14. Leo
14
LEO
I t’s a good thing Leo bought AirTags like gum. That’s how he’d found her at the diner those months ago. He’d stashed them all throughout her belongings (purses, tote bags, slippers, her car, he even slipped one on the rat’s collar). Tonight, it paid off.
What on earth was her problem?
“What?” Sage squeaked. “You can’t move in!”
“You have lost all Alone Privileges. Forever! You’re grounded, Love.”He wanted to pull over and grab her and—he didn’t know what. He wanted to scream at her for being an idiot and at the same time he wanted to wrap his arms around her and squeeze her tight just to know she was really there and everything was all right.
Which was totally normal and a professional thing to do. Probably.
(And now he was here wondering what it would be like to hug her, to hold her close. Would she resist? Would she melt into him, also overwhelmed by what had happened? Would he get a chance to brush that soft spot on her neck?)
He snapped out of his thoughts and back to the woman sitting next to him.
Goodness, he had been so scared.
The alarm blared around ten thirty and it wasn’t the normal chirp of a bird or squirrel crossing the camera. No. This was a full-on attempted break-in and Leo was out the door and careening down the road. He sent the automated message to the police department. (Sentinel Security Agency was pretty high up and part of his initial work when he came into town was to let the small-town officers know what was going on and set up a line of communication.)
Then he called Sage. A cold sweat rippled across his body when she didn’t answer. He tracked her phone. She was in the house. In the house with whatever monster was crawling through the window.
He had tried again. Nothing. Then again. Nothing.
A deep dread settled into his bones.
He’d dealt with missing Subjects before. He’d had some that had run off, some that had their lines of communication cut for whatever reason. Some threats created maddening chaos. But this? This was different. Leo was picturing Sage huddled in the bathroom, wielding a stupid plunger for protection. He even thought of the sad rat. Even it didn’t deserve to leave this world being scared.
The ten-minute drive only took him four and he barreled into the house, only fumbling with the key for half a second in his sweaty palm.
“Sage!” he bellowed. Nothing. Leo stormed out of the house, creeping around the corner, and found the cause of the blaring alarm. A kid, maybe a young adult, busy peeping into the ground-floor window around the back.
The shadow Leo cast over the Peeping Tom made the kid flinch and he tried to run away. It took Leo two steps to grab the intruder’s coat and haul him into the porch light.
“I’m sorry,” Sage whispered.
Her words brought him back to the present.
“What you did was unacceptable. I cannot do my job unless you do yours. I am so angry I am shaking.” Not an exaggeration. Or maybe it was the drop of adrenaline. He turned off the car, the light of the small police station illuminating Sage’s wide-eyed stare. “We are going to go in there where they will explain how a teenager managed to track down your address and wanted to meet up with you for a little chat. I don’t think it was malicious. It was just creepy as hell and should serve as a huge warning to you that your creepy little mansion doesn’t actually keep out the creeps.”
Sage swallowed hard. “Do you know what he wanted?”
Leo shrugged. “He told the cops he just wanted to chat about starting up as a streamer or some crap like that.”
Sage nodded. “But how did he find me?”
“I don’t know. Probably because you blast your whole life online. Wouldn’t be that hard.” He slammed the door and waited for her to get out and led her inside the station.
The cop’s rendition of the story made Sage blink in surprise despite the cop leaving out the fact that Leo had been the one to wrestle the kid into submission, not that it was hard, it just took one hard stare from Leo for the kid to wait on the porch step. Still, the cops should have mentioned that Leo was the one to detain him.
Sage opted not to press charges in exchange for the kid having to do community service. Leo wanted to be mad, but all things considered, it made sense. The teenager was creepy and weird in a hyper-fixated sort of way and Sage had partially begged Leo to let her avoid making public charges.
“Lily will ruin this boy’s life.”
“It’s a man, albeit a small one, and it won’t ruin his life.” But Leo couldn’t be sure of that.
“Lily will make it a big deal. Please don’t tell her.”
“I work for her. Not you. And you are in no position to ask me favors right now.”
Sage nodded. “I know. I’m so sorry. I’ll never do that again. I promise. Let’s just get this taken care of quietly for everyone involved. Please.”
The please sounded genuine. And to be fair, Lily annoyed him. And it was getting close to midnight. And he was tired. The adrenaline spike and subsequent crash were getting to him. So, he conceded.
It took them twenty minutes of driving in absolute silence before they pulled up to Sage’s haunted mansion. Seriously, why did it look so…ominous? During daylight hours the home boasted of character and proud craftsmanship that could never be replicated in today’s modern architecture. Why in the darkness did it look like it had eyes and the porch was going to swallow them whole?
Probably because it was. The place needed some serious updates.
They plodded inside (and did not get eaten by the decaying steps) and once the door was firmly locked behind them, the pair engaged in a staring contest fit for the Guinness Book of World Records. (Fun fact: the longest staring contest was 40 minutes and 59 seconds.)
