Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Angie paced back and forth across her living room, wondering what the hell she was doing.
One of her friends insisted on hooking her up with a blind date, which she swore she’d never do again after the last disastrous one.
However, here she was, all dressed up, with nothing to do but wait another fifteen minutes before she left for the restaurant where she planned to meet Melvin Fromm, an accountant.
Really? Melvin? When her friend had told Angie about him, she’d called him Mel, not Melvin, which is how he’d introduced himself when he first called her.
It was all Angie could do not to imagine him showing up with a pocket protector and glasses held together with a piece of tape.
She would kill Mandy if this didn’t work out—not that she expected it would.
Which brought her back to her original question—what the hell was she doing?
It’d been over three weeks since Jimmy dropped the bomb that he was going back undercover for one more case, and she was still pissed at him.
She had no idea why, after two years, he decided to go back and, as always, he couldn’t give her details because it was classified.
At least, that’s what he always told her.
But she figured it was more of a cross between he couldn’t give her any details, and he didn’t want to worry her with them.
Either way, she was in the dark and would be apprehensive until he contacted her again.
And from experience, she knew it could be a week or six months from now.
Damn him.
She’d always understood why he’d gone to work undercover for the DEA.
It was his way of getting some sort of revenge for the deaths of his family.
Mrs. Andrews had been a very nice, single mother whose husband walked out on her two months after their daughter, Ruthie, was born to hook up with another woman with no kids.
The only time she had ever gotten child support from her ex was when the court finally garnered his paycheck when Ruthie was three.
That had lasted two months before he moved out of state and disappeared for good.
As a result, the woman worked hard at two jobs for the next eighteen years to support Jimmy and his younger sister.
Some mothers may have grown to resent their kids in a similar situation, but Dorothy Andrews’ children were her world, and she let them know she loved them every chance she got.
She’d also loved Angie as much as her son’s best friend had loved her back.
Little Ruthie had been a sweet girl who’d gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd in high school.
It ultimately led to her and her mother being shot to death over what the police described as a case of mistaken identity.
One of her girlfriends swiped some drugs from a dealer they both knew, and the dealer blamed the missing drugs on Ruthie.
It wasn’t until after the police killed the suspect that the other girl came forward and admitted her role in the incident.
The same girl died of an overdose two years later.
Jimmy Andrews, now Jimmy Athos, was determined to rid the world of as many drug dealers as possible. Angie wished it wasn’t at the expense of his life, though. Not only was he in danger of being killed on the job, but she also worried about him in other ways.
He rarely dated, as far as she knew, and when he did, the dates never resulted in any relationship which lasted past the two- or three-week mark. She was afraid he would never find someone to love and grow old with, not that she’d found her soulmate yet, either.
Sometimes she wished they’d tried a romantic relationship, but the fear of losing everything had always stopped them.
For some reason, Angie had been positive that’s what would’ve happened, so instead, they were more like brother and sister.
A shrink might say they were using each other to replace the siblings they’d both lost, but neither of them had ever felt that way, having discussed the subject a few times over the years.
Ultimately, she wanted him to be happy with no regrets when he looked back on his life while on his deathbed.
However, she didn’t think it was possible for him, at least not at this point in his life.
Sighing, Angie looked at the time on her cable box again and was about to grab her purse when her cell phone rang.
Glancing at the screen, she saw Melvin was calling her ten minutes before their date.
She groaned, knowing what the man would say with the last-minute call.
Connecting the call, she walked to her back door and stepped out on the lanai because she had a feeling she was going to need some fresh air.
Ian took two steps across Brody’s living room toward the sliding glass door which led out to the patio and stopped.
What the fuck was he doing? He was only supposed to swing by and pick up a file his employee had to leave at his house after getting a frantic call from a corporate client very early that morning.
The geek had hopped into his truck and headed straight to Orlando after alerting Ian to the problem.
One of the company’s computer geeks had figured out a way to embezzle $800,000 from a corporate account.
They needed Brody’s help to figure out how the guy did it and how to prevent it from happening again.
So, Egghead was now near Disney World for at least another day or two, and Ian was standing in the guy’s living room.
And he was trying to talk himself out of going out the back door to see if Angie was in her own backyard.
After Athos had told them what he wanted them to do, they got to work doing what they could to keep his best friend safe.
They’d gotten lucky when she agreed to have her security system upgraded.
Brody brought up the subject as subtly as possible while talking to her over their shared fence, and the woman took the bait.
The next day, her new neighbor and Boomer installed their best system while telling her it was a normal setup for normal people who led normal lives and were probably not in any danger.
Athos told them to spare no expense and gave them a credit card number to cover any cost differences from a basic unit.
He had to let her pay something for the new installation. Otherwise, she’d be suspicious.
The teammates installed the whole system in one day.
Then while Brody took Angie around the house and showed her all the neat features of it, Boomer took the time to install the last few things they didn’t want her to know about.
He’d placed a few strategic audio bugs and remote cameras, then installed a tracking device on her phone, wallet, and car.
He’d also managed to get a few of them inside several of her shoes, which he’d found in her closet.
Looking at how worn the soles were, he was able to pick the ones she seemed to wear the most. The flat discs were very small, and he tried to put them where she or anyone else wouldn’t notice them.
If she did find one, chances were slim she would know what it was.
Brody had also gotten friendlier with his new neighbor, not too close, or Ian would’ve killed him, but enough so he found ways to check on her before and after work.
Two days ago, he even invited her to join him for dinner on his patio and threw a couple of steaks on the grill for them.
They wanted her comfortable enough with the geek in case anything ever went wrong.
Athos had given them his handler’s number and a backup passphrase Angie was aware of if they had to bypass the DEA altogether.
If Brody knew that Ian had been watching the live footage of Angie walking around her house for the past three weeks, he would have laughed at what a stalker his boss was being.
The feed was being recorded on equipment in Trident’s war-room for security purposes, in case they needed to review it for any reason.
But Ian hadn’t been able to help himself from bringing up the feeds on his computer a few times a day just to see her.
None of the cameras were in her bathroom, and the cameras in her bedroom only faced the windows and door, thus giving her a small amount of privacy so he didn’t consider himself a stalker.
He was a voyeur—what the difference was, he wasn’t sure, but if someone asked, he was confident he could think of something.
With the file he needed in his hand, he was about to turn around and leave when movement outside one of the windows caught his eye, and he realized it was Angie on her patio.
Sighing and calling himself ten kinds of an idiot, he continued toward the sliding glass door, opened it, and stepped outside.
He took one look toward her backyard and almost swallowed his tongue.
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. She stood with her head down, dressed in a navy, wrap-around cotton dress that stopped an inch above her knees.
The V-neck, while conservative, showed some of her ample cleavage, which made him want to beg to see more.
Her legs looked amazing, and a pair of navy and white polka-dot heels brought her height up three inches to about five-foot-eleven.
He could imagine where the top of her head would come if she stood next to his six-foot-three frame.
Her blonde hair was down the way he liked it, and he longed to run his fingers through the gentle waves which gave the strands some volume.
Her makeup was subtle, and her jewelry was understated.
All combined, it was one tempting little package that made his mouth water.