Chapter 5
Peyton
I lay awake the next morning, wondering if anything I’d said at the hospital last night had put me in danger.
Eventually, I decided the answer was no.
I hadn’t shown my fake ID to either the hospital or the police.
The paperwork I’d filled out had been under a different name, and the police hadn’t filed a report, so there was no record of Peyton Smith for anyone to find.
It had taken me forever to get to sleep last night. I could try to blame it on the adrenaline from the attack, or the headache it had caused, but I would only be lying to myself.
The cause had been simpler—Zane March, the current bane of my existence.
Why couldn’t Hawk Security have sent some smelly, overweight, ex-cop with bad breath to help guard Grace? Instead, the universe was testing my resolve around my rules by bringing March into my life.
I found him attractive. Hell, any woman with a pulse would. He was also a good man—that I could tell. I was drawn to him like a moth to the flame. Yet I knew if I gave in to temptation, I’d reap the same fate as the moth.
I heard the sound of March coming out of the guest room and moving down the hall. It would be creepy to come out of my room at the same time, as if I’d waited to ambush him. How long should I give him? A few minutes at least, I decided, so I rolled over and reached for my phone.
The soreness in my shoulder told me it would take a few days to bounce back from being thrown into that wall.
I scrolled to the encrypted messaging app I used to communicate with Rhonda, the one friend from my past life I kept in touch with. And even she didn’t know my current name. A message had arrived from her last night.
Before decoding the new message, I reread our short exchange from weeks ago during the insane attacks on my boss, Grace.
RHONDA: That sounds way too dangerous. You could get caught up in the violence. What if they put a bomb in the building? You should get another job IMMEDIATELY.
ME: My boss is great, the people are nice, and it’s over now. Don’t worry about me. All is good here and back to normal.
For Rhonda’s sake, I’d fibbed. She was a wonderful friend, but delicate. The attacks hadn’t been over when I wrote that, but she was freaking out, and I’d needed her to calm down.
I tapped the button to decode the latest message and swallowed hard, reading it.
RHONDA: Hope you are safe. It looked like the shooting was scary. Maybe you should change jobs. Maybe there’s a way you could help the investigation without coming back. What if I talked to them for you and they sent photographs of suspects to look at? What do you think?
I typed out my reply and reread it.
ME: Don’t contact the cops about any of this. That would put me in danger. I have to stay hidden for now.
RHONDA: Are you safe?
ME: For now.
That she would even suggest such a thing made my mouth go dry.
Any contact with the police could leave a trail to me for the killer to follow.
The task force in the Boston PD had known I’d gone to Atlanta.
The chance that one of them had been the leak wasn’t high, but any chance was too high to tolerate.
I’d seen his face, and those eyes, but I didn’t know him. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t tell anyone who he was.
Zane
When I woke to the early morning light, I sat up and checked the room. A long, relieved breath escaped me. The comforter hadn’t been dislodged. The sheets were still tucked in. Nothing was damaged.
Maybe the meditation had cured me. Nothing kept a SEAL down. Not only did my tattoo proclaim it, but I knew it as truth.
After using the bathroom, I checked the hallway.
Peyton was still asleep, judging by the lack of lights or noise.
After slipping into my spare cargo shorts, I headed downstairs. I had to open four cabinets to find the boxes of coffee and a French press. No simple percolator or coffee machine in sight. Personally, I was into the machine that took pods and was quick.
In addition, none of the boxes were my standard Starbucks. All of them had fu-fu names I didn’t recognize. Since I drank my coffee black, I chose the box labeled Black Ivory, an illogical name if you asked me, but what the hell?
After heating water in the microwave, I soon had a steaming-hot French press full of coffee.
“I have to get the paper.” Peyton’s melodic voice sounded from behind me.
Turning, I found her in tight blue leggings and the same color sports bra. Did I notice how delectable she looked? Any man with functioning eyeballs would.
I hadn’t heard her come down the stairs, but that was probably because she was barefoot.
She backed toward the door.
I crooked my finger at her. “Not so fast. How do you feel this morning?”
