24. Slider
24
SLIDER
She walked into the room with her arm slung through Spencer’s. They did that a lot—walked together. Everywhere. He guided her over to a stool and then kissed her on the cheek before going to the fridge to make her a smoothie.
Every morning, it was the same. For the past three days, I’d watched every move she made from a distance, trying to figure out what was really going on. Spencer made her a disgusting smoothie that she choked down, and she only seemed to do it because Spencer loved them so much. After that, she forced herself to join him for yoga, which she only did half-heartedly, getting distracted by something outside nine times out of ten.
Throughout the day, she lounged around the house, taking a few naps when her head started to hurt. The effects from the concussion hadn’t eased yet, and that was partially because she wouldn’t just sit the fuck down and take it easy those first few days. Now…now she had nothing else to do, and she knew it.
Spencer babied her, acting like she was his wife or something, but there was never any hint of attraction there. It was all a form of brotherly love, and there was no denying that whatever was between them, he truly cared about her. So, what the hell was she hiding? I just couldn’t figure it out.
“Here you go,” Spencer said, setting the smoothie down in front of her. “Your favorite flavor.”
She grimaced, picking up the glass. “Perfect.”
Spencer’s eyes dimmed slightly as he lowered his glass. “Hey, I promise we’ll try some fruit smoothies when we get home.”
“If we ever get home,” she huffed. “I miss my bed,” she grumbled.
“Me too. Hey, maybe when we get home, we should paint that wall bright blue like we were talking about.”
I cocked my head to the side. “You live together?”
Audrey narrowed her eyes as she slowly turned to face me. “Yes. Is that a problem?”
“Nope. Just didn’t realize it.”
“It wasn’t a secret. I told Thumper.”
He fucking knew and didn’t tell me. I ground my molars, but just smiled, not letting on that I was pissed. Not that I had a right to be. Hell, I walked out on her when I had her right in front of me, willing to take my cock. I still dreamed about how wet and warm her pussy was around my fingers. Fuck, I wanted to taste her.
I sighed, taking a sip of my coffee to distract myself from my errant thoughts. Now wasn’t the time to go down memory lane. Thankfully, Rae came stumbling down the hall, still in her pajamas since she’d just gone to bed a few hours ago.
“Did you forget something?” I asked.
“Dash called. He just finished going through Audrey and Spencer’s place,” she mumbled, plopping down in a chair at the table.
“Did he find anything?”
She shook her head. “But I asked him to send over the pictures anyway so we could look through them. Maybe we’ll see something they missed.”
It was highly unlikely, but it was worth a shot.
Rae kept her voice low as she whispered, “We need to find something soon. Her director won’t stop bugging Lock about where they are. He’s getting pissed that he can’t contact them and has no idea where they are.”
“That’s sort of the point of a safe house,” I muttered.
“You know Hollywood types,” she sighed as her laptop booted up.
“Is there anything you need us for?” Spencer asked.
“Nope,” I answered, my gaze focused on the screen.
They slipped out without another word as I pulled up a chair and tried to see what Rae was doing. After she uploaded the files, I got my first glimpse into Audrey’s life. Her place was a real eye-opener.
“Holy crap. That’s how she lives?” Rae yawned. “It’s fucking depressing.”
“It’s a mansion,” I muttered.
“Well, in comparison to where we live, but not for a movie star.”
I turned the laptop toward me to get a better view. “Go ahead and get some shut-eye. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
“Sure. Because it’s not at all creepy to look at pictures of your would-be lover’s house without anyone else around.”
She shoved back from the table and left, but I was too busy taking in every detail of Audrey’s home. It was big, but Rae was right. It was smaller than you would expect for a star like her.
I started flipping through the slides, hoping to find anything that would give us a hint of who was after her. There were files attached with every piece of mail she received and everybody in her address book, but the pictures were what I was interested in, and I didn’t want to admit that it was because I was curious if they could tell me more about who she was.
She was clean, organized, and didn’t leave a thing out of place. Although, she lived with Spencer. That could be just as much on him. He did seem like he was a bit of a freak when it came to maintaining a routine. There was a super-sized TV on the wall, along with a huge computer screen in an office. It looked to be a shared office, so whose computer it was wasn’t clear. There weren’t any pictures aside from the two of them together, and in each one, they looked perfectly happy. It was just the two of them.
No one came between them.
Maybe that was the key to everything. Spencer cared for her deeply. Maybe a little too deeply that he couldn’t let go of his control. I leaned back in my seat and scrolled through the images again, thinking it over, remembering how he made her smoothie every morning, demanding she drink it. It was almost like she didn’t have a choice in the matter. And she didn’t argue.
I stopped on an image of the kitchen. There were two mugs sitting beside the coffee pot. They were nothing special, but they clearly went together. A pair, each with their names on them. Everything about them was inextricably linked.
And that wasn’t the only matching thing on their counters. There were his and her oven mitts hanging on the backsplash, though his were used way more than hers. Two decorative plates sat on top of the microwave…it was a little nauseating how much they did everything together. I zoomed in on the microwave at the little bumps on the start and stop buttons. I had no clue what they were, but they were color-coded, so it was probably some form of matchy-match thing they had going.
I decided I’d had enough and didn’t need to see any more. I wasn’t going to get the answers I needed in these pictures. Well…the answers to the case. It was perfectly clear to me that the reason Spencer was so protective of Audrey and what she did was because he was intertwined in every part of her life. Yes, he wanted her to have a life and fall in love, but how did a guy let go of a woman he had that much of a hold over?
That was definitely something I didn’t need to be involved in. Now or ever. I shut the computer and walked away.
