Chapter 3 Annie #2
I shake my head. “My dad requested a second opinion from some other doctor, and he did talk to a lawyer after the funeral, but everyone told us it was a rare but unfortunate error. Not really a misdiagnosis. Just…” I shrug.
“Weird shit happens to our bodies sometimes. There was no failure on the part of the doctors, no failure to provide a standard of care. Every doctor Dad talked to told him that if Mom had just complained or gone back… But she’d lain in bed and tried to tough it out.
Without her going back, there was no way that anyone could have known how bad it was until it was too late.
Not that it was her fault, of course. But no.
There was no lawsuit. It was just a horrible tragedy that left my dad a single dad and me… ”
“Motherless,” Josh fills in.
I look up at him and am surprised at the warmth and understanding in his face.
“Yeah,” I say. “Motherless. After a couple of years of grieving, Dad went to law school at night. I think he wanted to go into personal injury or litigation or something, but he ended up with a really boring, stable job. He does real estate closings. He earns a decent living, but we’re nothing special.
We don’t have anything more than the average person.
Regular house, regular cars. No secret stash of money in a trust fund. ”
That leads me back to the whole reason I’m here. I literally can’t imagine who would think I took anything away from them.
“I’m totally at a loss about what these notes mean.”
Josh gets up from the desk and starts pacing the length of the office. His black jeans make little swishing sounds, his thick thighs moving with the perfectly molded fabric. That denim has been well broken-in, revealing a strong body underneath the professional demeanor.
“Well, somebody thinks you do. They may have been working up their courage with the first few notes. Maybe testing you out to see if you’d go to the police or campus security.
” He stops in his tracks and faces me. “Annie,” he says, his deep voice skating along my nerve endings.
I could fall into a seductive trance listening to that voice if I didn’t have stomach-twisting worries on my mind at the moment.
“I need to ask you something, and I need you to be completely honest with me.”
I square my shoulders and nod. “What is it?”
He sighs and scrubs a hand through the long layers of his hair.
“This may seem like I’m being insensitive, but I’m looking for motive.
If you didn’t take a position from someone, if you don’t think it’s related to money in some way, and you say you’re single—” he squints at me, as if he can read the truth of my heart with one stare “—do you have any deep, dark secrets? Shit even your father doesn’t know about? ”
“I mean… Maybe?” I nervously pick at what’s left of the polish covering my left thumb. “If there’s anything, there’s just one,” I admit. “But I’m sure it has nothing to do with this. Seriously nothing.”
He crosses his arms and arches a brow at me. The muscles in his beautifully inked biceps tighten, and he shakes his head. “I can’t help you if I don’t know all the facts. The whole truth,” he demands. “I need to know everything about you, Annie. Even the things you’re afraid to admit to yourself.”
I sink back in the chair. I’m not proud of what I have to tell him, but it happened.
And I suppose, no matter how irrelevant it is to what’s going on with these notes, it can’t hurt to tell him.
“You have to promise you’ll never tell my father,” I say, biting my lower lip.
“Dad doesn’t know. And I don’t want him to, okay? ”
Josh gives me a look like I’ve asked him to pinkie swear to something, but he eventually nods. “I’ll keep everything you tell me in confidence,” he says. “Unless I think it might compromise your safety, Annie. Then, all bets are off.”
I nod, relieved because there’s no way this secret has anything to do with these notes. This secret, as embarrassing and weird as it may be, will stay between us, I’m sure.
“It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme,” I admit.
“But after I found out I was going to grad school, Dad threw a little office party for me. A going-away thing with cake and pizza. You know, no big deal. My dad’s bookkeeper came, the new receptionist who they hired to replace me, and his law partner. ”
When I say law partner, it’s like something in Josh’s body language changes. He narrows his eyes and nods. “Did someone do something, Annie? Something inappropriate?”
I shake my head so abruptly that my braid flies onto my shoulder.
Josh looks like a pot about to boil over. I imagine in his line of work he sees the worst in people, but this isn’t like that. It’s just a little awkward.
“So, what happened?” Josh presses.
I nod. “After the little office party, Mr. Engler cornered me at my desk and asked me if he could take me to dinner. I wasn’t sure how he meant it, like, as a date or something.
He’s my dad’s partner and was my boss. He was always kind, and nothing ever felt weird until that moment. I said yes, but…”
All of a sudden, I feel super embarrassed admitting this to the strangely hot PI guy.
“I ghosted him. Didn’t show. Didn’t text. Nothing. I just couldn’t. It felt too weird.”
To my surprise, Josh looks really relieved. “So, what then? Did he start harassing you or anything?”
I shake my head. “He never said a thing about it. He never called me that night, didn’t text me. He sent me an email a day or two after I blew him off.”
“What did that email say?” Josh asks. “Do you still have it?”
I nod. “He said if I ever change my mind about grad school, he’d happily talk to my dad about giving me a bump in pay to stay at the law firm.
He said I’ve been a bright spot and an exceptional employee, and he would love to see me pursue my dreams, but a practical career in the law would always be waiting for me. ”
Josh is quiet, but his shoulders seem to relax a bit. “Okay,” he muses, squinting a little as he thinks. “So, no bad feelings with Dad’s law partner. Do you think that dinner was supposed to be a date in his mind? Is there a chance he wanted to take you to dinner to ask you to stay at the firm?”
“I don’t know.” I sigh. “Maybe I should have gone to the dinner after all. Then I would know either way and I wouldn’t feel like I did something wrong.”
He drops his pen and shakes his head. “You did nothing wrong,” he says forcefully.
“Listen, Annie. I’ve seen people do a lot of shit to one another.
