Chapter 36
FITZ
“And this is why you can’t just come in and start telling my employees what to do.” Crawford sounds annoyed.
I need him to be as furious as I am. “Winnie was about to have sex with him,” I snarl.
“I mean, you set up a situation where your girlfriend is used to strange men in masks coming into her house and sleeping with her, and now you’re upset that your negligence caused a strange man to break into her house to have sex with her.” He sounds bored.
I’m enraged. “Are you blaming me?”
“Ah, he is smart after all.”
“Well, fix it.” I order him. “I’m taking Winnie back to my place.”
“Um, no you’re not.”
“Yes,” I yell into the phone, “I am.”
“I need her there for bait.”
“She’s not bait. She’s my—love of my life, obsession, my prize—she’s my girlfriend. You’re not putting her in danger.”
“You’re the one who put her in danger. Look, relax,” Crawford drawls. “We’ll have her monitored at all times. It’s not like someone’s going to kidnap her.”
“It’s okay,” Winnie says, resting a hand on my arm. She’s still in the ripped shirt, holding the pieces around her.
I lean forward, rest my forehead against hers.
“I have a meeting with Loony Laura in the morning anyways. I can’t be locked up in your penthouse for the next month while you tear the city apart.”
I lean in and kiss the rise of her breast. “Scream if you need me.” I leave out the front door.
Hopefully, the guy is watching.
I look around.
I don’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean he’s not out there.
“I’m going to fucking find you. Then I’m going to kill you.”
Fidget sighs next to me.
“Some guard dog you are. I’m not buying you any more hamburgers if you can’t keep an eye on things.”
I wait around a few streets over for Crawford to show up.
“I swear, for someone who has enough money to solve world hunger, you sure do have a lot of personal problems.”
“Just find him.”
“I will. But you need to go home. He needs to see you leave. He might even be tailing you or could have a tracker on that car.”
“I’ll go buy a new one.”
Fitz: Any news?
Fitz: What about now?
Fitz: Crawford, are you ignoring me?
Faulkner: Crawford says that I can burn down your house if you don’t stop texting him.
I pace in my penthouse until sunrise.
Crawford wants Winnie to be near the windows in case it entices the stalker out into the open.
And he doesn’t want me there in case the creep has a telescope and is watching her text messages.
And yes, I do appreciate the irony of the situation.
But I’m rich and hot, and Winnie likes me.
Both the billionaire and the alter ego.
It’s late morning, and Winnie’s at the café.
I take a motorcycle to her neighborhood.
Crawford sighs. “I told you not to—”
“No one saw me. I went to McCarthy’s and stole his bike. I came here from a complete opposite direction.” I take off the helmet. “Did we get anything?”
“Not yet.” He waits a beat. “And if you’re going to ask me every five minutes, I’m going to shoot you.”
Faulkner, who’s been bribed to take Fidget, is texting me photos of her in Salinger’s office at his desk, eating his lunch that Mandy made him then being chased out of his office.
I text him back.
Fitz: That’s a very unattractive photo of Salinger.
Faulkner: Yeah, that vein in his forehead is rough.
“Incoming,” the radio crackles.
It’s just Winnie.
Her car rolls down the street.
I sigh.
Watch her get out.
Go back to my phone and start deciding which of my basketball players I’m shipping to the East Coast since they lost their last game. I delete the pleading messages from the GMs to leave things alone.
I don’t like her alone by herself. Hopefully, this will draw the guy out. I stare at her house.
Wait. “She’s undressing in front of the window.”
“Just a little peep show,” Crawford is saying into the comm.
I punch my brother in the arm.
“Ow.”
“Don’t look.”
“God, you’re still a territorial little shit. You would always get pissed when someone dared to touch whatever garbage you had scrounged up.”
“No one touches my stuff.”
“Bait has to be enticing.”
I scowl.
“Okay, I didn’t tell her to take off her bra,” he tells me.
She has her back to the window.
I watch the bra slide off.
My eyes trace the hourglass of her waist.
“You know what I think,” Crawford drawls as I fume. “I think she knows you’re watching, and she’s fucking with you.” He smirks. “Heh. I like her.”
“You don’t get to like her.”
“You seriously need therapy or a real job or something.”
