No Coincidence

by Tiffany Patterson

  “Anyway, had I known w-we were coming up here, I would’ve dressed a little d-differently,” I stammered, turning my attention to Joshua. “Excuse the hat. I, uh, had a hair situation this morning.” In spite of myself, my eyes guiltily shot over to Connor before moving back to Joshua.

  My stomach dropped when I saw the grin on his face grow. “Yeah. Kay often has one of those hair situations you’re talking about,” he snickered.

  My face flamed in embarrassment.

  Connor growled but Joshua didn’t pay him any attention as he strolled down the hall in the same direction Brutus had disappeared. For a man of his size, I was surprised at how swiftly and quietly he could move.

  “We’ve got a situation,” Connor started as soon as we entered what I presumed was Joshua’s spacious office. For a minute, I was taken aback by the nearly three hundred and sixty degree view the office offered of the city of Williamsport. But Josh and Connor both seemed to take it all in stride as we moved to the couch that sat opposite his large, wooden desk.

  “What’s up?”

  Connor placed his hand on my knee, making direct contact with my skin, and my body instantly warmed since I was wearing a pair of jeans that had a rip at the knees. The movement wasn’t lost on Joshua either, as his attention dipped to Connor’s hand before rising up to look at his friend again.

  “Someone broke into Resha’s home yesterday.”

  Joshua’s face immediately changed from playful to serious. The change was so swift I had to blink just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

  “You contacted the police?”

  Connor nodded. “Personally called Brookes to get his ass over there.”

  I looked to Connor, confused. I didn’t know he’d made a private call to Detective Brookes. I’d just assumed he was the detective the police station sent out to handle this type of thing.

  “He had them take prints and forensics is running the DNA on the mess that fucker left in her bed …” He paused, glancing at me when I began squirming.

  I still didn’t want to think about a stranger in my home, getting in my bed and jerking off. It pissed me off, scared me, and disgusted me all at the same damn time. I didn’t know what telling Joshua all of this was going to do.

  “He made sure they were thorough, but he’s still a cop and cops have—”

  “Procedures and rules,” Joshua finished.

  “Right. Which slows them down. I want to find this fucker now. We think we know who it is.”

  “That’s where I come in, right?” Brutus interjected, emerging from the opposite corner of Joshua’s office.

  I’d forgotten he was even there.

  “Yup,” Connor responded.

  “You know whatever you need is at your disposal,” Joshua added. “Besides …” he looked over at me, “Resha is family. I’m surprised Destiny isn’t here with Tyler.”

  I inhaled deeply, having almost forgotten how close this all was to Destiny. “She doesn’t know. And please don’t tell her,” I blurted out.

  Three pairs of confused eyes settled on me, demanding answers.

  Shit.

  Just one of these men’s intense glares would be too much to handle, but all three had me wanting to bolt for the door.

  The only thing holding me in place was Connor’s hand still firmly planted on my knee.

  “Destiny’s busy, and if she finds out, she’s going to tell Aunt Donna who’s already sick and she doesn’t need to be worried about me. I’ll tell them after all of this blows over.”

  “Resha—” Connor started.

  I shook my head. “No. Destiny can’t know. I don’t want her to know,” I implored, staring Connor directly in the eye.

  The edges of his eyes wrinkled as he scowled at me, appearing confused and angered by my reluctance to include my cousin in on what was going on in my life. Turning from Connor, I looked to Joshua.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m asking you not to tell Destiny, either. And that means keeping this from your wife and your brother. Please, I just don’t want …” I broke off, not wanting to explain my reasoning to the men in this room because I truly didn’t understand it myself. All I knew was that this was something I was certain was going to blow over anyhow, so why get my family involved?

  Connor’s hand squeezed my knee, and I looked back to him. He didn’t say anything but his eyes spoke for him.

  “We’ll discuss this later,” they said, and I pushed out a heavy breath, half thankful that he wouldn’t press this issue right then, but still worried that eventually he would push for more. For me to open up.

