Devastated

by EM BROWN

  “What should we do about the Scarlet Auction scoop?”

  “Has the district attorney given you any indication when they’ll be wrapping up their investigation?”

  She shook her head.

  “Call them and ask. I’d like to honor their request, but circumstances have changed.”

  “Will do.”

  Sam swiveled his chair back around to stare out his office window. She felt bad for him. And hoped that he would find a new job situation to his liking soon.

  The rest of the afternoon moved slowly, with many of the Tribune staff still in shock.

  “Maybe I’ll have to be a wedding photographer for a while,” Ron said.

  With only two weeks to work on the mayoral candidate profiles, Kimani worked at a faster pace assembling the background research. By the time she looked up at the clock, it was past nine o’clock. After hopping on the light rail back to her place, she arrived home at ten o’clock. As she walked up to the duplex, she noticed that the lights were on.

  Marissa was supposed to work the last shift at the bar and grill tonight, so had her roommate come home early?

  Kimani walked up to the front door—and saw it was slightly ajar. That was strange. Marissa didn’t usually leave the door open, but maybe she had forgotten something and was planning to head out the door again.

  Suddenly, Kimani couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched again. Turning her head, she looked behind and scanned the streets, sidewalk and other homes. Except for a car passing by several blocks down, it was quiet. No one happened to be out at the moment. Kimani would have felt comfort in even the sound of crickets, but there were none.

  She pushed the door open a little. “Marissa?”

  Instead of a verbal reply, a thud made Kimani jump. . For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to go in. If it wasn’t Marissa, maybe it was their landlords? But they had never come unannounced, and they were supposed to be on a Caribbean cruise.

  “Marissa!” she tried again.

  This time her heart stalled completely when a man dressed in black, a ski mask over his face, appeared in the doorway.

  “Well, if it isn’t the reporter,” he sneered.

  She thought of screaming, but the man grabbed her arm, stalling her intended response.

  Just then, the sound of a loud, persistent cough came from across the street.

  The intruder’s eyes widened behind his ski mask. Releasing her, he bolted past Kimani. He had something tucked beneath his arm as he ran around three houses, turned the block, and was out of sight.

  The man across the street continued to have a coughing fit.

  Though still rattled, Kimani ran over to the man. “You want me to get you a glass of water?”

  He waved his hand and shook his head. His coughing subsided. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  He then went on his way. She didn’t recognize him as someone who lived on their block, but there was a handful of apartments in the neighborhood, so she couldn’t know everyone.

  He had seemed to come out of nowhere. She was sure she hadn’t seen anyone for blocks, but she was immensely grateful that he happened to be walking by.

  Pulling out her cellphone, she called the police. She wasn’t going to go inside on the chance that the intruder had a buddy, even though that prospect hadn’t crossed her mind when she’d offered the coughing man water.

  She called Marissa next.

  “Yeah, I’m still at work,” her roommate replied. “The bar and grill closes at eleven. Why?”

  “Someone broke into our place. The police are on their way.”

  “Oh my God! I want to be there. It’s slow enough at work, I’m sure I can leave early.”

  “Okay, see you soon.”

  Still feeling like she was being watched—maybe the intruder was lurking about—Kimani didn’t feel safe waiting on the streets by herself and decided to knock on a neighbor’s door. Mrs. Sanchez and her elderly mother went to bed early, so it took a while for her to come to the door. She let Kimani stay in her house while she waited for the police to arrive.

  “Dios mio,” Mrs. Sanchez murmured with a brow furrowed in worry. She had a bolt and a chain lock on her door. Kimani wondered if she would be installing extra protection on her own door soon. “And I thought this was a relatively safe neighborhood. I did consider moving out of the city before, but Mama’s not interested in the suburbs. Says only white-washed Latinos live in the suburbs.”

  Kimani managed to smile and even consume a pupusa that Mrs. Sanchez insisted on warming up for her.

  After two police officers arrived and went inside and deemed the premises safe, Kimani was allowed to enter her home.

