COLE (Dragon Security Book 1) (21 page)

“I recognized some of those names right off the bat. You’re still friends with Ali and Steph?”

“Off and on. We get together a couple of times a year to brag about how great our lives are going.”

“And Tina?”

“She married Curtis. Can you believe that?”

His eyebrows rose. “I thought they hated each other.”

“They did. But then they found themselves alone together at the same university and they became inseparable. They got married two years ago and they have a little boy now.”

“Must be nice.”

I shrugged. “They seem happy.”

We were quiet for a minute, only the sound of cutlery on our plates filling the room.

“I ran into Amanda a few months ago.”

That stopped him. He didn’t move, just stared down at his plate where it was balanced on his thighs. Then he slowly began to chew again, nodding just enough so that I caught it.

“She was there that night, you know. She told me she saw them confront him at the party, that she’d gone to get them some cokes but heard them talking as she was walking back to him. He told her it was nothing. Said they were just blowing off some steam. She asked him to leave with her, but he refused.” I looked down at my food again, suddenly finding it completely unappetizing. “She feels guilty for not pushing the issue more.”

“It might not have done any good.”

I tossed my plate onto the coffee table and watched the potatoes skitter across the thin ceramic and fall onto the table.

“You don’t know what might have made a difference.”

“I know that analyzing every second of that night isn’t going to make anyone feel better.”

“Is that what you think this is?” I looked at him just in time to catch something like a dark cloud pass in his eyes. But then again, it could have just been a trick of the light. “Do you think it makes me feel better to be sitting here with you, all those memories coming back after I thought I’d dealt with it?”

“I don’t like this anymore than you, Kate.”

“I’m sure you don’t. I’m sure you would rather be anywhere else but here. You made that pretty clear when you disappeared all those years ago.”

“You told me to leave.”

“I was grieving!” I stood and moved to the recliner so that I could see him and I wouldn’t feel this overwhelming need to move into his arms. “You didn’t have to run away.”

“You blamed me for what happened. You still blame me!”

I nodded. “I do blame you. If you’d been there—”

“If I’d been there, I wouldn’t have been with you. Is that what you wanted?”

My eyes narrowed. “Don’t turn this around on me.”

“I’m not the one who did this, Kate. I didn’t hurt Joshua. The guys who did it are in prison, and they’re going to be there for a very long time.”

“I know that. I was at the sentencing hearing. Where were you?”

He stood up and grabbed my plate, carrying both plates to the kitchen.

“I’m going to bed,” he said. “Don’t try to leave the house.”

And then he was gone. Just like before.

Kate

I watched television for a while, thinking about sneaking out just to see what would happen. But my head hurt and I was exhausted despite the fact that I’d spent most of the day in bed. I paused outside his bedroom door, my hand on the wood, wondering if he was asleep, if he was thinking about me.

“Don’t be stupid, Kate,” I whispered to myself.

I went into my own bedroom and slipped out of my sweat pants, no longer concerned with the cameras or who might be watching me on the other end. Then I crawled into bed, willing sleep to come quickly, but of course it didn’t. Instead, my thoughts worked their way back in time, to all those moments when Donovan’s constant presence in my house became more than just the boy down the street, more than just Joshua’s friend.

“Take the remote, Kate,” Joshua said, holding his game controller out to me. “I have to piss.”

“Real classy, Josh,” Donovan laughed.

“Why do I have to be classy? This is my house and she’s my sister. It’s not like she’s a real girl.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, tossing my book at my brother.

“See? She doesn’t even know how to spend a Saturday afternoon. We’re seventeen, Kate,” he said, turning to me, “why aren’t you upstairs primping for a date?”

“Why aren’t you?”

“Because I’m a guy. It only takes five minutes to change my shirt and put on some cologne.”

“I’ll have to tell Amanda how hard you work to be pretty for her.”

“Go for it,” Joshua said, tossing my book back at me before climbing to his feet. “Seriously, take over the game for me.”

I climbed off the couch in the game room in the basement of our house, taking my time walking over to the beanbag Joshua had just abandoned. He glared at me as his character lost a life because he was too busy glaring at me.

“I don’t even know how to play this.”

“You’ve watched us often enough. You should.”

Joshua shoved the remote into my hand and ran toward the stairs, taking them two at a time. I laughed as I settled down in the bag, moving the character on the screen as expertly as Joshua would have. What he didn’t know was that I sometimes played this game when he and Donovan were out finding trouble.

“Good move,” Donovan said, his character rushing toward mine as we worked together against the same monsters. It was an intense few minutes, but we managed to clear the level and move to the next.

