Chapter Sixty-One
Miranda
What the hell did I just say?
Surely not that I wanted him to live with me.
Albeit temporarily.
I mean, that was insane.
I never lived with anyone. Not even my most serious boyfriend, back before I got my little empire going. I always needed my space. I valued my privacy. I didn’t want anything to alter my routines or invade the peace I found in the sanctuary that was my personal space.
“That can absolutely be arranged,” he told me before I could take the words back. Because I was absolutely going to take them back. Right? “I just need to take a trip back to Navesink Bank to pick up some of my things.”
“Can I go with you?” I asked, feeling my eyes turn to saucers as I realized what I’d just said. “I would like to meet your boss,” I added, trying to cover my tracks, trying to make it seem less like I was interested in Brock’s world.
“Yes, of course. Sawyer would love to meet you. Then I can just swing by my place, pack a few things, and we can be back here before the end of the night. Are you working late tomorrow night?”
Not if those were the plans.
And I was going to choose to not think about why I was going to leave work early, shirking important responsibilities, to go see the home of a man I barely knew, one I was going to allow to live with me.
Because if I thought about that too hard, I might come to the conclusion that I belonged in the psych ward I’d just been released from.
“No, actually,” I said, shaking my head, trying to be casual. “I underestimated just how capable Cam was. He got me a little ahead on a couple of little projects. So I don’t need to stay as late as usual while we are figuring some of these things out.”
“Great. It’s only about an hour and twenty minutes from here to there,” he told me.
“Sounds… is that the friend?” I asked when his phone started bleeping.
Putting down his food, he checked his texts.
“Just confirming what I have pretty much concluded myself,” he said. “There were no cops or ambulances dispatched here that night. But he did find that there was a call for a woman who’d attempted suicide several blocks away.”
“Where?” I asked, straightening, truly not believing I would have just… taken a walk with someone late at night when I knew I had food coming. Maybe I would have taken a car or a cab if I thought it was something serious. But not walk. At night. In leisurewear. Just because someone wanted me to.
“In an alley,” he told me, shaking his head.
“They found me in an alley?”
“Yes.”
“Someone took me to an alley, slit my wrist, and then left me there to die?” I asked, jaw–and therefore my tone—getting sharp.
“That’s what it sounds like,” he agreed, keeping calm to offset my escalating mood.
“Why the ever-loving hell would the cops, paramedics, or the doctors at the hospital believe that I would try to take my own life in a disgusting, garbage-ridden alley?”
“They might not have thought it was so weird. Most women who attempt or complete suicide, do so in places where they won’t leave a mess for loved ones to clean up. So the bathtub is popular. But so is their car. Or outside somewhere that wouldn’t taint anything of theirs.”
I got that.
I did.
“But an alley?” I pressed.
“Yeah, if they’d found you in a park or something, I might even say that, hey, you had a bad night.
But an alley is suspicious. But, keep in mind, that these people had no idea who you were.
For all they knew, you were homeless or looking for a fix or something like that.
You might be wealthy, but you’re not a celebrity.
They would have no reason to question the location you were found in. ”
“I guess that’s true,” I agreed, though it didn’t make the anger inside me feel any less hot and destructive.
Because somebody, likely someone who knew me, had left me to die in a trash-filled alley.
Treating me, in turn, as trash as well.
That burned more than it had any right to.
Mixed with that anger, though, was a deep sort of sadness.
I didn’t trust anyone as it was.
The idea that someone in my very tight circle could have done that to me…
“Hey, don’t let it get to you. What they did has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting,” I told him, reaching for my wine.
“I have to ask you this, and I understand if it is going to upset you, but I have to do it.”
“Okay,” I agreed, tensing.
“Could it have been Cam?” he asked.
“No way. You said it yourself. He tracked you down, came to you, and even tried to pay you for this job. That makes no sense if he’d done it.”
“Devils Advocate here,” he said, resting his arms on the table and leaning forward toward me, creating a little intimacy to try to make it easier for me to see his side.
“If he’d attempted it, if he’d failed, and he realized that when you got a text out to him on your smartwatch, would it not make the most sense for him to do everything he could to make it seem like it couldn’t possibly be him? ”
That was a perfectly sound argument.