  The place had been turned upside down. Every drawer was open, their contents strewn all over the floor. In her bedroom, her clothes covered her bed and floor. Even the clothes hanging in her closet had been ripped out.

  “So what was taken?” an Officer Nguyen asked.

  “My laptop,” she replied, seeing the bare spot on her desk. That was what the intruder had been carrying under his arm.

  “What else?”

  “That’s it, I think.”

  “What about jewelry?”

  Kimani looked at the earrings and necklaces hanging out of her jewelry box. “I don’t own any jewelry worth stealing, but it looks like it’s all here.”

  The other officer walked up. “The TV looks untouched, along with the wifi router and Blu-ray disc player. You must have interrupted the thief before he could grab much.”

  “I don’t think it was a thief,” she replied. Walking over to Marissa’s room and seeing it in order—relative order, as Marissa tended to let her laundry lie about her room—confirmed her suspicion. “The guy knew I was a reporter.”

  “He said something to you?”

  “Something along the lines of, ‘well, it’s the reporter.’”

  “Did the guy say anything else?”

  She shook her head.

  “We’ve seen an uptick in the number of threats to journalists in the past few years. Which news outlet do you work for?”

  The officers asked her several more questions, including whether or not the Tribune had received any threats. They also asked her for a description of the intruder. When Marissa arrived shortly after, they questioned her as well.

  “It does seem like a guy was targeting you,” Officer Nguyen said to Kimani. “We could dust for prints, but if you’re pretty certain he was wearing gloves, we won’t waste our time.”

  “He was covered from head to toe,” she replied. Only the little bit of skin she had seen through the eyeholes of the ski mask had clued her in that the intruder was likely white, possibly Latino.

  After the police officers left, Kim turned to a visibly shaken Marissa. “I’ll see if I can go in to work late tomorrow and clean everything up. You okay?”

  “I’m wishing I hadn’t given up smoking,” Marissa said with a nervous laugh. “Is it reasonable that I’m, like, totally freaked out?”

  “I’m freaked out, too.”

  “I almost want to go to The Lair. I need something to calm me down, and the wine cooler in the fridge isn’t going to cut it.”

  “Is The Lair open at this time of night?”

  “It’s open till two in the morning. You never know when you might need a late night flogging. You should come.”

  Kim stiffened. The only person who had ever flogged her was Ben. She couldn’t imagine receiving a flogging from anyone else, especially a stranger.

  “It’s a lot healthier than smoking or drinking,” Marissa coaxed.

  “Thanks for the invite, but I want to at least put all my clothes back in their drawers. Maybe next time.”

  Marissa raised her brows. “That’s the first time you’ve been receptive to going to The Lair. I’m gonna hold you to it.”

  Kimani hesitated, but going to a BDSM club with Marissa was the least of her worries. She hadn’t wanted to worry Marissa about the note, but
she had to believe that and the break-in were connected. What would Jake want with her laptop? Was he worried that she had incriminating photos of him? But he had to know anything she had, like the recordings she had on her pens, would have been turned over to the District Attorney’s Office.

  Maybe he broke in to her home just to harass her? At first she had considered that the intruder himself was Jake, but the former was too thin. And it fit that Jake would have someone else do the dirty work for him. A judge had also placed a restraining order on him. He wasn’t supposed to go within a hundred feet of her.

  Recalling the grip on her arm by the intruder, Kimani shuddered. She was sure he had intended to pull her into the house, but she didn’t want to think about what he might have done after that. She made a mental note to buy one of the bolt locks Mrs. Sanchez had on her door.

  Chapter Six

  “Uhsnei Hiej,” swore Bataar, holding the side of his face where Ben’s fist had landed. Somehow Ben had felled the large man. “What was that for?”

  Ignoring the gasps and gawks from people passing by them on the sidewalk and a woman telling her husband to call the police, Ben stared at the head of his security detail. “You’re fired. I’ll let you throw the next punch, but then you’re getting your arse kicked.”

