing incredibly well. The compound that had started with just four members was now massive. And still growing.
Bailey walked over carrying a tray. “Too bad Kai left. I have fresh cookies.” Bailey smiled up at the men. “And if there was ever a way to a man’s heart …” She held out the platter. But before anybody could take one, Ice stepped forward and took the biggest. She chuckled at the look of outrage on Levi’s face.
“I figured I’d better snag one before none are left,” Ice said.
Stone snorted. “You stole the one I was going to take.”
“I was after that one,” Levi said in disgust. “It was the biggest.”
Her voice smug, Ice said, “Of course I only took one. You’ll have a dozen. It won’t matter if yours are a little smaller.”
Stone nodded agreeably instead of answering because his mouth was full.
Tyson had to admit he was still unsure of everybody’s names here. He knew most of the men personally. But the women not so much. There were a lot of them. Some worked in town; some worked here, and some didn’t appear to do anything. But he knew they probably did; he just didn’t know what their jobs were yet. He knew Bailey worked in the kitchen because she seemed to constantly appear with food.
Just then she stepped in front of him with the platter of cookies. He smiled and said, “Thank you very much, Bailey.”
Her smile brightened. “You are by far the most polite man here.”
That set off a tirade from the others. “The new guy is just sucking up so he gets more cookies,” Logan said. “I’m leaving in a couple hours, so I should get extra cookies first.”
Agreeing, Bailey held the tray out for him. Before Logan could reach for one, Harrison grabbed several for himself. “I’m leaving too.”
Walking to the coffeepot, Tyson poured himself a cup and turned to look around at the wonderful camaraderie he was unexpectedly overwhelmed by. He’d never thought to see something like this. And that it was here right in front of him with people he knew. He wanted to join in, but, at the same time, he still remained on the outside.
Jace poured a cup for himself. “It’s almost too good to be true,” he said in a low voice.
Tyson nodded. “Michael did tell us that.”
“Exactly.”
They’d trusted Michael for a lot of years. He hadn’t let them down yet. It was a relief to know this time was no different. Somebody else’s face kept popping into Tyson’s mind. Kai. She’d been the same as he remembered her. Innovative, high energy and a dynamo. Tracy used to laugh and say Kai only had one speed, and that was overdrive. He’d seen her in action many times, and he had to agree.
But there’d been a change in her when she’d gotten that text. A disquiet settled on her face. That’s when he’d seen the fine tremor in her fingers as she packed up. There was a lull in the conversation around them as everybody worked on their cookies. Into the silence he asked, “Did anybody else see Kai’s expression when she got that text?”
A dozen heads turned toward him.
“I did,” Ice said. “But it was subtle. You had to be watching her features when it happened.”
Tyson nodded. “Subtle or not, that message worried her.”
“Like us, she leads a full life. I’m sure some aspects of it aren’t very nice,” Harrison said. “I doubt it’s man trouble though. She’d work anybody over who gave her one bit of conflict during her classes.”
That brought out more chuckles and stories of Kai over the years.
Tyson couldn’t let it go. “She looked afraid,” he said in a low voice.
“How afraid?” Levi’s voice was hard. “I didn’t see her face. I was at the far side of the room.”
Tyson studied his new boss. He knew Levi well; so did many of the men here. He was a no-nonsense take-it-at-face-value type of person. Tyson knew he had to back up what he said.
“Very afraid,” he said firmly. “Her face went white, and then she turned away. I saw her eyes. They were bleak and scared.”
Levi turned to Ice.
Ice shrugged and said, “I saw something, yes. Whatever was in that text bothered her.”
“But she didn’t say anything so I doubt it was an emergency,” Levi said. “It’s not like she gave any kind of a physical response as in somebody close to her was in a car accident or something.”
“No. It wasn’t anything like that.” Tyson thought back to the way she’d pulled out the phone almost hesitatingly, as if she didn’t want to see what was coming. “It’s happened before. And she’s afraid it’ll happen again.”
Stone asked, “But what? What is she afraid will happen again?”
“I have no idea. But I don’t think it’s anything good.”