I immediately reached for my gun as I was shaken awake. Thumper stood over me, holding his finger to his lips. I glanced over at Spencer, who was dead to the world, and slipped out of bed. After pulling on some clothes, I headed out to the living room where everyone was waiting.
That is, everyone aside from Spencer and Audrey.
“What’s going on?”
Rae shifted from one foot to the other. “We just found out that Audrey’s mom died.”
I swore my heart stopped in my fucking chest. That had to be some kind of cosmic joke. “No.”
She nodded. “I swear to God. Lock got the call an hour ago. He said they need her back to start making funeral arrangements.”
“In the middle of all this shit?” I asked, finding the timing just a little too coincidental.
“That’s what I thought,” she agreed. “But what are we going to tell her? She can’t go?”
“Yes,” Thumper answered immediately.
“Just don’t tell her,” IRIS cut in. “This is her life on the line. Better she’s alive and misses her mother’s funeral than dead.”
“Can we really make that call?” Rae asked everyone, but her gaze was on me.
“Fuck, you can’t leave this up to me,” I snapped.
“You seem to have a better handle on what she would want,” Thumper answered. “What do you think?”
Hell, I had no fucking clue. I couldn’t believe they were putting this on me. “There’s a reason I’m not the fucking team leader.”
“If it were up to me, she wouldn’t go,” Thumper shrugged.
Yeah, that’s what I had in mind, too. But then I remembered how I lied about her mom dying before. If I didn’t tell her now…that had to be some horrible kind of karma that would come back to bite me in the ass at the worst time possible.
“It has to be up to her,” I finally said. “I don’t think we should take her. The timing is shitty and it feels more than coincidental, but if this is real and her mom really is dead…I can’t be the one to keep this from her.”
“Because you have feelings for her?” Thumper asked. “I thought that’s why you wouldn’t sleep with her—so you wouldn’t develop feelings.”
I ground my teeth together, trying to keep my cool. “No, it’s not because of that. When I took her to the hospital and had to pretend she was my wife, they asked if anything traumatic had happened recently. I said her mom had just died.”
“Shit,” Rae muttered.
“Which is why I can’t fucking lie to her about it now.”
“Well, shit,” Thumper grumbled. “You couldn’t have told them she had a traumatic experience at the salon or something?”
“That’s not a thing,” Rae retorted.
“Sounds like a thing,” IRIS agreed with Thumper.
That was it then. We were telling her, and we’d have to be prepared that she might want to go home. And if her mother really was dead…if we could get confirmation of that, this job would get a hell of a lot harder.
“Does Lock have another team to spare?”
Rae shook her head. “Everyone’s out. Unless you want?—”
She instantly shut her mouth and looked away.
“Unless I want who?”
“Crap,” Thumper muttered. “Not them.”
“Fox? That’s who Lock has for us?” I snapped.
“It’s the only team not in the field.”
“Meaning, it’s the only team no one is crazy enough to want on a detail,” I concluded. Sighing, I scrubbed a hand down my face. “What choice do we have?”
“Between death and going on our own?” Thumper asked. “I’d go on my own.”
“It’s not that bad,” IRIS argued.
“It’s FNG,” I reminded him. “The man gets blown up or killed about once every six weeks.”
“And somehow survives,” Rae shrugged. “It could be worse.”
“We could have Max fly us out. At least we wouldn’t have to make the drive. That would cut out some of the danger of crossing the fucking country,” IRIS added.
“Yeah. Trade the danger of being attacked for going down with a drunken pilot,” I snorted. “The choices are amazing.”
“Well, at least Fox isn’t in his yoga phase anymore. Imagine how it would be if he still was and met Spencer in the morning.”
We all looked at each other, imagining the horror of what we would walk in on. Icelandic throat singing, pants that were way too tight for any man, deep breathing and humming…nope. It would be a fucking disaster.
“Well, good luck with that,” Thumper nodded.
“You’re coming too,” I grumbled.
“Yeah, but you have to tell her.”
Shit. “You’re—are you fucking kidding me? You’re the team leader. You can’t leave everything up to me!”
“You already have a thing with her.”
“Which I majorly fucked up. Do you really think I’m the best person to tell her right now?”
“He might have a point,” Rae said. “Maybe we should talk to Spencer and let him be the one to break the news to her.”
That wasn’t a bad idea. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“Good. Then we’ll put a plan together in the morning if she wants to leave.” Rae looked at Thumper and me. “Get some shuteye. It’s gonna be a long fucking day.”
I headed back to the bedrooms, but instead of turning left, I turned right. I wasn’t sure what made me open the door or step inside. But I did. I watched her for hours, wondering what the hell would happen when we told Spencer in the morning. How would she react when he conveyed the bad news?
I rubbed my chest, wondering why I felt an ache forming when I hardly knew the woman. I didn’t have feelings for her, yet I couldn’t help but want to spare her from what was about to happen. I shook off the need to comfort her and headed out, closing the door softly behind me.
Thumper stood on the other side of the hall, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared at me.
“How long have you been there?”
“About as long as you’ve been in there.”
There was no way for me to explain it. I didn’t have the words to tell him what was running through my head right now. None of it made sense. “I don’t even know her.”
“Sometimes that’s just the way things go,” he said as if he already knew what I was talking about.
Maybe he did. After all, wasn’t that kind of the way it was with him and Bree?
“You want some advice?” he asked, pushing off the wall. “Stop trying to push her away and actually fucking talk to her. Then you might get an answer to your questions a hell of a lot faster.”
Surprisingly, that was really good advice. I just wasn’t sure now was the time to follow through on that. Not when she was about to get some devastating news.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think for too long. Time is running out.”