“Yes!” Donovan yelled, turning to me with his hand raised, waiting for a high five.

I slapped his palm.

“You wouldn’t have been able to do that without me.”

“You think so?”

“I’m good at this game.”

Donovan laughed. “And so modest about it.”

I shrugged. “Why should I be modest?” Then I reached past him and grabbed his bottle of soda. “And I deserve a reward.”

I started to get up, but he grabbed my arm, pulling me back down.

“That’s the last one.”

“I know. And now it’s mine.”

“No, it’s not.”

He reached for it, but I moved it out of his reach. I started up out of the beanbag again, but he grabbed me around the waist and pinned me to the bag. We started to wrestle, hands gong where they probably shouldn’t have. But we’d played like this since we were seven years old. Yet, there was something different about it, something about the way he looked at me when he finally had my shoulders pinned. I stopped fighting and looked up at him, my heart pounding as I focused on his lips and wondered what they would feel like on mine.

And he seemed more out of breath than he should have been…but it must have been my imagination.

Joshua came pounding back down the stairs calling to me.

“You better have not lost me my last life!”

Donovan let me go and settled back in his own beanbag.

“Here,” I said, handing him the soda. “You can have it.”

“No, you take it. You earned it.”

I could almost feel his hands on me as I slowly woke and realized I was dreaming, but the dream was most definitely a memory. That was the day I knew there was something between Donovan and I… something that shouldn’t have been there, but had somehow snuck up on the both of us. By graduation…

A scream reverberated through the house. I sat up, my heart pounding.

That must be what woke me.

It came again, a little muted this time.

I reached over to my nightstand, to the knife I kept hidden in there. But when the scream came a third time, I realized that it wasn’t an intruder. It was coming from the spare bedroom.

It was Donovan.

I went out into the hallway and knocked on his door, but he didn’t respond. I pushed the door open. I couldn’t see him at first because the room was so dark. But as my eyes adjusted, the lump on the bed became mused hair against the white pillowcase, a muscular back and heavy thighs uncovered by the sheets that had been kicked to the foot of the bed. He was dressed in just a pair of boxer briefs, the kind of underwear that hugged a guy’s thighs and ass like a pair of spandex workout shorts. And Donovan filled his out quite well.

He cried out again, mumbling something I couldn’t quite make out, tugging his pillow harder under his head.

“Donovan?” I called from the doorway. But it had no effect on him. “Donny,” I said softly, crossing the room and laying my hand lightly on his shoulder.

He responded immediately this time, grabbing my wrist and yanking me over his body and onto the thick queen-sized mattress. I cried out as he climbed over me, pinning me with his hands on both shoulders.

“Let me go!”

He stared at me in the dark for a second, then reached over and flipped on the bedside lamp.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” he demanded, as he came back to pin me down, his eyes narrowed as he studied my face.

“You were screaming in your sleep.”

“I was…” He hesitated, clearly aware that this was something he did. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Will you let me go now?”

The confusion and sleep left his eyes as he studied my face. And then his eyes moved further down, taking in the fact that I was still only dressed in a thin t-shirt. Memory made my cheeks burn, my mind going right back to that dream—to that relieved memory—I’d just woken from. How I’d wanted his touch back then, how I wanted to feel his hands on my skin. My body still remembered that need and the fact that we were lying in his unmade bed, both of us nearly naked, made that need come back tenfold.

I crossed my ankles, pulling my thighs tightly together.

“Let me go, Donovan.”

“Why are you always blushing when I look at you? I don’t remember you blushing this much back then.”

“Must be the head injury.”

“You think so?”

“What else could it be?”

“Oh,” he said, releasing one of my shoulders to move his fingers slowly along the curve of my jaw, “I could think of a few things.”

“Think about them on your own time,” I said, pushing his hand away and pulling myself away from his hold. I climbed off the bed and headed to the door. “Remind me not to wake you up ever again.”

“Might not be a bad idea.”

I glanced back at him. “What is it, anyway? PTSD?”

“Don’t worry about it, Kate. I have it under control.”

“Do you?”

His eyes moved slowly over me. “Go back to bed.”

“Time to get ready for work now,” I said, gesturing at the small travel clock he had on the bedside table. Then I focused on him. “Must be hell for your girl, sleeping with you during nightmares like that.”

“You sure worry an awful lot about someone you’ve never met.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. And I wasn’t sure I could speak with the knife that just sliced through my heart.

So he really does have a girlfriend.

