Ready

by Lucy Monroe

  She forced herself to take a spoonful of soup instead. The pillow under her bottom notwithstanding, she was too achy to contemplate anything like that at the moment.

  “So, did Hotwire get a chance to research any of the suspects?”

  “Yeah, but there’s another list I need from you.”

  “Who? My Sunday School class in third grade?” He’d asked about pretty much everyone else the day before.

  “The people you’ve interviewed for your books.”

  That made sense, though she couldn’t imagine any of them stalking her. Of course, a year ago she wouldn’t have been able to imagine anyone stalking her at all. “Okay. I’ll put it together after lunch.”

  “I’m giving you a massage after lunch, then you are taking a nap. You can put it together after you’re rested.”

  “Bossy rooster,” she accused while wondering what sort of massage he meant.

  He just laughed and winked. “You bring it out in me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m so not buying that.”

  Joshua shrugged.

  “So what did Hotwire find?”

  “One of the men who skipped parole has no computer experience in his background and the other has been picked up. He was in Louisiana peddling crack in the District in New Orleans.”

  “The other guy could have studied computers in prison.”

  “He didn’t—not formally, anyway.”

  She didn’t ask how he was so sure about that. She got the distinct impression that Hotwire knew how to access files denied to most people. “Maybe he played with computers in his spare time. Prisons have a lot of options like that for inmates nowadays.”

  Joshua looked supremely unconvinced. “It would take a lot more than a casual acquaintance with computers to do the things Nemesis has done.”

  “You mean the hacking?”

  “And the modifications to his espionage equipment. That could only be done by someone with a strong understanding of electronics.”

  She sighed. “So, what you’re saying is that he’s not my stalker?”

  “That’s my gut feeling.”

  “What about the other possible prospects?”

  “Strikeouts. Every one of them lives too far away from both Texas and Seattle to have done the things Nemesis has done without taking some significant time off from their jobs.”

  “And none of them have.”

  “Right.”

  She stood up and started clearing the table for something to do. “Where do we go from here?”

  “We keep digging.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Make that list of people you’ve interviewed and I’d like to have a look at the rest of your reader letters, too.”

  She stopped halfway to the sink. “But why? They’re from people who like my books.”

  “Lise, you’re not very social. Even back in Canyon Rock you spent most of your time either with Jake and Bella or alone in your apartment.”

  She had a few friends, but for the most part, he was right. “And?”

  “Nemesis accused you of leading other women astray.”

  “He’s nuts.”

  “Absolutely, but the point is, he has to have a reason, no matter how obscure, for believing that. The only possible source Hotwire, Nitro, and I can come up with is your books.”

  It made sense and was a conclusion she’d come to as well. “I still don’t understand how reading my fan mail is going to help find someone who hates me enough to stalk me.”

  Joshua shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

  “Okay. Do you need me to get them for you?”

  “They’re in the same file drawer as the other folder was?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll find them.”

  She opened her mouth to agree when the phone rang. Her heart skipped a beat, but when she picked the receiver up, her brother was on the other end. She’d been expecting the call, but not his pronouncement that he wanted to come to Seattle and help find the stalker. She was glad Joshua was there to help her convince Jake that Lise’s best chance of catching her stalker was to stay in Seattle for the moment and that Bella needed Jake’s protection more than Lise did.

  Joshua’s massage turned out to be total sensual pleasure as well as torment. Not only did it hurt to have sore muscles rubbed into submission, but once the pain was gone, having his fingers so close to her sexual center made her damp with desire.

  He noticed, and by the time he finished the deeply intimate massage, both she and Joshua were straining from the effort of not doing anything about the feelings arcing between them.

  He announced she needed a hot bath before her nap to relax her, but refused to join her, completely serious about the need for her muscles and feminine flesh to recuperate from the exercise she and Joshua had given them. When she started to nod off, her body as boneless as it had been after climaxing, she had to admit that soaking in the steaming, softly scented water had been a good idea.

  Joshua caught her dozing and insisted on drying her off, then carrying her to bed and tucking her in.

  When she woke up, dusk had fallen and Joshua was quietly conversing with Nitro in the kitchen. Lise joined them, not too proud to sit on the pillow Joshua had left on the kitchen chair. She felt infinitely better, but she wasn’t going to risk being too sore to enjoy Joshua in her bed that night.

  She hoped he’d gotten some condoms. She had no idea how much time they had together, but she was determined to maximize the moments of intimacy with her mercenary bodyguard. “Hi, guys.”

  Joshua came away from where he’d been leaning against the counter and dropped a soft, quick kiss on her mouth.

  She darted a glance at Nitro to see how he’d taken Joshua’s claim-staking gesture. The other man’s face was impassive as usual, but his eyes were smiling, surprising her.

  Maybe he was warming up to her.

  She turned back to Joshua. “I thought I’d make that list for you now.”

  “First, you need to eat something.”

  “You’ve got a real thing about feeding me.”

  “I like to cook.”

  “He made some homemade sorbet. It’s good.” Nitro’s words stunned her.