  “She wasn’t hurt,” Bataar insisted. “My guy was there. Moe prevented anything more from happening.”

  Ben drew in a breath to lower his blood pressure as he took in what Bataar said.

  “And he stuck around the rest of the night to make sure the guy didn’t return,” Bataar continued. “I’ve got the new guy, Bill, on the next shift, so she’s covered twenty-four hours a day.”

  Ben took in another long breath. The rational side of him advised against firing Bataar, as he was unlikely to find a more loyal and effective bodyguard, someone willing to take a kick to the head whenever his employer wanted to blow off steam, but his anger wanted a punching bag at the moment.

  Someone had broken into her residence. Luckily that’s all that had happened. So far.

  Fuck. It meant he couldn’t put Kimani behind him, no matter how much he wanted to shove her into the past and have her stay there.

  “Was it Jake?” Ben asked.

  “Chin was with Jake. The guy spent the night at some woman’s place.”

  “Doesn’t mean Jake wasn’t behind it.”

  Bataar got to his feet and nodded. “I know.”

  “Did this Moe catch the guy in her house? Did he see what he looked like?”

  “If Moe had tried, he would have exposed himself. He decided his priority was making sure Kimani didn’t get hurt. I’ve got someone trying to hack into the SFPD to pull up the report. Maybe Kimani noticed something and told the cops.”

  Feeling his anger recede, Ben started to walk, his mind turning. The gawkers stared in puzzlement as Bataar hurried alongside him as if nothing had happened.

  “I want you on Kimani,” Ben said after a few minutes. “Not some new untested guy.”

  “Bill worked for the Secret Service. FLOTUS detail. I don’t think we’re going to find anyone better.”

  “Don’t give me excuses.”

  “You’re my charge. That hasn’t changed in over seven years.”

  “It’s changing today.”

  “Look, I know you’re worried about her because—”

  Ben stopped and turned to Bataar. “You want me to aim for your nose this time?”

  “I’ve had my nose broken three times. You’re welcome to make it four, boss.”

  Ben’s hand curled into a fist, but he couldn’t punch Bataar just for the hell of it. Sparring was one thing, but breaking Bataar’s nose wouldn’t serve a purpose. He uncurled his hand.

  “It’s not optimal for me to shadow her, especially without her spotting me,” Bataar explained. “I’m a big Mongolian. Even here in Japan and China, I stick out. Bill’s a white guy. He can move about without notice much better.”

  Bataar returned Ben’s stare for a few seconds before adding, “If anything happens to her, I’ll save you the trouble and beat the shit out of myself.”

  Ben released his breath. They walked in silence back to the hotel. If Bataar had been a woman, he would probably comment or make inquiries as to what his boss’ anger implied about certain feelings for Kimani. While the masculine and feminine both reside in an individual, Bataar had rarely demonstrated the latter quality save in his mother bear protection of Ben. Although privy to all of Ben’s personal affairs, Bataar had always kept his nose out. He was a sparring partner, not a drinking buddy. He never tried to be anything but the head of Ben’s security detail, not even a friend.

  Ben decided to chalk Bataar’s uncharacteristic toe-dipping into the arena of feelings to the motive of giving Ben a hard time just for the hell of it—a normal masculine activity. If Ben didn’t have the tolerance for talking about Kimani with May, his confidante since they were children, he sure as hell wasn’t going to talk about her with Bataar.

  If asked, he would admit that Kimani had been fun to hang out with, fun to fuck. Her arse was sweeter than eight-treasure rice. And he should have helped himself to more of it when he’d had the chance. He also felt responsible for her. He had taken her off Jake’s hands, had become her Master. If he hadn’t ticked Jake off so much, Jake might not have taken his aggression out on her because he was too much the pussy to confront the true source of his insecurity.

  It all might have turned out better if he had never bought her in the first place. He wouldn’t bet high on that, but what was supposed to have been just a week of harmless sex had turned into a messy complication involving depositions with the Trinity County District Attorney’s office and an earful from his cousin Jason’s father, who had charged Ben with looking after Jason.