Donovan

I made us breakfast, but she only picked at the eggs, throwing them down the drain the moment I turned my back. And she was silent on the short drive to her bank, refusing to speak even when I commented on the weather or asked a direct question about her normal route to work.

Everyone in the bank when we walked in stared at us. I wasn’t sure if they were staring at her because of what had happened Monday night, or if they were staring at me because their manager had told them who I was and why I was there. Probably a combination of both.

Kate dropped her bag into the bottom drawer of her desk and settled in her chair, adjusting the nameplate that sat beside a photo of her and her dad.

“What are you going to do all day? Stand there and watch me work?”

“She speaks.”

She started to make a face at me but caught sight of her manager, Mildred Talbot, walking toward us.

“Mrs. Talbot,” she said, climbing to her feet.

“Please, sit, Miss Thompson. I understand you sustained a concussion during whatever happened the other night.”

“I did. But it was mild. I’m fine.”

“I certainly hope so.” Mrs. Talbot turned to me. “You must be Mr. Pritchard. Mr. Grayson called yesterday to explain what was going to happen for the next few days.”

I inclined my head. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion. I’ll try to stay out of the way as much as possible.”

“It’s no problem. We’re happy to have the added security for Miss Thompson.”

She focused on Kate again, her eyes moving slowly over her. “Well, let’s have a good day and hope that there is no more drama.”

Kate watched the woman as she walked away, a clear look of dislike on her face. It reminded me of the many times I’d seen that look on her face after a teacher reprimanded her for some slight in class.

“Drama?” she muttered. “Someone died and she calls it drama.”

I rapped my knuckles on her desk to get her attention. “I’ll be around.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I’m not going far. But you’re safe here.”

“How can you be sure? After all, this is where it all happened.”

I turned, located a security camera on the wall directly across from her desk that was looking right at her. “See that?”

“Yeah?”

“David hacked the bank’s security system and he’s watching you right now.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pulled up the app that was connected to David’s program. It had a green, all clear banner prominent across the top. “If anything appears out of the normal, he’ll notify me and I’ll be here in seconds.”

She glanced toward the front of the bank. I could almost read her thoughts. The front was all glass, and she was only ten or fifteen feet from it. What if someone made an attempt on her from out there? She was practically sitting in a fish bowl, vulnerable to just about anything.

I moved behind her and leaned close so that I was speaking directly into her ear where no one else could hear.

“Whoever killed the security guard picked late at night most likely because of the reduced chance of being seen. A perpetrator like that would not make an attempt on you in broad daylight where anyone and his dog might see him.”

She nodded, but I could still feel the tension rolling off of her. I laid my hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly.

“I wouldn’t leave if I didn’t think you were safe.”

She nodded again, but her eyes flicked to that wall of glass again. I didn’t know what else to do to set her mind at ease, so instead of walking the perimeter as I had planned to do, I took a seat in the lobby for the time being. I watched her for hours, waiting for the scared glances and the tension to stop. And, slowly, as she got into her work and long conversations with the people who came in to ask for loans, they did stop. I chose a moment when she was preoccupied to get up and slip out the front door.

The bank sat on a busy street with businesses on either side of it. There was a narrow alley on one side and the wider alley where employees parked their car on the other. Customers were required to park out back where there was a large lot that supplied all five business on this block. I walked around, noting the placement of the security cameras. There were multiple cameras on the outside of the building that should have caught any activity that took place late Monday night. But, as Ash had said, there were no security cameras outside the closed bakery where the actual shooting appeared to have taken place.

No cameras meant no real evidence of what had happened.

I walked back to the employee parking area where Kate’s car still sat. I walked around it, looking for anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Everything seemed fine at first glance. But then I began to notice little things.

There was loose gravel on the asphalt that was thicker along the area that came right up against the building. But where Kate’s car was parked, these rocks looked like they’d been brushed aside, as though someone pushed them out of the way so that they could kneel comfortably there. Could have been the cops. But something told me it wasn’t.

And then there were tool marks on the bumper. There were still metal shavings there, so they were clearly new.

And when I knelt, in the same place where the rocks had been brushed aside, I could see that someone had loosened a couple of bolts that held the bumper in place.

I knew that my experience always made my head jump to what was obvious to me—that someone was setting an explosive on the car. But that was my military training. That was my expertise. It didn’t necessarily apply here. But it was clear someone had been messing with Kate’s car recently.

I tugged my phone out of my pocket and placed a call.

“Can you meet me at the First Premiere Bank in Santa Monica?”

