Chapter Eight
Jackson had found her . “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Chloe asked Jayla.
The woman had already gone around Chloe’s apartment, closing the blinds and drawing the curtains, making it so dark that if it weren’t for the lit screen of her Echo, she wouldn’t be able to see a thing.
“We weren’t sure until recently where he was. All we knew was he’d gone missing.”
“How’d he find me?” She’d been so careful. Or, at least she thought she had. But Jackson was a cop; there was no telling what sort of means he had at his disposal.
Jayla pulled out her phone and, after a few seconds of navigating through it, handed it to Chloe, while saying, “This was the last hit on Savoy’s search history before he went missing.”
There was an article on the screen, and Chloe grimaced as she read it.
She knew the journalist. He’d interviewed her several times during her tenure at the Met.
But how had he found out? She knew Lattie wouldn’t have said anything; it had been a stipulation he’d readily agreed to before she’d signed on, and she didn’t doubt his integrity.
But that didn’t mean someone else at the opera house hadn’t recognized her and leaked the information.
Stupid. So stupid. She should have known something like this might happen, but at the same time, she’d hoped that enough time had passed for Jackson to have gotten over her. Wishful thinking on her part, and now, two people had been injured. Because of her.
“Sit down. You’re making me dizzy.”
Chloe had been pacing and hadn’t even realized it. Moving stiffly to the couch, she forced herself to sit. “Now what?”
Jayla picked up the TV remote. “Now we wait.”
Easy for Jayla to say. She wasn’t the one whose life had just been upended.
Again. For months, Chloe had hidden in this apartment, jumping at every noise, her stomach curdling every time her phone rang, even though she’d gotten a new one with a different number.
She’d had groceries delivered, online shopping had become her best friend, and even her therapy sessions had been done via Zoom.
When she’d finally felt well enough to step outside, he had to show up and ruin everything.
Her taste of freedom had been all too brief, and while her heart thumped a hard beat in her chest, her hands trembled, and her palms were clammy, she was also angry.
No. Livid. Jackson Savoy had once taken everything from her.
She wouldn’t let him take this from her, too. Not again.
“Should we call the cops?” Back in New York, when everything had gone to hell, she hadn’t gotten them involved because Jackson was a cop.
He’d been well-liked and respected. She’d been afraid that she wouldn’t be believed, or that his actions would be swept under the rug.
But she wasn’t in New York anymore. The cops here didn’t know him and weren’t his buddies.
Jayla tore her attention away from the show she was watching to look at Chloe. “Is that how you want to handle it? Any evidence we have right now is circumstantial at best.”
In other words, she could file a report, but there’d be little the police could do. She’d been down that road before.
“What do you suggest, then?”
“Let us handle Savoy.”
Jayla returned her attention to the TV, and Chloe tried to do the same, but her thoughts were in such chaos that she couldn’t focus. She needed to do something…
Jayla’s phone rang, and Chloe jumped, startled by the unexpected sound. “Easy,” the other woman murmured. “It’s just my partner checking in.”
Right. The other unknown member of the two-person protection team, which General Davies had sent to keep an eye on her as a favor to her father.
Whoever they were, Jayla had called them right after she’d called the general, to let them know about the rose on her car and that she’d had to come clean about being there to protect her.
Chloe listened in this time, too, but could only hear Jayla’s frustratingly uninformative side of the conversation.
“Hey.”
“Yeah. We’re good.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Hey, listen. Can you grab some food? I’m starving.” Jayla looked at Chloe. “You want something to eat?”
Her stomach rolled at the very thought of eating anything, and it must have shown on her face since Jayla patted her knee sympathetically before saying to her partner, “Grab something for Chloe, too, in case she gets hungry later.”
Chloe was about to point out that she had plenty of food. Her cupboards were stocked, as well as her refrigerator, but Jayla ended the call before she could.
“You want me to change the channel?” Jayla picked up the remote again. “If this show doesn’t do it for you, I can find something else.”
“This is fine.” Whatever it was… Chloe was too deep in her head to pay attention to anything anyway.
