Chapter Fourteen
Chance arrived at the San Antonio Security office the next morning, coffee in hand, glad he’d been able to talk Maci into sleeping late and working a half day in the afternoon. She could talk tough all she wanted about how she wasn’t an invalid. But the truth was her body had been through a trauma with the attack and was already exhausted from the pregnancy.
His phone pinged with a reminder as he stepped inside the building and he smiled. Maci had an ultrasound the next day and he was going.
The thought that they’d be able to actually see their baby—at least the heartbeat—had Chance shaking his head.
He was going to be a dad.
“You are a godsend.” Brax snatched a cup of coffee from Chance’s tray, gulping half the drink down in one go. “Walker is in the middle of sleep regressions. I was up most of the night.”
Brax’s two-year-old son was technically his biological nephew, but his son in every way that mattered—getting him to sleep included. Brax had officially adopted him once he married Tessa, Walker’s mom.
“Maci and I are going to the ob-gyn tomorrow. Check on everything.” Chance handed out the other two coffees to Luke and Weston.
Brax grinned. “Exciting, terrifying stuff, isn’t it?”
“You better believe it.”
Weston wasn’t paying attention to any of the baby talk. He was zoned in on the footage in front of him. “The stalker has been inactive for too long. Something’s not right. He’s going to strike soon.”
Chance met eyes with Brax, then Luke, behind Weston’s back. Weston was definitely the quietest of the four of them, but his intuition was generally spot-on.
If Weston was saying the stalker was going to make another move soon, all of them were willing to believe him.
“I’ll get on the phone with LeBlanc and Dorian. Make sure the security around Stella is tight.” Luke was already walking out of the conference room, phone in hand.
“She’s still in Europe, right?” Brax asked, all traces of tiredness gone.
Chance nodded. “Switzerland, unless they’ve moved her again.” It was possible. Stella didn’t like staying too long in one place.
Chance looked over at Weston, who was still studying the footage. “Is there something in particular that has your spidey senses tingling?”
He shook his head without turning from the screen. “No. It’s less this footage and more talking to Maci about the guy in the apartment. Do you remember what she told us he said at the apartment?”
“That he knew she wasn’t Stella?”
“Actually, the part about battle and honor. That there was honor in staying when Stella had run and hid. It tells us something about his mindset.”
Chance rubbed the back of his neck. “That he sees this as some sort of war or competition.”
Now Weston turned to look at him. “Yes. All this time we’ve been searching for the stalker as someone who’s obsessed with Stella. And honestly, he may be. But I also think he’s obsessed with the process of stalking.”
Luke came back in the room. “LeBlanc has Stella on lockdown. Guards have eyes on her and will be preparing for a possible attack.”
“Did you talk to Dorian?” He had enough experience to understand that sometimes a gut feeling was actionable intel.
“Not directly. He’s handling some other business for right now. But I did talk to his second-in-command, and we should be getting a call from Dorian soon to provide any info we can.”
“We have reason to believe the stalker might be former military or even law enforcement. Let’s run guests at Stella’s past events based on that filter and see if we can come up with anything useable.”
For the first time they didn’t feel like they were looking for a needle in a haystack.
They were maybe thirty minutes in when Chance’s phone buzzed. He looked down, expecting a text from Maci or maybe Dorian. But it was from an unknown number.
Are you particularly attached to your office’s front window?
“What the—”
“I just got some sort of weird text about the front window,” Brax said. Luke and Weston had gotten it too.
“Sales promotion?” Luke asked.
“From an unknown number?” Brax responded. “Not going to get much business that way.”
This wasn’t right. All of them knew it. They moved into the office lobby, but the only things there were Maci’s empty desk and a few other pieces of furniture.
The window shattered in front of them as a bullet struck it, a sea of glass flying everywhere.
All four of them dove to the ground—Chance behind Maci’s desk, Luke and Brax behind a couch, Weston at the corner of the room.