  “I won’t tell Kay or Tyler … for now.”

  I swallowed and dipped my head at Joshua. “Thank you.”

  “Tell me what you know,” Brutus interjected, moving behind Joshua with his massive arms folded over his chest.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know much.” I glanced over to my left before speaking again.

  “Start with what you do know.”

  “I started receiving some strange emails about six months ago …” I went on to tell them the same story I’d told Connor the night before.

  “And you kept this information from Brookes?”

  “I didn’t even put it together until I was talking to Connor last night.” I turned to him for comfort, and he wrapped his arm around my shoulders.

  “We think we might know who it is.”

  “Who?” Joshua asked.

  “Her neighbor. First name’s Jarvis …”

  Within minutes, Brutus and the four of us were sitting around Joshua’s office table staring at my neighbor’s personal information on the screen of Brutus’ laptop. I had no clue how he was able to pull up Jarvis’ information so quickly but he was able to not only get his full name, address and occupation, but also medical, dental, and school records.

  “His first name isn’t Jarvis,” I exclaimed, surprised that the man I’d been calling Jarvis for the past two years was actually named Sebastian. “Sebastian Jarvis Caldwell.”

  “S,” Connor stated grimly.

  Our eyes caught and my stomach dropped.

  The rest of that meeting was a bit of a blur for me. I heard Connor mention something about making a visit, but I just assumed he meant going to the police or Detective Brookes about what we found out. If this was true, hopefully the police could put two and two together and this would all be over. Regardless, to think the neighbor I’d been living down the hall from, had ridden in the same elevator with, the one who I thought of as a little creepy but pretty much harmless, was the person stalking me, scared the hell out of me.

  Yet, it did make sense. His first name matching up with the way my stalker signed off on all his emails. Jarvis, or Sebastian rather, had access to my building as a resident there and the garage where I parked my car. He could’ve been following me in the parking lot garage of our building and just hiding from plain sight.

  “We need to head out,” Connor informed the room.

  Glancing over at the clock, I saw we only had about twenty minutes before my scheduled hair appointment. We said our good-byes and returned to the garage.

  “How long do you think your appointment will take?” he questioned, climbing into the driver's seat of his SUV, as I buckled myself in.

  “No more than two hours. Missy’s pretty good about getting clients in and out, and it’s Sunday. She only takes two clients on Sundays.”

  Connor nodded while he pulled up the car’s navigation system. “Plug in the address. I’ll drop you off. I have to run an errand, and then I can swing back to pick you up.”

  “I can just grab an Uber back, it won—” I firmed my lips shut at the thunderous look he gave me.

  “I’ll drop you off at the salon and then pick you up once I’m done. My errand won’t be too long. And you won’t be getting into any fucking Uber, Lyft, or other car sharing service until we know the bastard who broke into your home is taken care of.”

  I shivered at the words taken care of. He
didn’t say, “until he’s behind bars,” or, “until the police arrest him.”

  No.

  Taken care of were his words, and it was on the top of my tongue to ask him what he specifically meant by that, but I held back.

  “Fine,” I finally agreed with my arms folded over my chest.

  Connor snorted as we pulled out of the Townsend Industries’ parking garage.

  Chapter Eleven

  Connor

  It’d been quite a while since I waited in the backseat of someone’s car for them to come out. And as I laid there, prone, in the backseat of Sebastian Jarvis Caldwell’s F-150 truck, I had to control the anger coursing through my body. Just after taking Resha to her hair appointment, I called Brutus back for him to give me the information he was able to pull up on Caldwell. Turns out, he had a spotty past.