It was finally Sage who broke the silence. “I’ll have to get a spare room ready?—”
“Don’t bother.” Leo walked over to the plush couch and made himself at home. “We’ll take care of it tomorrow. Right now, I feel like I could fall asleep on my feet.”
“Leo, I?—”
He held up a hand. “Just. Stop. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Go to your room.”
And for once she listened. He lay across the couch, trying to find sleep.
Wait, had she finally said his name?
T he first thing Leo was met with the next morning (other than the labored breathing of the rat dog on the couch opposite of him) was the smell of coffee. The elixir of life was enough to rouse him out of the plushy couch. Seriously, the pillows and blankets were threatening to suffocate him and he vowed never to tell Sage how falling asleep on a mountain of impractical blankets gave him the best sleep of his life.
“You’re up.” Sage walked over to the couch, handing him a cup of coffee before sitting next to the rat.
“Thank you.” Leo sipped the coffee. It tasted like dirt. He spit it out.
Sage raised her eyebrows. “I promise the gesture was meant to be a peace offering.”
“Really? Looks like you are trying to poison me.” Coffee grounds stuck to his tongue.
“I’ve never actually made coffee.”
No kidding. “I’ll show you. Seems like an important thing to know how to do—roomie.”
She grimaced. Good. He was ready to torture her a bit. He was still not over her little escape last night.
“Roomie,” she repeated. “Well, you are in the minority with us ladies ruling the roost.” She patted the rat-dog’s head. “So, let’s go over the rules.”
Leo sat up and almost took another sip of the poison. He set it on the coffee table gently, as if it may explode in his face if he were too rough with it. “Yes. Let’s chat about some rules.” He stood and walked to the kitchen, reheating the kettle on the stove, ready to make himself an actual pour-over. Then he saw the true abomination. The horror. The living nightmare he walked into.
“You used my pour-over without a filter?”
“A filter?” Sage joined him in the kitchen and hopped up on the counter to watch him. She gripped her mug of tea and took a sip. “I didn’t know you needed one of those. ”
“Clearly. And I am not in the mood for an internal cleanse with these coffee grounds.”
Realization hit her. “Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. So how did you find me?”
Leo made coffee (without the solid bits).
“Magic.” Leo was not ready to admit that he had dropped AirTags around the house like candy at a parade. Luckily, she had brought a bag that he had slipped an AirTag into. Once he realized that Sage was not in the house after the attempted break in, he pulled out his app and scoured the fifty-plus (not an exaggeration) AirTags and found an outlier. At a bar. The rest was history.
“I don’t believe in magic,” Sage said.
“Can’t reveal my secrets in case you decide to be a flight risk again.”
“I won’t,” Sage said. “Look. Let’s go over some ground rules now.”
“Good. Rule one: don’t be a complete idiot.”
Then Sage droned on about how he’d have his own bathroom and not leave messes in the kitchen because of ants and if he wanted a fire to open the floo and a bunch of other nonsense. He quit listening when he got distracted by a coffee ground stuck in his tooth. He needed his toothbrush. And clothes. Really, he needed to grab all his things from Tess’s house.
“Are we agreeing?” Sage asked, ending her monologue about…something.
“Until something needs to change,” Leo said, avoiding actually agreeing with anything. “Now get dressed, we have errands to run.”
“I am dressed. ”
Sage wore a pair of leggings and a long shirt that nearly went to her knees. And of course, it had an obnoxious purple tie-dye print on it with another familiar print of the rat-dog wearing a flower crown. Must be part of her branding. Which was ridiculous.
“You’re a walking fashion faux pas.”
“I would love for you to define faux pas.”
Leo didn’t dignify that with a response because he could not, in fact, define it and wasn’t even sure he could spell it correctly enough to Google it.
Sage accompanied him to his house and waited in the car while he gathered his belongings. Luckily Tess wasn’t there because he would have a tough time explaining why he came back at ten in the morning looking like he had a much better night than he actually did (with a girl who looked like she was wearing pajamas sitting in the passenger seat).
When he hopped back in his car (no he wasn’t rushing because he was afraid Tess was coming home…he was just a quick person) Sage said, “The condo looks like a hospital.”
He really couldn’t argue. It was bright white with harsh lines and looked so…clinical. Still, he couldn’t let her have any jab at him go by that easily. “At least the porch won’t eat you.”
“What?”
“Let’s just get back. I want a shower, roomie. You’ve got dinner duty tonight. ”
I t turns out that Leo would be taking over most of the dinner duties, which was fine. He didn’t exactly feel like testing his stomach’s resolve. He didn’t expect it would fare well against an obscene amount of slightly charred pizza bites (apparently Sage thought she’d cook them the fancy way instead of in the microwave) and a pre-made salad with dressing that tasted mostly of syrup.
But cooking was a sword he’d fall on. He actually rather liked it. There was a quality about it that made cooking feel like a true escape. Maybe it was the giant windows pointing out to the yard or maybe it was just the ample counter space.