They paused, waiting for another shot to come, but there was nothing but the sound of tinkling glass.
“I have a feeling the stalker just brought the war to us,” Luke said.
“Yeah, Weston, why do you have to be so damned right all the time?” Brax backed away from the couch. “How about next time your intuition tells you I’m going to win a million dollars rather than someone shooting at us.”
Chance was staring at the chair Maci normally would’ve been sitting in. It was covered in glass. Rage was bubbling in his gut. “If Maci had been here...”
“There aren’t too many places that someone could have made that shot from,” Weston said. “It had to have been from the building across the street.”
Chance nodded. “The roof. Let’s go. If we move now, maybe we can catch him.”
It was an office building with three stories. The shooter would’ve had a clear range.
Luke was already running toward the weapons room. He yanked out bulletproof vests, throwing them to each of his brothers. They all grabbed their weapons from their desks.
In under a minute they were running out the back door. They all knew this could be a trap, but they weren’t going to let that stop them. Not when they had a chance to get the upper hand.
As they rounded the corner from the back alley and had the building across from their office in sight, Chance barked out the plan. “Weston and Brax will clear the top two floors, while Luke and I do the roof. Good?”
His brothers called out their affirmations. They kept their weapons holstered as they ran for the building. It was already pandemonium on the street.
“You think they heard the shot and are panicking?” Luke asked.
As they got closer, the problem became evident. Someone had set off the fire alarm.
He and his brothers looked at each other. “He’s giving himself an easy way to escape.”
“Split up and look around. Let’s see if we can catch anyone acting strange.” Weston pulled out his phone and started recording as he walked inside. “I’ll try to get as much footage as I can, see if we can match someone to one of Stella’s events.”
Brax grabbed Chance’s arm as someone rushed by, sobbing and yelling about smoke. Maybe the stalker had started an actual fire to make sure there was real panic. “We need to get up on that roof.”
Chance shook his head. “There’s no way, not with so many people pouring downstairs. Plus, he’s already gone. You know he’s around here somewhere. Let’s record like Weston said.”
They spread out, Chance checking every face he passed. He didn’t bother looking for a gun bag. The shooter wasn’t stupid. He’d either stored the weapon to come back for it later or got out of Dodge immediately after taking the shot.
Chance tried to ignore the most panicked people and the ones who didn’t fit the profile. He looked for those who were more calm despite the chaos, and concentrated on recording those.
When the fire engine parked in front of the building and the firefighters began crowd control, Chance knew there was nothing else they could do. They’d talk to local police about the shooting and hopefully get the footage from any security cameras around, but they were limited in what they could do until then. He walked outside as the firefighters demanded it.
Annoyed at the situation, Chance yanked out his cell with a growl when it rang. Weston. “Please tell me you have good news.”
“Unfortunately, nobody walking around with a shirt saying I Just Shot Out a Window. I didn’t see anything or anyone who seemed too suspicious,” Weston said. “You?”
“A few people who were too relaxed, but nothing concrete.”
“Let’s get back to the office. We can compare footage and start calling in favors to get the local security feeds. Maybe we caught something.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
A flash of something in his peripheral had him turning, eyes locked with the back of a plain black hoodie. Besides standing slightly taller than the crowd, the man blended in with everyone around him.
Except he was walking away rather than watching what was going on around them.
Chance knew from experience it was human nature to stay at the scene of an emergency. Curiosity and the desire for drama had people sticking around.
Using one hand, he called his brother back.
“I may have something. Man in a black hoodie leaving the scene just to the west of the front door. I’m following.”
“We’re right behind you.”
Chance sped through the crowd, having to jostle to the side as he tried to keep his eyes on the man in the hoodie. At the end of the block the crowd cleared out, and Chance could finally put on some speed. When he was close enough to touch, he reached out and clamped his hand down on the man’s shoulder, whirling him around.
Not a man. Another damned teenager. The kid ripped one of his headphones out of his ear with a frown. “Can I help you?”