  Mostly because he’d spoken at all, but also because she had a very hard time picturing her soldier of fortune puttering around in the kitchen. When she tasted the tangy lemon sorbet, she thought puttering was definitely not the right word.

  She ate it while making the list and then got up to put the bowl in the sink.

  “Can I go out?” she asked.

  Joshua had picked up her list. “Out where?”

  “Anywhere. I hate being cooped up inside—I feel like I’ve been living in a prison cell since the Seahawks game. The only time I left my apartment was when you took me to Texas.” She rinsed her dish and put it in the small apartment dishwasher. “I hate being inside all the time.”

  “You’re a writer,” Joshua said, sounding disbelieving.

  “Yes, and I bought a laptop with one of my first advance checks and a Dana later. I like being mobile. When I was back home, I spent hours writing in secluded spots on the ranch. I feel like Nemesis has stolen my life from me.”

  “It’s going to get better.”

  “He’s threatened my family, Joshua.” Which made her feel doubly helpless and that made her angry.

  Joshua came over and started rubbing her shoulders, proving intimate massage wasn’t the only one he was good at. “He’s not getting near them. We’re going to get your life back and you’ll get out of this apartment, but right now, we want Nemesis to think you’re running scared. We want him overconfident.”

  “And frustrated,” Nitro added.

  “What do you mean?”

  Joshua kept up his soothing ministrations. “He can’t hear you right now and that’s going to really piss him off. He wants control and he hasn’t got it. When he does finally see you leave, we want him primed to act.”

 
“Which means you want me to stay holed up in my apartment.” She stifled the urge to argue. He was right, after all, and it wasn’t Joshua’s fault she felt so stifled.

  “For the time being.”

  She looked at Nitro and read a surprising understanding in his eyes.

  “Couldn’t you guys sneak me out?” She couldn’t help asking, tilting her head to get more solid eye contact with Joshua. “You go running every day and aren’t worried about Nemesis seeing you.”

  “I go disguised and I leave the apartment building by a route he’s unlikely to watch.”

  “Then take me out the same way.” She’d only been back in her apartment for a couple of days, but she was already feeling stir-crazy. “I’ll wear a disguise, too. Nemesis isn’t as all-seeing as he’d like me to believe he is.”

  Joshua’s lips curved just slightly. “No, he’s not. And he’s not as smart as he thinks he is, either, but we don’t know what he is watching outside your apartment. For all we know, he’s tapped into the security cameras in the apartment building.”

  “If he has, then he’s seen you, Nitro, and Hotwire enter and leave my apartment.” There was a camera at the end of her hall.

  “No one has seen us. We feed prerecorded footage of an empty hall to the camera when we come and go,” Nitro said, surprising Lise again, this time with the sheer thoroughness of the mercenary’s covert behavior.

  They’d gone to a lot of trouble to protect her and be there for her. It wasn’t fair for her to repay them with a bunch of whining. “Please forget I said anything. I’ll be fine.”

  She forced a smile to prove she wasn’t the stressed-out basketcase she seemed to be.

  She was writing when the phone rang again.

  She finished the sentence she was typing before leaning over to grab the cordless headset off the table next to the sofa. “Hello?”

  “Are you having fun retyping your book?”

  Unexpected and all-consuming rage filled her at the inhuman sound of Nemesis’s digitized voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t notice the disappearance of your book? I don’t believe you, Lise Barton.”

  “And you think I care?” The sarcastic words slipped out, born of her fury that he would threaten her family, besides all the other grievances she could lay at his door.

  “You should. You should care very much what I think. I hold your fate in my hands.”

  “You hold a phone in your hands, not my fate.”

  An ugly laugh was her only answer.

  “How did you know about my book being deleted?” she asked, playing dumb, trying to control the anger roiling through her.

  “How do you think? I did it.”

  Hearing him say it in such a triumphant voice made her even madder than she’d been when she discovered what he’d done.

  Nemesis added, “Don’t leave town again, Lise Barton. It made me angry.”

  “Right, so you hacked into my system and deleted my book,” she mocked, infusing her voice with the very real derision she felt for the kind of coward that terrorized a woman and hid behind anonymity to do it. “More likely a sector went bad on my hard drive.”

  “If I hadn’t been the one to do it, how would I have known about it?” His outrage was palpable.

  He didn’t like being questioned.

  Good. She didn’t like being stalked.

  “I don’t know, but if I had to take a guess, I’d figure you must have gotten a friend to hack into my system. If you were smart enough to do it, you would also be sufficiently computer savvy to realize I back up my files.”

  “You bitch! I know more about computers than you ever will.”

  “You sound like a three-year-old fighting over playground turf. If you did do the hacking, I bet it was luck.” She wanted to push him, needed to push him.

  She could not forget the sound of her brother’s voice on the phone earlier, pleading with her to come into hiding with him, demanding that she allow him to come and help her find her stalker. This bastard had upset her family’s lives as well as her own.

  “A four-year degree and twenty-five years in the industry is not luck.” Even the digitizer could not mask the near hysterical volume of his voice.