  Caldwell came from a well-to-do family, but he himself was a slacker. He’d been a middle school teacher for a few years right out of undergrad, but when it was found out that he’d actually been having an affair with one of the eighth grade students, he was abruptly fired, and rightfully so. However, his family’s money kept him out of jail and off the sex offender registry list. But that didn’t slow Sebastian down. A few years later, in Sebastian’s old neighborhood there were reports of a Peeping Tom in the area. The police never caught the guy but there were two neighbors who swore they saw Sebastian running from the scene where the peeping took place. Unfortunately, he’d had an alibi that his mother just so happened to back up. And surprise, surprise, the Peeping Tom seemed to go away once Sebastian moved out of that neighborhood. That move brought him to Resha’s building, where he began going by his middle name, Jarvis.

  The more I found out about this guy, the more the pieces seemed to fall into place. Just when my patience was starting to wane, a shadow befell the backseat of the car, moving to the front. I ceased breathing, remaining completely still as Jarvis or Sebastian, whatever the fuck his name was, pulled open the driver side door and climbed in behind the wheel.

  Before he could insert the key into the ignition, I sprang up from behind him and circled his neck with my right arm, pulling him hard against the headrest of his seat. My left arm came up to hook onto my right shoulder, completing the circle and leaving his windpipe completely vulnerable to whatever I wanted to do with it.

  “Wh-Wha—” he struggled to talk.

  “Don’t speak unless spoken to. That’s the one hope you have of saving your own life right now, understood?”

  He tried to nod, and I took that as a yes. Reaching forward with my left hand, I lowered the sun visor and pushed the mirror component open to allow me to see Sebastian’s face, but due to my position he couldn’t see mine.

  “I’m going to ask you a series of questions. They’ll be yes or no questions. You’re going to blink once for no and twice for yes. Do you understand?”

  He went to nod his head, and I tightened the hold I had around his neck.

  “You don’t seem to fucking understand English. Is that the case, Sebastian? Do I need to speak another fucking language for you to understand what I’m saying? Blink once for no and twice for yes.”

  Staring in the mirror, I watched his eyelids close and open twice.

  “Good. Now, understand this. This hold that I have around your neck currently isn’t life threatening. I can tighten it and eventually the pressure against your windpipe will cut off oxygen flow to your brain, causing you to pass out. If I were to let you go, you’d still live after that and be fine. But, if I continue to hold for say … one minute … two minutes … five minutes … ten minutes, you would die. And trust me when I say it would be the worst minutes of your life before you passed out. But, Sebastian, you are the one who is going to determine whether you live or die today. Understood?”

  I paused and glared into his eyes in the mirror. He blinked twice.

  “Great. Let’s get started. Did you break into Resha’s home yesterday?”

  His entire body stiffened and his eyes widened in horror—not that they weren’t already filled with immense fear, but this was a renewed, stunned type of horror. He blinked once.

  “Do you know who did?”

  Another solitary blink. I’d expected him to answer no to those questions anyway, but I wanted to look him in the eye as he answered.

  “Have you been sending her emails?”

  One single blink.

  “What about a bouquet of flowers? Did you send her a bouquet of flowers, Sebastian?”

  One blink.

  “Do you find Resha attractive?”

  A double blink. And even though I found his answer to be truthful, my arms tightened around his neck.

  “Put your fucking hands down!” I demanded when his hands moved to my arms as if he was going to try to push me off of him. If he knew anything about fighting he would’ve known that that move was no use anyway. I had him exactly where I wanted him and could do anything to him, including take his very life.

  And when I began to seriously consider doing just that, a knock on the passenger’s side door window stopped me. I let out an annoyed breath before reaching over and pressing the button to unlock the door.

  Sebastian, aka Jarvis, began squirming in his seat, trying to look over at the man who was now getting into the passenger seat beside him, shutting the door.

  “I see you got started without me,” Brutus said over his shoulder.

  I shrugged. “Couldn’t resist.”

  “You get anything?”

  Frowning, I looked back to the mirror. “Not much,” I admitted, my heart sinking as if filled with the realization that this guy likely wasn’t Resha’s stalker, in spite of the feeling I had earlier.

  “Where were you yesterday, Sebastian?” Brutus questioned.