***

Emily Warren was younger than most people might expect. At thirty-three, she already held the rank of lieutenant. Of average height and build, her curves hidden under a man’s suit jacket that was required to hide her shoulder holster, she could have been just any woman in the business world, running off to make sure the boss has his coffee on time. But, in truth, she would probably shoot the boss rather than run to get him coffee.

“Donovan,” she said as she approached me in the alley. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Haven’t had any cases that crossed your radar,” I said, as I watched her, loving that small smile that always slipped across her lips when she saw me.

I thought she had a little crush on me. Kirkland insisted I was wrong. He thought she had a thing for him. But maybe we were both just a little right.

“How’s Jack?”

She shrugged. “He’s chief of police. He’s always too busy.”

She stopped just a foot or so in front of me and let her eyes move slowly over the length of me. I’d dressed a little more conservatively today in honor of coming to the bank. I still had on jeans, but I’d put on a dark button down that I actually tucked in with a loose blazer that was designed with the same concealment purpose as hers. My 9mm was tucked against my ribs, a comforting presence despite the benevolent intent of the day.

“You look nice.”

“You’ve seen me in a blazer before.”

“Yeah, but it’s always a treat.”

She winked and then turned toward Kate’s car. “This it?”

“Yeah.”

She squatted and looked at the same tool marks I’d mentioned in my call to her. Then she stood and looked up to where the nearest camera was.

“Too far out of the frame.”

“Probably why they chose the front bumper instead of the back. Back would have been easier for placement.”

She nodded. “Well, I’ll call the detectives working the case, find out if they noticed any of this.”

“Do you know if they’ve made any progress?”

She shrugged. “They’re still leaning toward the whole burglary-gone-wrong theory. They have tape of the front of the bank that shows the security guard letting Miss Thompson out the doors. Then a full minute later, Miss Thompson comes running back. The security guard opens the door, and they have a conversation at the doors. She points to the side alley a couple of times. The security guard appears to decide to go check out whatever she’s telling him. Then they both move out of camera range.”

“What about these cameras over here?”

“Don’t show anything but Miss Thompson pausing at the mouth of the alley.” She pointed toward the street. “She comes out of the bank and walks to the edge of the building. But then she stops and stares down the alley. Something upsets her and she turns, running back to the front doors.”

“The cameras don’t catch anything else?”

“No. If there was someone here, in the alley, he knew where the cameras were and how to stay out of their range.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, staring at the bumper of Kate’s car.

“This makes me nervous.”

“It could be nothing.”

“Or it could be something.”

“The detectives on the case think that the security guard caught a couple of burglars breaking into cars parked in the area. They were probably kids who panicked when they saw him. And then Miss Thompson, instead of staying in the relative safety of the security cameras, followed him and they went after her only to get interrupted by something. A passing car, probably.”

I agreed. It sounded plausible. But it still bothered me, the tool marks on her car. If they were just stealing radios out of the cars, why mess with her bumper?

“Okay.”

I gestured for her to walk back up the alley. I followed, my thoughts still working out what she’d told me. I couldn’t see someone being that cautious with the security cameras just to turn around and shoot a man dead practically in the middle of the street. But what other explanation could there be?

Emily turned to me when we reached her car, laying a hand affectionately on the center of my chest.

“I know this one is personal to you.” She smiled when my eyes narrowed. “Ash was worried.”

“He doesn’t need to worry.”

“Yes, well, when things are personal we sometimes do things we shouldn’t do.”

“I’m just doing my job, Em.”

“I know that. But I can also see that you’re worried. So I want you to promise me that you’ll let me and my colleagues do our jobs.”

“I’m not—”

“Please, Donovan. I know you. Just promise me.”

I hated that she was asking this of me. Emily knew if I made a promise I would stick to it even if things changed. Even if what I’d promised could compromise my safety. It was who I was, who the military taught me to be. And she was taking advantage of that fact.

“I promise I won’t interfere with you and your colleagues doing your job.”

She squinted at me a little, as if she wasn’t quite sure if she should accept that. But then she let her hand fall to her side.

“I guess I’ll have to take that.”

“Just make sure you find these idiots soon.”

“That I can’t promise, but I will promise that I will put as much pressure on Jack’s people as I dare.”

“I guess I’ll have to accept that.”

She smiled. “That’s the Donovan we all know and love.”

She rose up on her tiptoes and kissed me gently on my cheek. I caught her around her waist and pulled her close for a brief second. Then I opened her car door and helped her inside. I watched her drive away before I turned to the front of the bank and caught Kate watching me from her desk.