  “According to our attorney, Jason has nothing to worry about,” Ben had told his uncle.

  “The fact that we need an attorney in the first place is unacceptable,” Jason’s father had responded.

  Ben couldn’t dispute that. He had failed to keep Jason away from trouble. It didn’t matter that Jake had been Jason’s friend to begin with or that Ben had initially opted out of the Scarlet Auction. Everything got fucked up because he had to have Kimani.

  Back at the hotel, Ben decided that swimming laps in the pool might help calm his agitation. Even though he had decided he didn’t like Kimani—not after what she had done—he didn’t want her to come to any harm as a result of his spat with Jake. He didn’t want that on his conscience.

  Looking forward to his swim, Ben was taken aback to find his hotel room occupied. Not by the hotel maids or the twins, whom he had bid goodbye to in the morning, but by a slender woman in a hip-hugging scarlet dress. Even sitting down on his bed, she looked all legs. Standing, she would be six-feet tall. Her baps were larger than the last time Ben had seen her, so she must have gotten a second augmentation. Her long black curls were styled like some actress from the Golden Age of Hollywood, a skinny Chinese version of Rita Hayworth.

  “Eumie,” he greeted, unsurprised that she had gotten access to his hotel room. Women of her beauty—she was aptly named Eu-meh, which meant “especially beautiful”—could get almost anything. He was surprised that she knew he was in Tokyo.

  “I bumped into May in the hotel lobby,” Eumie Ma explained. “I’m staying here, too.”

  “What brings you to Tokyo?” Ben asked of his ex-girlfriend. She was one of the reasons he had decided that, unless it had to do with family or business, sex was all he wanted from women at the moment.

  “Doing a photo shoot for a new fashion designer. What about you?”

  “Business,” he replied simply. Eumie didn’t have much of an interest in anything outside of fashion and gossip. Kimani would have inquired into what kind of business, and he would have been happy to indulge all her questions about the intricacies of real estate development.

  He took off his jacket and hung it up in the closet. He still intended to go swimming. It d
idn’t matter that a runway model might be interested in something else.

  They were different in other ways, too. Eumie would never want to shoot hoops or play ball of any kind for fear of breaking a nail. Ben would not have been surprised if she had never picked up a ball in her entire life. And while she enjoyed naughty sex, she had never allowed him to use a flogger or any impact toy on her because she needed her skin unblemished for her swimsuit photos.

  “Your sister said you’re in town till the end of the week. So am I.”

  He undid the top buttons of his shirt and pulled it over head. She gave a small grunt as her gaze traveled over his pectorals and six-pack.

  “Maybe we can have drinks later,” he said.

  Her cherry-red lips curled downward, but he could tell she wasn’t giving up yet. She crossed one leg over the other, causing her short dress to ride up a little farther. He remembered exactly what her pussy looked like, with its soft white folds, always smooth because she kept up with her Brazilian bikini waxes. Warmth began to stir in his groin. But he continued to undress, unbuckling his belt and pulling off his pants so that he stood only in his briefs.

  “It looks like you’re not off to a meeting,” she said. “And I’m done for the day, so...”

  He grabbed his swim trunks from the dresser. “I was going to go for a swim.”

  He stopped short of inviting her to join him.

  “That sounds fun. Maybe I’ll join you after...”

  “After what?”

  Sliding off the bed, she stood up and ambled toward him. The potency of her perfume overwhelmed him. He had smelled it the instant he’d opened the door. Now that she was inches from him, it burned his nose. Why did some women douse themselves with this shit as if they had lost their sense of smell?

  He bet Kimani understood moderation. In fact, he didn’t remember her wearing any perfume during their time together. And she still smelled good. Especially when she was aroused.

  His cock throbbed just as Eumie trailed a finger down his left pec.

  “You know we haven’t seen each other in over a year,” she said.

  “What happened to your British movie star?” he asked of her latest boyfriend.