9. Beck
CHAPTER 9
Beck
It took less than five minutes for me to find the footage.
Luna fucking Marks stretching on her stoop at two in the fucking morning. My Steele Security app caught her in the act. It even captured her looking directly into my camera. Smirking .
Now she was just playing dirty.
I shucked off my sheets and scribbled a quick note for the nanny. Mrs. Corbett was healthy again and officially living in the downstairs guest room. She'd moved in two days ago and I heaved a sigh of relief at having another adult on the premises capable of watching Alice. I wouldn’t be missed.
I anticipated this might happen, so I slept in my workout gear. It only took a few seconds to tie my shoelaces and then I was off into the night to follow Luna.
Unlike the woman I was trailing, I wore a high-visibility outfit. It didn’t do much to attract the opposite sex, but it would do a lot to attract the attention of drivers who might otherwise miss me.
Luna should be wearing something equally protective. Although with her and that body, she’d attract creeps like a moth to a flame. That wasn’t her fault. Just a fact.
It only took a couple steps to catch up with her. The woman wore a fucking sports bra and shorts. Sure, it was a balmy eighty degrees with humidity, but seriously? Could she have picked something else?
Headlights flared as a car barreled down the street.
Fuck . My instincts took over. I grabbed Luna’s elbow, tugging her back from the street. Before I knew what was happening, she punched my throat.
“Back off, fucker!” she screamed, lifting her leg to kick me—probably in the groin.
My reflexes returned. I thwarted her next move, but just barely.
“It’s me,” I growled, my register higher than normal. I rubbed my neck once I was certain she wouldn’t try to attack again.
“Beck? What the hell?” She drove her hands through her hair, her ponytail coming loose. Then she planted her hands on her hips, eyes flaring as she put two and two together. “Wait a minute. You followed me? You actually followed me? And attacked me, no less. How dare you,” she seethed.
Of course she’d spin it like that. This woman could infuriate me like no other. “If you hadn’t noticed, there was a car coming. I just saved your life.”
“Please, I was stopping. This isn’t my first time running in the city. This isn’t even my first time running in the city this week .”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “Don’t I fucking know it.”
Suddenly, Luna took off, resuming her run, as if we weren’t just in the middle of a conversation.
I launched into motion, following behind her and shouted, “I’m not done talking.”
She flipped me off. “Sucks for you, because I am.”
“You need to at least take those earbuds out. You can’t hear the oncoming traffic.”
She tilted her head while maintaining her steady pace. “And yet I can hear you perfectly.”
The woman stopped at the next light, bouncing on the balls of her feet to keep her body warm. When the light turned, she glanced left and right then proceeded to cross. I kept pace next to her.
She threw me a nasty look. “Go home .”
I glanced at Luna. Her shoulders were tense, and she had a look in her eye I didn’t like. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t bother to look at me. “I already told you. Go home.”
That response didn’t sit well with me. Sure, I knew she wanted me to scram, but the way her body tensed reminded me of fight-or-flight mode. My senses were screaming at me, something about her reaction felt overblown. Sure, I may have scared her, but that would normally have been a temporary reaction, something easily shaken off. Either something else was bothering her now or something happened in the past.
I knew that mode and I knew it well. Seen it dozens of times with the people I’d served with. I saw it with clients my people and I were assigned to protect.
Because of this experience, I knew how to approach people in that mode. As frustrating as it could be, it wasn’t about approaching it directly. You had to let the person come to you in their own time.
And I could be patient.
I kept pace beside her. “I might as well accompany you for the rest of the jog. I’m a completionist.”
“Don’t I know it,” she said with a wink and a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, even if her tone had oozed sex and implication.
Danger, Will Robinson.
I shifted, grateful my pants had extra room. The last thing I needed was to sport a boner while jogging next to a woman in the middle of the night. I refused to become the kind of creep I was out here to protect her from.
Luna sped up until we made it to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. “Are we really crossing the bridge right now? It's the middle of the night.”
We’d already logged a mile and a half, and I anticipated we’d turn around any minute now and make the return trip.
“I’m just getting started.”