And so, another week passed in relative peace. Sage, for the last week, pretty much lived in her office, even falling asleep in there between streams and other projects. She occasionally came downstairs to flap the umbrella around while she let the rat do its business in the yard.
But Leo also discovered that she came down if he made something that smelled particularly delicious. And no, that’s not why he was cooking every single night. He just liked cooking…though he had to admit that was a recent development but what else was he supposed to do while cooped up in this house? Fix the porch? He'd ordered the lumber already. Repair the sticky bathroom door? Done. Run twelve miles a day? Pretty much did that, sometimes more. Bury his nose in his computer and updating and perfecting the cameras and software Sentinel Security used remotely? Every single day.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he did need a hobby. Something to learn. Something to improve his mind. He could practically hear her shrill voice whispering in his ear, “Hobbies are supposed to be relaxing. Something you’re allowed to be bad at and do for fun.”
The thought of her whispering in his ears gave him the tingles and he decided to run a half marathon as a distraction.
Cooking was the only thing that really seemed to entice Sage out of her little cave and Leo had to admit that it was nice taking care of his Subject (what? It was in the job description) and he had to admit he was starved for conversation.
Today’s dinner menu consisted of seared pork chops and roasted broccoli and, right on schedule, Sage closed down her stream with her signature, “Thanks, everyone! I'll see you tomorrow, go pet a puppy!” (Yes, he had her stream playing in the background. He needed to keep tabs on her.) Moments later she was casually walking down the stairs in her simple black t-shirt (only a small print of the rat on it in the corner pocket) and grabbed the umbrella, squawking as she walked out the back door, flapping the rainbow material around so her dog could “pee in peace” which seemed totally backward considering the song and dance Sage performed.
Once inside Sage commented on how good “something smells” which was her line to try and act casual, like she just happened to be down here and so she “may as well have a bite to eat.” Leo could see right through it. And he didn’t mind one bit.
“Made you a plate,” he said, sliding it to her usual spot at the counter. Sure, there was a formal dining room down the hall with a big oak table, but it was covered in old vases and art. Sitting on the barstools at the counter felt better for both of them. Less formal. They could both tell themselves this was just a happenstance occurrence and not a routine they’d cultivated over the last two weeks of forced cohabitation.
“This is good,” Sage said. “When’d you learn to cook?”
“The barracks actually,” Leo said. “I had a little kitchenette and after a bout of food poisoning, I was skeptical of the mess hall. After the second time, I was sure there was something off about the food. Third time I never went back. I am a proud student of YouTube University.”
Sage laughed. “I say you graduated with honors. I too, am a student of YouTube. I learned how to change out the graphics card because of a video. It mostly worked. I think I am more of a B Student and actually not that great with the guts of the computer.”
Leo cocked his head. “I can fix that pretty easily, you know. PCs are kind of like Legos in the way they are built.”
“You know computers?”
Leo snorted. “I am pretty much the IT guy for the agency. As much as I love lounging around here with your rat all day,” Sage pointed a butter knife at him but he was undeterred, “I actually do a lot of work for the company remotely. Mostly tracing hacks, fixing tech issues, you know the drill.”
Sage glanced at his computer which still had her stream up despite it already ending. “That part of the duties?”
Leo stabbed at his plate. “As much as I love listening to white noise, which your voice has become pretty close to, still a little shrill and squeaky, I actually have a filter on, monitoring the comments, seeing if there are any red flags I need to chase down.”
“Sure,” Sage said, chewing and looking around. “Why do I smell eggs?”
Leo made a show of looking at his watch. “That would be the quiche. Needs another ten minutes.”
“Quiche? A weird thing to have for dessert.”
“That would be for breakfast. The more your mouth is full, the less talking you do.”
“You know, there is a mute button on that fancy computer of yours.”
“But alas, not for real life.”
Sage rolled her eyes. “So, catch any baddies waving red flags?”
“You have quite the eclectic mix in the chat, that’s for sure.”
Sage just shrugged. “It pays the bills.”
“You keep saying that. Do you actually like pandering to these people?”
Sage bit her lip. He touched a nerve. “I don’t pander to anyone. I actually like streaming and chatting. I get to have fun and get paid for it. But sometimes the weirdos come in, and sometimes people I don’t really like join the group. There’s not much I can do about it.”
“Doesn’t it get to you?”
“No.” She looked down at her broccoli.
It was a lie. He didn’t push it.
They finished eating in relative silence. Sage did the dishes while Leo ignored his mother’s phone call and checked the cameras. He chased down a few leads, getting absorbed into the world of IP addresses and locations (which he had to admit was fascinating).
They mumbled goodnight to each other despite it only being eight and Sage went to her office where she streamed a cozy game because “she couldn’t sleep” and Leo watched the stream from his bedroom downstairs, where he also couldn’t sleep.