Kai walked into her apartment, tossed her gear and jacket where she stood. Her boots came off next, and, by the time she reached the bathroom, the rest of her clothing was off. She stepped under the hot shower and let it pound on her sore muscles. She no longer slept. She worked herself to the bone and filled every waking moment so she didn’t have to think. When she did think, it just hurt and sent her stress levels off the wall. This was like the twelfth if not fifteenth text message she’d gotten. The messages were all the same.
Choose. What will you do about it?
She had no idea what the choice was supposed to be, what she was supposed to do something about. There was no looming question in her world. There was no conflict, no big issue. In the beginning she had tossed it off as being a wrong number. She responded after the second and third time to say he had the wrong person; go find somebody else to bug. But the emails hadn’t stopped coming.
She shut off the water, and, using two towels, she dried herself as she walked into her master bedroom in her small apartment. When she’d left the military, she’d had her choice of what to do. She was accustomed to living in a small space and didn’t really want to buy a big house. Besides, she wasn’t into the family scene; she just wasn’t there yet. Her apartment felt safer.
Which was stupid. She had great self-defense skills and had spent years instructing soldiers on the latest and best weapons as they came on the market. And here she was, slowly being eroded by text messages. She wanted to laugh at herself, but all she could do was cry. She always had a feeling of being watched. The sense of somebody keeping tabs on her. She didn’t have any criminal background training, but any woman alive understood how dangerous a stalker was. How had he gotten her phone number? It didn’t make any sense. Forcing herself to think of something more pleasant, her mind jumped to Tyson.
He looked like he was healing. Compared to when she’d last seen him, at Tracy’s funeral, he looked fabulous. Then he’d been a broken man, which was to be expected after such personal losses. To land as part of Levi’s group was huge. Here, he was still doing what he did best, helping people, and was with the team that he needed. It was interesting to see that Jace was with him. And Michael.
They’d all walked away from the military after one particularly bad mission. Several men had been killed—and the commander blamed. It came out eventually that somebody had deliberately sent them into action on bad intel to mess up the commander’s record. The fallout had come too late to save the men—or the commander. It was just one more straw in the long line of straws that had disenchanted the men with their life and their mission. Tyson couldn’t imagine the lives of the injured men of the one unit. Seven injured and one dead from that single unit alone. Then Michael himself had gone to ground for over a year. Not that she kept tabs on them. Hard to do when they were damn good at hiding.
But, in Tyson’s case, she’d been keeping tabs on him since forever. It was all she could do. Besides, she’d promised Tracy to keep an eye out on him. When Tracy realized she wouldn’t make it, she’d entrusted Kai with Tyson’s care. At the time, Kai hadn’t been able to protest. What was she supposed to say to a dying woman?
She had nodded, held her best friend’s hand and promised to do anything to make Tracy’s last few moments peaceful while she frantically wished for the ambulance to get here. Tracy had fallen unconscious fairly quickly after that while still at home and had died less than an hour later in the hospital. Kai had tried to keep that promise. Yet initially Tyson hadn’t wanted anything to do with her.
She’d phoned and stopped by his place afterward, but he didn’t answer his phone or door. She’d checked on him via their mutual friends for regular updates. She’d hated how he wouldn’t talk to her. Apparently not only was he a wounded animal, long gone to ground to lick his wounds, but he’d also only seen Kai as a reminder of all he’d lost. How could she argue with that? For a long time she’d gotten up every morning apologizing to Tracy for not doing more.
Until Kai had finally made peace with herself and with the fact that Tyson had to walk his path. But that didn’t mean she had to walk away. Now she just kept watch, even reached out and talked to Michael at one point. But after Michael left the military, she’d lost touch with him. She knew they were from California originally and now all lived in Texas, but that was all she knew.
Still, as long as Tyson was doing okay, it was all good. She knew Tracy would be sad to see how much Tyson had suffered, and she’d be the first to give him a swift kick up his butt, tell him to move on. She’d also be the first to cheer his progress. And he’d made a lot of that. At least from what Kai could tell. It was an easy thing to tell someone, but it was another thing to do it. As Kai knew herself.
Her phone went off again. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She had no idea who the hell it was, but in her gut was a sinking feeling that she knew it was another one of those texts. She brought it up, glanced at it and read it out loud. “I know where you just were.”