Nasty, horrible, dangerous shit. Even to people they’ve known forever.
Even to people they love. Always listen to your gut, and never, ever apologize for trusting your instincts. ”
“How can you do it?” I ask quietly. “With everything you see in people every day, how can you ever trust anyone?”
Josh rakes a hand through his hair, but then he meets my eyes when he answers. “You have to,” he tells me. “Sometimes you get hurt. People will let you down. But if you never give people a chance and let them in, life is incredibly lonely.”
I wonder if he’s telling me this because he has been lonely.
I could see the other PI’s that I met with today being that way.
Hardened, closed off to love and even friendship.
I don’t want that in my life. I don’t want to be afraid to walk into my studio for fear of what somebody might want to do to me.
I lean forward on the desk and clasp my hands in front of me.
“Whatever this is,” I say, “can you help me, Josh? I don’t have a ton of money, but I was thinking maybe if I hired you for security services, you could walk me to and from my studio for a few days.
Maybe seeing someone—” I look his large, muscular frame up and down “—like you around will discourage whoever this is from bothering me.”
Josh is quiet for a moment, tapping the end of the pen against his lips. “Security?” he asks. “You want to hire me like a bodyguard?”
I nod. “When I heard what the other PI’s charge, I knew I probably couldn’t afford a whole investigation. I’m not sure it even matters what this is about, as long as it stops. I Googled private security, and your listing came up. I thought I’d look into that as an option.”
Something in Josh’s shoulders shifts when I bring up his rates. “Yeah,” he sighs. “Most of us take a retainer to start. We add on expenses, if there are any. Mileage or gas, stuff like that.”
He asks a few questions, like where I go to school, and he calculates the distance between his office and campus. Then he asks about my budget and whether my father knows anything about what’s going on.
“I really don’t want to go to my father,” I admit. “He’s paying for school, which is a huge, huge gift. If he finds out anything weird is going on, he’ll pull me out, and all that tuition will go to waste.”
“Annie…” Josh shakes his head. “If this escalates, for your own safety, you may need to go to your father. Hell, you may need to go to the police. I recommend you go now, just to get a report on file. There hasn’t been a demand for money or any other coercion yet, so there’s not much the cops can do.
It’s not clear if you’re being stalked, if someone’s trying to extort money from you… ”
The more he talks, the more a sense of uncomfortable foreboding settles over my entire body like a heavy blanket.
I stand from the chair and pace the lobby, the heavy panic deciding to settle in my chest. I’ve got to move, got to shake these feelings off before they sink me. “Who the heck would stalk me? I barely know anyone on campus yet. I mean, I hardly have any friends. How could I have enemies?”
Josh stands too, and while he doesn’t approach me, he does look me straight in the eye.
“Annie, you’re beautiful. You never know who might notice you and get weird-ass ideas in their head.
Stalking doesn’t have to be about someone knowing you.
It could be anyone who thinks they know you or someone who wants to know you.
” He crosses his arms over his chest and looks at me harshly.
“I’ll take your case,” he says abruptly, then turns and walks into his office.
“Wait…what?” We haven’t even talked about money or how I’m going to pay him.
He returns a moment later with his laptop. “I’m going to take some basic personal information,” he tells me, opening the lid and tapping the keys. “I won’t charge a retainer, and I’ll work by the hour. Can you afford this?”
He turns the screen to face outward, so I go back to the desk and bend over to read the client service agreement. I scan the fields he’s filled in, and my mouth drops open when I see his hourly rate.
“Is that what you charge?” I ask. “That can’t be right.”
He points a long finger farther down the page to another paragraph. “I’m going to limit my initial investigation to ten hours. If I can’t get your answers in that amount of time, we’ll revisit this rate. Fair?”
I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I gave up my apartment to move in to the much cheaper dorms. I paid my room and board out of my savings, and now that I’m not working at all, what’s left in my account has to cover everything.
I was only a receptionist when I worked for my dad, so it’s not like I was making big bucks and was able to save up a ton of cash.
But the rate Josh is charging me is something I can easily afford.
But it’s far too little, in my opinion. And I’m not sure why he’s cut me a deal like this. Unless…
No. He’s not given me any creepy vibes at all. He’s been nothing but warm and professional. And still, I have to ask the question.
“Why?” I search the contours of his face for answers. For secrets. Is he a wolf in sheep’s clothing and I’m about to open the door and let him in? “Why would you do this for me?”
He sniffs and then waves at me as if to dismiss the question. “I’m between corporate gigs,” he says simply. “I have some extra time at the moment. I’d rather take a pay cut and have some work to tide me over. But there are a few conditions you’ll have to follow.”
Here it comes. The strings attached to his too-good-to-be-true offer. I haven’t signed anything yet. I am, after all, the daughter of a lawyer. Now it’s my turn to cross my arms and consider his conditions.
“What are they?” I ask, looking over at the notes spread on his desk. If I don’t like what he says, I’ll take the notes and my backpack and just leave. It’s that simple. I may be in some kind of danger, but I’m not powerless.
“You tell me everything that happens as it happens,” he says.
“Nothing is too big or too small. You take this seriously, Annie. What I mean is, don’t tolerate anything.
Don’t sit there and take it, Annie. You deserve to feel safe on campus, out in the world.
You speak up. No matter what it is, you tell me.
If I’m not there, you yell. You tell somebody to fuck off if they even look at you funny.
You hear me? You deserve better than this bullshit, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.
But I can’t put a stop to it if I don’t know what’s hurting you. Are we clear?”
Tears sting my eyes, and I nod.
Josh may look like a big, bad wolf, but I have a feeling I may have just met my knight in shining armor.