Chapter 16
“You’re tellingme the fucker’s still in Chicago,” Blaze growled.
Seth was at his laptop, studying the screen. “Technically, yes. His phone is, anyway. He’s either hired someone to intimidate her, or he bought a burner and left his phone at home.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Blaze was fucking furious. Acid scalded its way through his gut. He and Seth had gone to install the cameras and change the door locks that afternoon. He’d stopped by the doctor’s office to tell Emma what they were doing. She’d shown him the message and he’d launched into protector mode, hustling her out of there and into his apartment while they worked.
“I’m only letting you do this because I’ve seen the last patient for the day,” she’d said, eyes flashing fire at him as she closed up the office and followed him upstairs.
They were back at One Shot Tactical now, and Emma was currently on a tour of the facility with Kane. Charming Kane. Blaze had glared at his teammate, telegraphing that he’d better keep his damned charm under wraps. Dude could charm the panties off a nun if he tried, and Blaze wasn’t having it.
If anybody was getting into Emma’s panties, it was him.
Maybe.
“You know, I thought the doc was kinda standoffish when I first met her.” Chance said when he walked into the office. “But she’s not, is she? Plus she’s kinda hot in that nerdy librarian way.”
“Off limits,” Blaze said, his teeth grinding.
Chance grinned. “Saw Kane showing her the ropes. You sure you wanted to do that, man?”
“He’s already got a date with that cute chick that’s been taking the ladies’ beginning firearms class. What was her name? Lindsey? Laura? Lainey?” Seth said without looking up.
“Beats me. Never stopped him before, though.”
“Emma Sutton’s too smart for Kane Fox,” Ghost said without looking up from his desk.
Blaze said, “I think you mean she’s smarter than a fox.”
Ghost pointed a finger gun at him. “Bingo. She’s not his type if Lainey is any indication.”
“Riiight, Lainey,” Chance said. “Bleach blonde, big knockers, ass to die for.”
“That’s her,” Seth replied. “Kane got there first or I’d have asked her out.”
“What’s taking so long with the rest of that report?” Blaze said.
“Uh, you realize we aren’t back at HQ and the shit doesn’t show up instantly, right?”
“I know. Sorry.” Blaze clenched and unclenched a fist, thinking. “Emma’s been feeling like someone’s watching her, her apartment gets broken into, and now she gets a message from an unknown number. Unless she’s got enemies in Sutton’s Creek, it seems like Simon Marsh is the most likely suspect.”
“Here it is,” Seth chirped. “He doesn’t have a record. No arrests. On paper, dude is ordinary. No mortgage, but he has an address, so he must be renting.”
“He hit her,” Blaze ground out. “And he intimidated her enough not to report it. He’s probably done the same to other women.”
“Gonna agree with you there,” Chance said, his voice hard. Blaze knew his friend had grown up rough, like he had, but he didn’t know the extent of it. Chance didn’t talk much about his childhood, but they all knew it’d been difficult. His easygoing manner overlaid some serious trauma if Blaze was any judge.
Which he was since his own mother had been such a nightmare. So far as he knew, she was still alive. They didn’t talk, though. He hadn’t heard from her in about five years. She’d occasionally called asking for money when she was desperate enough. Never for any other reason. Not birthdays or holidays or anything else. Just money. The last time, he’d told her he’d pay for a treatment facility, but he wasn’t sending money. Predictably, she’d ghosted him. It wasn’t a loss. He’d always known he didn’t mean jack to her.
“Any photos?” Blaze asked.
“No.”
“Not even on his driver’s license?”
“Still trying to access the file for that. Nothing’s coming up so far.”
The door opened, and Kane emerged with Emma. She was smiling, and Blaze’s gut tightened. She hadn’t smiled at him since last night when they’d been drinking beer together. Of course, she’d pretty much avoided looking at him since she’d fallen asleep sprawled across his chest.
“Did you find anything?” she asked, directing her gaze at him. Finally.
The tension he’d been feeling seemed to ebb a bit. “His phone is still in Chicago.”
She frowned. “I guess I could be wrong. Maybe we scared whoever broke into my place before they could hit yours. They heard us coming and got out before they could really go through my stuff, such as it is. It could be a whole lotta nothing.”
He could see the hope on her face. He hated to crush it, but he had to be real with her.
“It’s also possible he left his phone at home and bought a burner rather than using a service like Google Voice to mask his number.”
Marsh would have been easier to find if he’d done that, but either the dude was aware he could be tracked, or he was still in Chicago and they were wrong. He could send a shitty text from Chicago just as easily as he could from Sutton’s Creek.
She closed her eyes for a second before gazing at him again. He watched the mask settle over her face, the determination to be strong. If his mother had mustered even an ounce of Emma’s strength, maybe she wouldn’t have searched for whatever it was she was looking for in bottles and needles.
“Okay. So now what?”
“We monitor the video feed for any sign of him or anyone else. And you have to promise not to go anywhere alone for a while.”
He didn’t tell her that they’d also see if Marsh’s car had gone through any toll booths between Alabama and Chicago, or that they’d pull footage from the parking garage at his building to see if he’d been leaving and returning regularly, or if he’d left and hadn’t yet gone back.
Emma skated her gaze across the men gathered. “I don’t see how I can do that. I have to work, and I might be in the clinic alone sometimes if my dad or the nurse isn’t there. And what if I need to run upstairs to get something from my apartment? Or if I want to visit my parents at home? I can’t upend my life again. I won’t.”