  “Oh, I’m so convinced,” she jeered.

  “Don’t mock me.”

  “What are you going to do to stop me? Call me again?” She laughed and hung up the phone, dropping it in its cradle with an obvious look of contempt on her face which she purposefully turned toward the video camera in her speaker.

  Then she picked up her Dana and started typing again. It was all gibberish, but he didn’t know that, the bastard. If he was watching her, and she was sure he was, he would be livid at how little importance she was attaching to his phone call.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?” Joshua demanded from several feet away, his voice vibrating with wrath that had far more impact on her than Nemesis’s anger. “You didn’t even try to keep him on the line long enough for a trace.”

  She didn’t look up, not wanting the dweeb stalker to realize she had company.

  She grabbed the stylus and tapped her lip before speaking as she often did before reading a paragraph aloud. “What difference does it make? He called last time from a pay phone across town and that piece of information netted us nothing.”

  “So, that made you decide to taunt him?”

  “He threatened my family, Joshua. I think the guy’s a jerk and I’m going to tell him so.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I can’t.” The next time she got a call, she was going to tell Nemesis what a lowlife she thought he was in very explicit terms even an idiot could understand.

  “We don’t know how he’ll respond to that, damn it. Things could escalate rapidly.”

  She moved so only her legs and busily typing fingers were in range of the camera. Hotwire had very meticulously outlined the area of the living room that could be seen by the camera transmitter.

  She didn’t want Nemesis seeing her doing so much talking. He might think she was more upset and talking to herself, and she refused to give him the satisfaction. “So, they escalate. Our only chance of catching him is to force him into acting anyway.”

  “Not by making him murderously angry.” Joshua was the one that sounded furious enough to spit nails.

  She looked up, meeting a dark brown gaze filled with a lot more worry than anger. “I’m sorry, Joshua.” She’d done it again. Put her emotions first, rather than acting with logic and self-control. “Truly. I don’t want to mess with the plan, no matter what I’ve said today, but I really couldn’t make nice to him. I just couldn’t.”

  She hoped he understood, but he probably didn’t. The only time she’d seen him lose his control was when they were making love. She was usually a lot more self-controlled, too, but her emotions were too close to the surface right now. If she attempted to explain it was because of making love to him, he’d probably go back to his no sex on the job rule.

  And then if Nemesis didn’t drive her round the bend, unrequited lust would.

  “I never said you had to,” Joshua said, “but antagonizing a stalker is dangerous. You’re giving him more ammunition for his vengeance delusion, possibly sending him over the edge.”

  “You’re right. I’ll be better next time.” She couldn’t help the emotional catch to her voice. “Are you mad at me?”

  She hated what her life had become, but she loved this man. That love was so new that the thought of sending him away from her because of her inability to control her growing rage was enough to tear a strip right out of her heart.

  Joshua looked like he wanted to come to her. “I’m not angry with you, sweetheart. Just don’t be so antagonistic next time.”

  She wished more than anything that he could come into the living room and hold her, but if he did, he’d have to cross a section of space in range of the camera.

  “Do I have to answer
the phone again?” As difficult as it was to admit to herself and to him, she wasn’t sure of her emotional control.

  She needed a chance to get a grip on herself before she had to face Nemesis’s inhuman voice over the phone again.

  “No. I think he’d see you ignoring him as in character.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  Joshua’s face twisted, but he didn’t say anything else and he turned to leave.

  The phone rang a few minutes later and she ignored it. The answering machine picked up and the caller hung up. Afterward, she reached for the phone and turned the ringer off before going back to her book.

  “She dedicated one of her books to victims of domestic violence?” Hotwire asked as Joshua laid the letters that had led him to the book in question on the table.

  “Yes.”

  “We didn’t read that one, did we?”

  “No, it was actually her first book. I tried to buy it before, but it had a low print run and was hard to find. I’ve got a book dealer looking for me right now. Hell, he may have found it, but I haven’t been home for over a month.”

  Nitro picked up one of the letters and read it. “She put nationwide hotline numbers and Web sites for abuse victims in the dedication?”

  “More than that, she encouraged women to get help if they were in fear for their safety.”

  Hotwire whistled. “And you think her stalker is a disgruntled husband?”

  “It fits.”

  “It does,” Nitro agreed. “This creep has been deprived of his victim and it makes sense he would turn his attention to the person he blames. Wolf’s woman.” Hotwire said.

  “Yes.” Joshua didn’t deny possession of Lise.

  She might not be his permanently, but she belonged to him right now and it made him angry enough to maim to see her as distraught as she’d been earlier. She’d fricken apologized for losing her cool, and he’d felt guilty because she wasn’t the perpetrator, damn it.

  She also wasn’t a soldier, and no matter how self-contained she appeared on the surface, she was a woman with a woman’s emotions. It wasn’t just Nemesis pushing her to her limit; it was him, too. He was treating her like she was a seasoned warrior who could go into battle-ready mode and shut off her feelings as easily as he could. She wasn’t.