The sun drops low in the sky and sets.
“Nothing happens.”
Crawford ignored me.
“More nothing happens...”
“If you keep saying that—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll shoot me, push me off the roof, pull out my toenails.”
“Shut up.”
We see it—movement.
A man creeping along the bushes.
I can’t make out his face.
He’s wearing a black balaclava.
He tests the side window.
Crawford had Winnie leave the window half cracked like it was a mistake.
He said the front door would be suspicious.
It’s him.
Crawford makes a military hand gesture.
I need to shut up.
The man struggles then manages to jump through the open window into the house.
“Move out,” Crawford says in a low voice into the comm system.
Thirty ex-Marines swarm the house.
The guy’s in the laundry room, pawing through Winnie’s clothes.
He screams when he sees the guns pointed at him.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” he begs as they throw him on the ground.
“Put your hands up! Put your goddamn hands up!”
“Winnie.” I grab her before she can run into the mayhem. “I need to get you out of here.”
“I need to see who it is!”
“Winnie!”
She slaps my hands away and grabs the mask off the intruder.
“Logan?”
“It’s me again. Hi. Oof—” He grunts when I kick him.
Crawford has to hold me back before I curb stomp the shit out of the little worm.
“Don’t be mad! I needed some of your panties.”
“You needed my—are you fucking kidding me?” She slaps him.
He starts crying.
“You were leaving crazy notes in my house. You threatened my dog.”
“I had to! You ruined my life!” he screams. “We were supposed to date, then you left me for a high-value man who’s going to break your heart. He’s not going to treat you right.”
“Dude, you live with your mom, which, you know, no judgment—it’s rough out there—but you’re unemployed, and you’re stealing my underwear.”
“I was selling them online. And your socks,” he adds. “I needed the money.”
“You did it?” Crawford sounds suspicious as the neighbor’s son cries noisily on the pavement.
“Please don’t tell my mom. She already found out I lied to her about having a job.”
“Just take him to my mountain lodge. I made a horrible mistake and bought a mini pig. Now it’s eight hundred pounds and always hungry.”
“We’re taking him to the police station.”
“I plead the Fifth!” Logan shrieks.
“Sure, buddy. I have your confession on camera.”
I take the broom from Winnie and finish sweeping up the spilled laundry beads. Then I open up a bottle of wine.
“Red? White?” I ask her.
“Is the white cold?”
“Perfectly chilled.” I uncork the bottle. “You want some charcuterie?”
“Always.”
It’s so simple, the domestic bliss.
Winnie hums along softly to the music on the record player.
I lean in and kiss the top of her hair. “I just told the hotel manager to keep your houseguests for another night.”
“Good.” She snuggles into the blankets and pulls me down for another kiss. “Now I finally get you all to myself.”
“In your lair,” I joke.
“Yes, mine’s better than yours. I have cheese and bread.”
I feed her a slice of soft cheese on a cracker.
“Yum, this is good.”
“Made from sheep I bought. Was going to knit things. I don’t know why—it’s not like I have the attention span for it.”
I feed her another cracker.
“I think the sheep started making milk so that I didn’t ship them back to Australia. They are kind of cute, though. And I’m going to take Fidget out there, see if we can’t get her moving a little bit.”
“My border collie will finally herd sheep. We should order pizza to celebrate. It’s like all my problems are solved.”
“Yep. The end.”
“The end, huh?” Winnie wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me noisily.
“The—” Kiss. “End!” Kiss. She tastes sweet like the wine.
“You need a refresher already?”
“It’s been a stressful week.”
When I close the wine fridge, though, a scrap of paper flutters.
I pick it up.
You can’t escape me that easily. You’re going to bend over for me.
“Fitz?”
“Did Fidget take the Pinot,” I ask as an excuse, “that I put in here?”
“I bet my mom took it. Or the troll.”
“Tell me.” I amble over with a bottle. “Did you ever call her that to her face?”
The note must be old. I don’t want to upset Winnie.
She spears an olive. “Only in her vicinity. Accidentally.”
I lie down on the soft nest of blankets. “I bet that turned into a nuclear war.”
I let her run her fingers through my hair.
Try to tell myself that everything’s fine.