Twenty minutes later, when the buzzer sounded, announcing someone at the front door, Chloe startled again. Even knowing Jayla’s partner was on their way, that they would have to be let in, the noise still made her overstressed nerves jangle.
The other woman looked at her phone. “Yup. It’s him. Ooh! He got Panera!”
Him. While Jayla bounded off the couch to buzz her partner in, Chloe gave that some thought. Jayla was the only new addition to this apartment complex, and she lived alone, so her partner must have moved in somewhere close by. Maybe the building across the street.
Mildly curious to see if she’d recognize whoever he was – maybe she’d caught a glimpse of him when she’d been outside, leaving to go to work or coming home – Chloe stood and faced the door. But when he finally appeared, his name left her lips in a whispered rush. “Erik.”
“Hey, Chloe.” He looked her over as he passed the big bag of food to Jayla. “Are you okay?”
She laughed. She couldn’t seem to help it.
The sound just emerged from her involuntarily.
Of course, it was Erik. She’d pegged him as a soldier at their first introduction.
It was she who had assumed he was no longer on active duty because of his scars.
He’d never said that. Now that she thought about it, he’d evaded saying much of anything when she’d touched on his time in the military, hadn’t he? He’d changed the subject.
Cautiously, he moved closer, almost as if he thought she’d run away screaming. Did she look fragile to him? Probably, considering she’d just laughed like a hysterical loon. Taking it as a challenge, she raised her chin a notch and squared her shoulders. “I’m fine.”
Erik nodded, taking her at her word. “Good.” He motioned to the couch. “Sit down, please. We need to talk.”
When she did, he didn’t take the seat next to her, but settled on the front edge of the recliner.
Leaning forward, he braced his forearms on his thighs.
“We’re going to get him, Chloe. But we need to know exactly what we’re dealing with.
You need to tell us everything. From the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”
Her heart pounded like a drum in her chest, and her mouth suddenly went bone dry, her tongue feeling too thick to form words. She needed a drink. If she was going to do this…
Jumping up from the couch, she went into the kitchen and dug into her cupboard.
Chloe typically avoided alcohol, but she kept a bottle on hand for the rare occasions when her father or General Davies visited, and tonight, she needed it.
Locating the bottle of Glenlivet, she poured herself a healthy measure.
Knocking back a mouthful, she cringed, shivered, and then coughed.
“Are you all right?”
Chloe whirled to find Erik right behind her. “Fine.” The word came out choked, sounding hoarse, so she cleared her throat. “I’m fine.” Grabbing the bottle, she held it out in offering. “Want some?”
“No thanks.”
With a nod of acceptance, Chloe kept hold of the bottle and her glass and marched with determination back into the living room. It was time to rip open a wound she suspected might never fully heal.
“It all started a little over two years ago when I was performing at the Met.” Chloe looked from Erik’s attentive gaze to Jayla, who had just taken a big bite of some sort of wrap.
She took another small sip of her scotch, then rolled the glass between her hands.
“It was common for me to receive flowers after a performance, notes and cards, even small gifts, especially from the VIP ticket holders. So the night I found a single red rose with an unsigned note in my dressing room, I didn’t think much of it.
I thought the manager or one of the other performers had placed it there for me. ”
“What did the note say?” Erik asked.
“You deserve better.” Chloe cleared her throat. “I wasn’t sure what it meant. Better than what? So I didn’t dwell on it. The next rose, also left in my dressing room, added a little clarity. It said: You could do so much better than him.”
“You were dating someone,” Jayla chimed in, scooching forward a bit in her seat.
“Not really. It was more of an image thing. His agent and the opera house employed the same PR company. It was meant to get my name out there, being seen arm in arm at events with a relatively big name, that kind of thing. The press may have speculated that we were romantically involved, but we weren’t. We were just friends.”
Erik nodded. “Who was the guy?”
“Tyler Sinclair. He was an actor who was growing in popularity thanks to his role in the cop show Watchtower.”
Jayla perked up. “Hey, I’ve seen that show!” Her face fell. “Oh, wait…”
Chloe nodded and took another bracing swallow of her scotch. “The next time, I didn’t get a rose, but a gift. And this time, I asked around to see who had put the box in my dressing room. No one knew what I was talking about.”