  I loosened the hold I had around his neck, until my arms dropped to my sides, but when he didn’t respond quick enough I slapped the back of his head. “Answer him!”

  “I-I-I—”

  “Use your fucking words!” I demanded, slapping him again, so hard his forehead banged against the steering wheel.

  “I w-was out all day.”

  “Out where?” Brutus followed up.

  “W-With some friends.”

  “You don’t have any friends.”

  Sebastian’s eyes went to the mirror as he peered up at me, now able to see me in the mirror. His eyebrows raised with recognition. I didn’t give a shit about being recognized. If he was in any way smart, he’d realize the fact that I hadn’t disguised my face wasn’t a good look for him. But again, this guy wasn’t the cream of the crop when it came to intelligence.

  “Phone records indicate you made a call to a Ms. Wendy Mansion. A well-known Madame. So you spent the day with an escort?”

  Sebastian sputtered, his eyes bulged, and he shook his head.

  “What did I tell you about lying, Sebastian?” I warned.

  He immediately ceased his denial and pointed his gaze at the floor of his truck.

  “He was out most of the day. And I’m betting his phone records verify it. I’ll get in contact with Ms. Mansion herself. Better yet, how about we take a trip to go see her?” Brutus proposed even though it really wasn’t a question.

  Sebastian, the fool he was, however, didn’t realize this. “I-I can’t,” he stammered. “I’m supposed to be going to my momma’s today.”

  “See your momma some other time,” I demanded. “Sebastian, you’re about to take a trip with my friend, here. And he’s going to call me and tell me how that trip went. What he finds out will determine whether you live or die.”

  “He—” He started to scream for help and tried to open the door but he was much too slow.

  I again wrapped one arm around his neck, pulling the door closed and locking it with the other hand.

  “That was just fucking stupid.” I squeezed his neck, cutting off the oxygen to his brain by blocking his windpipe but not crushing it like I wanted to. Only once he passed out did I let go.
r />   “Go ahead, I’ll handle this and call you later when I have more information.”

  I sighed and dipped my head in Brutus’ direction, getting out of Sebastian’s backseat. Slamming the door behind me, I felt defeated. I’d been all but certain this son of a bitch was the bastard behind whoever was stalking Resha, but my suspicions weren’t quite panning out. Besides the fact that Sebastian seemed to have an alibi for the day before, something in his eyes told me he wasn’t the stalker. He appeared too surprised when I mentioned the emails and flower arrangements sent to Resha. He may have a spotty history with women, and Resha was probably right when she said he gave her creeper vibes, but that didn’t make him her stalker.

  ****

  Resha

  “I love it.” I grinned in the mirror as I swung my head from side to side, admiring the new weave I just had installed. My stylist had done a long, curly style. The long, curly locks fell a few inches past my shoulders and there was a pop of color with the honey brown highlights around my face while the rest of the hair was a dark, deep brown.

  I sighed, feeling a little more like myself than when I’d first walked into Missy’s shop.

  “You look good, girl,” Missy purred while fluffing the sides of my hair. “Not that you don’t always look good, but, chile, that mess you came in with this morning.” She clucked her tongue and sucked her teeth, shaking her head. “Looking like who did it and ran. If I didn’t know any better I’d say you was up late doing something you had no business doing.”

  I rolled my eyes because I knew Missy was fishing for information. Connor hadn’t been shy about escorting me into the shop before dropping me off. Nor had he been shy about giving me a departing kiss on the lips before reminding me not to try to order an Uber, and that he’d be here within the next two hours to pick me up.

  “But I know someone’s still on her celibacy kick … at least that’s the last I heard,” Missy continued to pry.

  “Hey, Missy, can you take some pictures of me and my hair so I can post on Instagram?” I questioned, ignoring her previous comments.

  “Sure thing.” Missy took my phone and snapped at least a half a dozen images of me from different angles, allowing me enough poses and angles that I could go through and decide which images looked best for me to post.