“Were you in the building back there?” Chance asked.
“No. I stopped by because I heard the sirens, but it doesn’t look like there’s an actual fire. So I’ve got better things to do.”
Chance still had him by the shoulder of his hoodie. “How do you know there’s no fire? People were talking about smoke. Seemed pretty panicked.”
The kid shrugged. “Whatever, man. There’s no fire.”
Chance wanted to push, but knew there was no way in hell this was the stalker. He let the kid go. “You see anything suspicious?”
The kid raised an eyebrow. “You mean besides a random dude grabbing teenagers? No.”
Chance fished out a card from his pocket, telling the kid to call if he thought of anything strange. He snapped a picture of the kid’s face while he was looking at the card.
They would run him and make sure he didn’t have any ties to Stella they should know about. But besides that there wasn’t much Chance could do.
He turned and walked back to the office, calling to tell his brothers the hoodie kid was another dead end.
When he got back to the office, he found his brothers hovering around Maci’s desk.
“What’s going on?”
Luke held up a piece of paper in a gloved hand. “The stalker left us a note.”
You made me better, but I want to be the best. First one to the prize wins.
Chance didn’t know what to make of that. “Is the prize Stella?”
Brax dropped his phone to the counter. “I just talked to Dorian, and Stella is safe. No attempts on her.”
Chance rubbed his eyes. There were so many things he didn’t like about this situation. The stalker actively communicating with them, and coming into their personal space. Him making it into some sort of game he wanted them to play.
But most of all he didn’t like the fact that if Maci had been at work today she might have been at that desk when that bastard shot the window out. Might have been covered in glass.
“I need to make a call.” He needed to hear Maci’s voice.
Chance stepped into his office, dialing before the door was shut.
“Chance? Is everything okay? I was just about to leave so I can work the half day.”
Just the sound of Maci’s voice—relaxed and calm—soothed his frayed nerves. She was okay. That was all that mattered.
“You’re not going to believe this, but we’re going to need you to not come in today.”
“Damn it, Chance. I am not going to let you—”
“I promise this is not me trying to get you to rest. The front window of the office...broke, and we’re going to have to close everything early today and get it fixed.”
“Oh, my gosh. Did you throw someone through it?”
He chuckled. “You’re not here. So, no.”
She laughed at that. “Ha-ha. I’ve thought about throwing you through that glass once or twice too. What happened?”
“I’ll tell you everything when I get home. Do me a favor and make sure the doors are locked.”
She didn’t respond for a second. “Something happened, didn’t it?”
He’d never lied to her and wasn’t going to start now. “Yeah. But nobody was hurt.”
“Okay,” she finally said. He knew she wanted to demand details and appreciated that she didn’t. “You all be careful. Come home safe.”
Home. To her. “I will. See you in a while.”
He walked back out to the main room. Although he hadn’t touched it, Luke had found the bullet where it had wedged into the wall. Definitely a downward trajectory. The shooter had been in the building across the street.
“I called some friends on the force,” Weston said. “They’re going to come pick up the bullet and run it. Brax is on the phone with the window replacement company.”
“Maybe we should put in bulletproof glass.” Chance meant it as a joke, but Weston’s bunched eyebrows said he was really considering it.
Luke stood from where he was studying the bullet. “Good news is that Weston did his voodoo, and because of the special circumstances of our ongoing case, the police have kindly offered to share the security footage from the high-rise to see if we spot anyone we recognize from our own research.”
Chance looked over at Weston. He was the one who’d served on the San Antonio PD for a few years. He nodded. “Although, they’re more interested in catching the guy who caused the fire panic in the office across the street than they are our window.”
Chance shrugged one shoulder. “Since we’re almost positive it’s the same person, I’ll take it.”
Luke rubbed his eyes. “Means going through more footage.”
It wasn’t what any of them wanted to do.
But this bastard had brought the fight to their front door. Chance and his brothers were going to take him down.