“Fine, Dr. March.” Sarcasm laced her voice.
The cut on her wrist was red. “Let me see that hand.”
“It happened when they tore the watch off me,” she explained as she held it out.
I turned it over. “Where’s the watch now?”
She nodded. “The counter behind you.”
Her wrist wasn’t as bad as I’d thought, just an irritated and rather deep scratch. “I’ll get it fixed.”
“You don’t need to do that. It’s fake.”
I added my other hand to her injured one and captured her eyes. “I said I’ll get it fixed for you.”
She huffed, but corralled her opposition.
“It’s time to test you again.”
She let out a long sigh. “Do I have to?”
“Yes. Morning, noon, and night. I’m supposed to note if anything is changing for the worse over time.”
She wasn’t happy about it, but came closer.
“Have you farted yet this morning?”
She laughed, a real belly laugh. “That’s not one of the tests.”
It was great to see her smile for a moment after all she’d been through. “You weren’t paying attention at the hospital, so how would you know?”
“I know because I’m a—” She stopped short.
After a few seconds of silence, I gave up on getting more of her backstory. “Have you farted yet? It speaks to gut motility.”
“No, but I haven’t eaten anything. How about when I feel the urge, I come over to your desk so you can verify it?”
I made a show of fake writing her response on my palm. “No farts.” I looked up. “I’d be better able to verify your first post-concussion fart if you sat in my lap. You know, you’d be closer.”
She put her hands on her hips defiantly. “I’d rather sit on a porcupine.”
I wrote on my palm again. “Shows signs of mental deterioration.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Fine. If you’re ready for the boring stuff, place one foot in front of the other. You know the drill.”
She completed that and the backwards alphabet perfectly. “Can I get my paper now?”
“I’ll go with you.” I followed her. Was it because I couldn’t resist watching that ass of hers? A little. Okay, more than a little.
“No need. The most dangerous thing around here is Mrs. Peterson tripping you while walking her pug on one of those extendo-leashes, and she doesn’t go out this early.”
“I’m responsible for you, remember? What would happen to my reputation if some dog walker tripped you, and you hit your head and had to go to the hospital again, and the second CT came out bad, and they had to operate, and that evil Dr. Holland found out, and—”
She put up a hand. “It’s no big deal. I’m just picking up the paper before the kids steal it.”
“You get a physical paper?”
“The Hartfords do. They’re the owners here, and they told me it’s a matter of pride that they’ve been continuous subscribers for four decades, so they didn’t stop it.”
She turned, and yes, I followed, deciding that her legs were as nice as her ass.
When she opened the building’s front door, a breeze blew in, and the sunlight lit up her flowing hair. In that moment, I decided on a nickname for her.
Neither of us had shoes on, and the concrete of the walkway was wet from the lawn sprinklers that had run overnight.
A dark-haired man with a thin mustache leaned against a car a dozen yards down the street with the newspaper open in front of him. He had longish hair in need of a wash, and a blue Dodgers jersey.
She stopped just outside. “Since it’s cold and you don’t have a shirt on, you can wait here. I wouldn’t want my neighbors to get the wrong idea.”
“Angel, cold doesn’t bother me.” If you had a problem being cold, you’d never make it through BUD/S training.
She stopped, her face scrunched up in disgust. “Angel? Really? You promised to stop hitting on me, March.”
“Get used to it. That only applied to yesterday.” I could be determined, or stubborn, if she preferred that term.
Peyton bounced on her toes to the sidewalk and toward the paper by the curb.
Thin Mustache Man folded the paper, pushed off the car, and started toward her.
I stood on the wet concrete by the door, soaking up the morning sun.
She picked up the paper. “Hi, Frankie.”
I turned to see Frankie coming up to her. “Peyton, there’s a great article on the Middle East in the opinion section today.”
“Thanks.” She unfolded the paper and ambled back to the building, reading the front page.
Frankie followed her down the path. “That exercise you suggested is working great.”
“Good. Keep it up.” She kept her eyes glued to the paper.
“Maybe wanna get lunch today?”
Say no, was the mental message I sent Peyton.
“Sorry. I can’t.”