But everything inside of me rebelled against it.
This was the guy who went shoe shopping with me, who tried to force me to go to the doctor when I didn’t want to, who’d helped me change my bloody gauze when I’d needed to have oral surgery done.
Yes, I paid him well.
But I would have paid him well even if he hadn’t done those things.
If he hated me enough to discard me like garbage, then why would he go above and beyond in all other areas?
“I see you trying to make it make sense,” Brock said, reaching out and placing a hand on my wrist. “But I need to remind you that people who’d do shit like this? They aren’t rational. What they’ve done or haven’t done won’t make any sort of sense.”
I was only half processing what he was saying.
What with his big hand on my wrist, and his thumb absentmindedly stroking, my system was trying to also process the surge of desire that bloomed within me.
“All I am saying is to really think about it. Go over it in your head. If after doing that, you conclude that it isn’t remotely possible, I’ll believe you. But you have to be objective.”
“Okay,” I agreed, nodding.
“And on safety standpoint, I have to ask.”
“God, what now?” I grumbled, yanking my hand away from him and resting it in my lap. I felt like my head was spinning. I needed to focus.
“Are you alone with Cam at any point during the day where something bad could happen?”
“No. I mean, we’re never really alone at work. And even the drive in, we have my driver. The only time we would have been alone would be if he came into the apartment.”
“But with me here, that’s not going to be a concern.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, glad to have a reason to have him around. On a rational, less hormone-driven level, anyway.
“That’s probably the crew,” Brock said when there was a buzz to my room.
After buzzing him up, I felt the need to turn and rush to put the food away, only to find that Brock had already done it.
“Brace yourself for Lennon,” Brock said as I reached for my glass of wine, taking another sip. “He can be a little intense.”
“Intense how?”
“Intense in the way that says he’s seen and heard all the crazy ass stories about shit that can happen in someone’s home if they don’t have it properly secured, so he is ultra-vigilant,” Brock explained.
“He’s going to have a fucking field day with the balcony,” he added, shaking his head as he smirked.
“It’s a penthouse balcony,” I reminded him. “There’s not even a fire escape.”
“I guarantee you, he will have a story to strike the fear of God into you about it.”
Lennon, like Brock, screamed ex-military from the moment I laid eyes on him.
He was a giant of a man with dark skin, legs the size of tree trunks, and the biggest arms I’d ever seen.
He had a handsome face, all square jaw and a stern brow.
Everything about him was serious, but there was a slight kindness behind his brown eyes as well.
“Lennon, this is Miranda. Miranda, Lennon.”
“Miss Coulter,” Lennon said, giving me a handshake so firm I felt like my bones were crushing.
That voice of his? So deep you could practically feel it reverberate through your chest when he spoke.
“We need to talk about that balcony,” he said, making my head swivel in Brock’s direction, seeing his self-satisfied smile.
“Brock mentioned you would think it was problematic. I can’t imagine why. It’s a penthouse balcony with no access to lower levels.”
“It is, ma’am,” he said, nodding. “That does not mean that it is impenetrable. I have seen on more than one occasion, people in climbing gear or using window cleaning equipment, penetrate penthouse balconies.”
“I really don’t think anyone who is out to get me is anywhere near that highly trained,” I insisted.
“Ma’am, I am here for your safety. And I do not feel comfortable with your balcony or the access it has to your apartment,” he told me.
“We can go over options to mitigate those dangers after my man here,” he said, waving to a guy who was loaded down with bags of equipment, “finishes setting up your cameras.”
“I thought you were exaggerating,” I told Brock as I moved in at his side while Lennon and his employee got to work, walking around my apartment, pointing to things with very grave faces.
My entire apartment, it seemed, was a logistical nightmare and a danger to me and everyone in it.
“If anything, I was underplaying it,” Brock said, smirking. “I thought maybe time would have chilled him out a bit. Seems only to have reaffirmed his belief that everyone was in danger from unseen forces plotting our downfall. Though, objectively, that is the case with you.”
“Yeah, but I really don’t think anyone I know could, like, parachute onto my balcony or something like that.”
“I’m kind of with you on that one. Though I have an issue with that balcony as well, just for a different reason.”
“What reason?” I asked, looking over at it.