Erik’s voice was gruff when he said, “So, whoever it was must have somehow snuck backstage.”
“Yes.”
“What was the gift?” Jayla asked, her food abandoned.
“It was a necklace.” A beautiful piece, with diamonds and emeralds set in platinum, that she normally would have loved, but after reading the note that had come with it, she hadn’t even wanted to touch it.
“With it, there was a folded piece of paper with a printout of a photo that had recently appeared online of Tyler at a party, making out with a woman who was sitting on his lap, his hand up her dress. Written above it was: He’s a piece of shit. I would treat you like a queen.”
It still broke her heart to think about it, so her voice was choked with emotion when she told them, “Two nights later, Tyler was shot and killed outside a popular nightclub.” He hadn’t deserved that.
“The police had no leads, so I brought them the necklace with the note. I would have brought all the notes, but I’d already thrown the others away. ”
Erik nodded while Jayla said, “They never found his murderer.”
Chloe was almost positive she knew who it was. There was no way it could be a coincidence. The problem was that she couldn’t prove it.
“After that, I received a few more roses with notes that said things like ‘We can be together now, nothing is standing in our way,’ and professing his undying love for me.
I was scared to death that whoever this person was, they were following me, stalking me.
What if I did something to make them angry, and they decided to kill me next?
So I brought everything to the police, making sure not to touch any of it with my bare hands, so they could maybe get fingerprints from it.
They took them into evidence, took my statement, but they were unable to pull any DNA or fingerprints, and pretty much told me that without that, there was nothing they could do.
“When a cop later showed up at my door, introduced himself and told me he was going to be keeping an eye on things to keep me safe, I was relieved.”
“Jackson Savoy?”
Tears welled in Chloe’s eyes, and there was a painful lump in her throat, so she nodded.
She felt so foolish now, so gullible. Raising her glass to her lips, she drained the remainder of the scotch and poured herself another.
A little self-deprecating laugh escaped her.
“Seeing his unmarked patrol car outside my apartment building was a comfort. He made me feel safe again. I brought him thermoses of coffee, made him snacks, chatted with him…”
Jayla’s hand landed on her back and rubbed soothing circles. “You couldn’t have known.”
Chloe swiped at the tears on her cheeks that had spilled over. “When he asked me out, I wanted to accept, told him as much, but that I was also afraid for him after what had happened to Tyler. He told me he’d take care of it, and not to worry about it, so I took a chance.”
Keeping her gaze on Jayla, she confided, “He took me out to dinner, and it was one of the best dates I’d ever had. We had so much in common. He liked opera, enjoyed some of the same books I’ve read, shared a lot of the same views as me, and he had a great sense of humor.
“But after, I was waiting for that rose, the note, the threat.”
“It didn’t come, did it?” Erik murmured low, his outstretched hand offering a tissue.
Chloe took it and dabbed at her eyes. “No. And maybe I should’ve put two and two together right then, but I didn’t. I was just so relieved. It was like I could finally breathe again.” And she’d been happy. So happy. At least for a while.
“Things with Jackson and me moved pretty fast after that. A whirlwind relationship, I guess you’d call it.
Jackson moved in with me.” They’d never even talked about it; it just kind of happened.
Chloe frowned. “At first, everything was perfect, but then, things started to feel off to me. Little things. There were a couple of red flags I probably should have paid more attention to, but I wrote them off as him being a cop and just overprotective, especially considering how we met.”
Erik cocked his head. “What kind of red flags?”
“I caught him going through my phone once.” Just keeping you safe, baby, he’d told her with that winning smile of his.
“That, and he’d get upset if he texted me and I didn’t immediately text him back.
He’d make a comment like, too busy talking to your other boyfriend, and he’d play it off like he was joking, but I always got the feeling he wasn’t.
” There’d been a glint in his eyes that made her uncomfortable.
She should have gone with her gut instead of convincing herself she was overreacting.
“The biggest red flag, though, the one that tipped the scales, was when I had a meeting with my agent.”