I breathed easier.
“Uh… Okay.”
It didn’t take a detective’s badge to catch him checking her out.
I let both of them pass before turning around myself.
Peyton stopped at the elevator.
“I need to get my steps in, so I’ll take the stairs.” Frankie continued past her down the hall and then turned. “Charleston?”
She shook her head just as the elevator arrived. “Nope.”
I joined her as the door opened.
She punched the button. “It’s going to be a nice day.”
“What was that about?”
“What?”
“That Frankie guy.”
“He’s trying to guess where I’m from.”
“You’ll tell him, but not me?”
She shifted her eyes to the floor. “I haven’t told him anything.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He works at a grocery store near work, I think.”
“He’s a creep.”
“He’s harmless.” The door opened on her floor, and we exited. “Maybe I should get his Social Security number so you can do a background check.”
I followed her down the hallway. “That would be a good start.”
An awkward silence descended as she opened the door to her unit. Frankie came out of the stairwell door at the end of the hall as we entered the condo.
After the door closed behind us, I tried again. “He strikes me as odd is all.”
She ignored me and walked to the kitchen.
“Does he live on this floor?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded as she opened the fridge. “The other unit.”
I really didn’t like that.
Peyton pulled a carton of orange juice from the fridge. After pouring a glass, she spun on me. “It’s sweet that you’re concerned, but you don’t need to be.”
That pretty well shut down the whole line of questioning I had planned. Now was not the time to delve into what she was running from.
I picked up the mug of coffee I’d brewed.
“That’s very expensive coffee,” she noted.
I sniffed it. It certainly was different than what I was used to.
She smiled. “It’s very expensive, but I think it’s an acquired taste.”
I took a sip. It tasted off.
“Personally, I don’t care for beans that they pull out of…”
I tried a second sip.
“Elephant poop.”
I coughed up the dirty liquid, making a mess on the island. “What the hell?”
“They feed the coffee beans to elephants.”
I dumped the mug and refilled it with water from the tap.
“Then after nature runs its course, they pull the fermented beans out of the poop and sell it to fools.”
I rinsed my mouth out with the water and spit into the sink. “That’s disgusting. Why didn’t you warn me?”
“I just did, and I thought you SEALs were made of tougher stuff—you know, surviving on scorpions and swamp water.”
“I can drink swamp water if I have to, but that doesn’t mean I want to. You actually pay money for this shit?”
“Not me. The Hartfords left it.”
“They must have IQs equivalent to their shoe sizes.”
She laughed. “He’s a professor at USC, so I doubt it.”
My phone rang. “I have to take this.” Heading up the stairs, I answered it. “Jordy, just a second.”
“Your instincts were right.”
I waited until I was shut into the bedroom to ask, “What did you find out?”
“There are plenty of legit Peyton Smiths in the country, but she’s not one of them. Her only employment history is SpaceMasters. Before that, zilch. And I can’t find a name change order for that name either.”
“You’re certain?” That was bad news, but at least my instincts had been spot on.
“Why ask me for information if you’re not going to believe what I give you? Yes, I’m sure. And before you ask, no I don’t know what her real name is. We might get that from fingerprints if you lift some, but it’s not guaranteed. Or, DNA maybe, but that’s an even smaller database.”
“Thanks, Jordy. Can you keep this to yourself for now?”
“Keep what to myself?” he quipped.
“Exactly. I’ll talk to you later.”
Lifting prints and getting a DNA sample? I was going to have to think about that. If I took that step, Jordy was probably right that Peyton would be pissed at me. What if she was running from an abusive ex-boyfriend and she wasn’t a criminal hiding from the law?
“Everything okay?” she asked when I returned to the kitchen.
“Yeah,” I lied.
“Good. I’ll cook you breakfast.”
“How about I cook for you?” I offered.
“No way. You’re the guest, so I cook,” she said.
“Okay. Then I’ll take a quick shower.” On the way upstairs, I stopped to gather her Rolex from the counter and pocketed it.
The hot water of the shower didn’t do anything to clear my head about what to do next. Should I go behind her back and collect her prints?