She’d wrapped her arms around her middle. Her eyes had widened the more she spoke. Blaze could see the fine edge of a panic attack about to happen. She’d been on the verge of one last night when she’d first told him she thought she was being followed. He’d told her to breathe, and she had. She’d managed to hold it off, at least so long as he was there. If she’d had one later, he didn’t know about it.
“Breathe, Emma.”
Chance produced a chair, and she sank onto it. She bowed her head and sucked in a breath. Blaze went and knelt beside her. “You got this, babe. Just breathe.”
She nodded and reached a hand out. He took it, squeezing gently while she processed her way through the attack. Nobody said anything. Someone put a bottle of water in his free hand. Chance placed a blanket on the counter nearby in case she got chilled. It happened with panic attacks sometimes, and Blaze was grateful that his friend thought of it.
“You aren’t alone, Emma. You’ve got me. You’ve got this room full of badass motherfuckers willing to stand between you and any asshole who tries to hurt you. I promise you that.”
Her gaze lifted to his. Her skin was pale and her hand clammy, but she squeezed back. “I fucking hate this,” she hissed through her teeth.
“I know, honey. It sucks. Been there a few times myself.”
Her eyebrows climbed her forehead.
He nodded. “Yep, it can happen to anyone. Even big guys like me. Anxiety doesn’t care who it gets, babe. It’s getting to you right now, but it’s gonna be okay.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. She was already breathing easier. He felt the tremors start in her limbs as a chill settled over her.
“I hate that I can’t control my body. That I know what’s happening but still can’t stop it.”
Chance handed him the blanket, and he settled it around her. The guys exchanged looks and then melted away so he could handle the situation alone. He appreciated that. He knew she would too. Emma was an accomplished woman who didn’t like to appear weak. He’d figured that out pretty quick.
“I know. It doesn’t work that way, though. I’d explain the science, but I think you probably understand it better than I do.”
She attempted a laugh. It sounded rusty. “I hope so. There’s an inciting incident to make the heart race—Simon’s presence in my hometown, for example—and then the amygdala sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus fires up the adrenal glands, which in turn release adrenaline and cortisol. Pretty much a flight or fight response that floods your senses, diverts blood from non-essential regions, and fucks up your day for a while.”
“A wise colonel I knew said once that a panic attack is just fear of fear. So long as you know that, you can deal with it instead of letting it conquer you.”
It was Ghost who’d said it. Dude was right, too. Not that panic attacks were easy, but it helped.
“Can’t necessarily stop the symptoms, though.”
“True.”
She’d wrapped the blanket around her neck and sat shivering from time to time. Not as badly as she had before. “This is another one of those things that, when it’s over, we need never speak of again.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You mean we need to file it away with that other thing we can never speak of?”
“That’s right.”
“Sure, why not?”
She cracked an eye to look at him. “Like I said, you’re a nice guy, Blaze Connolly.”
“I am to you.” He got up and grabbed a chair to tug over near hers. She’d let his hand go and clutched the blanket. The panic attack was ebbing, though she’d probably feel the shivery effects for quite a while. “We need to talk about protection, Emma.”
She rolled her chin forward and opened her eyes. There was a question in them. “Protection?”
“For you. You need to be escorted to and from work, which is easy enough for me to do since I live next door. You shouldn’t be alone in the office. Make sure your dad or the nurse is there. If they can’t be, then call me. One of us will stay with you.”
Her mouth fell open. “You guys have a business to run. You can’t drop everything to sit with me for the hour or two I might be alone in the office. There’ll be patients coming and going, so I won’t be alone anyway. If I see Simon anywhere—sitting across the street, walking in the park, whatever—I’ll call you and 911 both.”
“Not good enough, Emma. Any man who abused you the way he did, who controlled you and tried to intimidate you, who then follows you across state lines to a new town after you ended your relationship, doesn’t have good intentions. If he’s out there, it’s not so he can apologize.”
She shivered again. He didn’t think it had anything to do with the panic attack this time.
“What is it, babe?” he prodded softly.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you before.”
“So tell me now.”
She dragged in a breath. “He has a gun. That last day, when he hit me, he held it to my head and told me what would happen if I ever left him.”
Blaze swore. Emma shook her head, her eyes squeezing shut. “I know, I know. And telling you this doesn’t make you less likely to tell me not to be alone. But when does it stop, Blaze? When do I get to live my life and stop worrying that some deranged control freak is going to pop up when I least expect it and do, well, I don’t know what? I think he gets off on fear. I’m not sure he’d go so far as to kill. It wouldn’t make any sense. He doesn’t want to end up in prison.”
Blaze gritted his teeth. “Not everyone is logical or sane. Some people are broken, and they do things that don’t make sense. He threatened you, hurt you, controlled you. But you left him, and when he tried to get you back with apologies and promises he wasn’t that guy, you didn’t fall into his arms. Instead, you left your job and moved several states away. A guy like that is probably pissedas hell that you dared walk out on him. Maybe he wants to scare you, make you as uncomfortable in your new home as you were in your old one. But maybe it’s more than that. He might want revenge, and none of us can say what form that’s going to take in his head or what he’s going to consider satisfying. Best you treat this like a dangerous, life-threatening situation until we get evidence otherwise.”
She blinked up at him. Her face had gone pale, her mouth parting slightly. She swallowed and then nodded. “You’re right.”
He shoved his fingers in his hair and blew out. “I know you don’t like this. I know it’s not what you want. But anybody who’d use a pistol to threaten you isn’t stable, Emma.”
She was still pale, but her spine straightened, and her head tilted up.
Good girl.
“Tell me what I need to do.”