She sank slowly onto the edge of her couch and stared at the text. In a loud strident voice she spoke into the empty room. “Asshole! You’re just saying that to unnerve me—or because you were following me.” That would imply he knew her schedule. She ran through all the scenarios she could think of; every one of them was distressing. There had to be a reason why he tormented her. She just didn’t understand. And she didn’t quite know what to do about it.
Just then her phone rang. Startled, she almost dropped her cell. It was Warren from work. She could talk to him. “Warren, what is it?”
“I was hoping you could get me invited to that lunch tomorrow with Ice.”
“Hey, it’s more personal than business.”
“You know how this works. It’s networking. She’s hot.”
“It doesn’t matter how hot she is. Levi would tear you to teeny tiny pieces and feed you to the crocs before he’d let anybody like you close to Ice.” She tried to keep her voice light, instead of releasing the anger unfurling inside. “She’s also not the type to like being talked about or spoken to in such a manner.”
No way would Warren make the first cut with Ice. Hell, Ice didn’t need Levi’s protection, but, if Levi got wind this guy was panting after her, Levi would have something to say.
“You don’t know that. Maybe she’d rather do business with me than with you.”
His voice had dropped into a tone she’d only heard a few times, but each time she hated it. There was almost a sneer to it. Not somebody she wanted to work with. But she was in no position to buy them out, and neither was she in any position to walk away. “Enough of that. It’s not happening.”
“You just want to keep her for yourself.”
“Ice is a good friend, Warren. It’s not a matter of keeping her to myself. We go way back, and none of Levi’s team knows you. This is also how business works.”
The silence at the other end meant Warren finally understood he had gone too far. He sighed. “Sorry. You’re right. I’m just frustrated. You get to talk to all the movers in the military world, and I’m stuck in the office.”
Kai’s eyebrows popped up. He rarely apologized. Even so, it was one thing for the guys to talk like that at work when she wasn’t around, but she really didn’t like the lack of respect when she was there. “Whatever. You still don’t get to meet Ice.” She hung up the phone. Then she leaned back and groaned. Warren was harmless. He was also irritating as hell. They all were in some ways. Tommy was okay, but he was at that belated teenage stage of whistling at girls as they walked by, making rude noises, telling body-function jokes. She kept hoping these guys would buck up and pull together to become the dream company she needed. The thing was, they had the components for an incredible set of equipment. Not just equipment either. The products they’d come up with so far were mind-boggling. And they were incredibly important for the military and for the people of Levi’s team. She was glad she had a hand in getting them into the marke
t, at least as far as the prototype Levi had.
Putting away her phone, she hopped up and dressed quickly then walked to the kitchen to put on some coffee. She’d had several cups at Levi’s place. It seemed like she could almost inject the stuff for the amount of caffeine she needed on a regular basis. As soon as the coffee was dripping, she went to her laptop to check her emails. A friend—a stewardess who often stayed with Kai—wanted to know if she would be in town next month. She quickly answered that one, grateful this email was safe. Tommy at work had set it up. A couple were more business prospects. She responded the best she could. Most were just leads discussing products’ availability times. She enjoyed this part of her job. She was excited about the new VR project they were developing, so it was easy to talk about, and that made it less sales oriented and more about relationships. Business relationships, those were good things.
The last three looked like spam, but they’d come to her priority inbox. She opened one so she could see the preview. And swallowed hard. It was a picture of her front door. The front door to the apartment building she lived in.
She sat up to see who it was from, although she knew the account would already be closed. She dropped her elbows to the table and leaned her forehead into her hands. Now the asshole knew where she lived. She wasn’t sure she wanted to open the other two “spam” emails, but she’d never been the bury her head in the sand type of woman. She could more be counted on to be the goat that bounced off the cliff edge. Knowing she needed to check, she clicked on the second one, and sure enough there was a picture of her front door with her apartment number clear as day. “Okay, asshole. I see you know where I live.”
The third one was a little more disconcerting. This message had a picture of her vehicle, her license plate showing. “You know where I live, and you can get at me any time,” she confirmed out loud. She leaned back and thought about that. She needed to check her weapons again. It was something she did weekly. She had one under her pillow—her father’s old service revolver from his years on the force. There was a shotgun in the closet that had been her grandfather’s but she had no ammunition for it. She’d had no time or inclination. She’d really wanted to close the door on that part of her life.
