Chapter Nine #2
Charlie opened her mouth to speak, but I raised a finger and pointed it at her face. Her eyes narrowed. I didn't care.
I was done arguing about this.
"Charlie, they have to know what kind of threat you're under so they can design the system to handle it.
I know why you want to hide this from the press, but you can't hide this from your security team.
It's idiotic. Do you have any idea what could've happened to you if I hadn't been sitting in my driveway when you got jumped? "
Charlotte's eyes went dark and she looked away.
Shit.
I didn't want her to start shaking again. I needed to get some food in her, and maybe a beer, before Brennan showed up.
Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I flipped it open and dialed. Brennan answered on the second ring.
"Jackson. What is it?"
"I have a situation. I have a friend who needs to make a police report, but it has to stay quiet. She can't come into the precinct and she can't have a black-and-white in her driveway. Completely under the radar."
There was a long silence.
"Are you going to tell me who we’re talking about?" Brennan asked carefully.
I gave him Charlie's address in answer.
"Be there in ten," he said.
That was why I liked working with Brennan. He was always calm, collected, and on the ball. I shoved my phone back in my pocket and glanced at Charlie, now leaning against the wall of her kitchen, hands hanging loose at her sides, staring at the floor.
She looked beat to shit and so tired she could pass out right where she was. She couldn't go to sleep, not until she talked to Brennan, but a little food would steady her.
Grabbing her bag of take-out, I opened the container inside.
Her burger was all over the place, avocado and onion strings and melted cheese mixed in with her fries.
It looked a hell of a lot better than the dry chicken and finger food I'd had at the party.
I did my best to reassemble it and handed the box to her.
"If you don't want furniture, you need to at least get some folding chairs and a table. For now, sit down on your futon and eat."
"Bossy," she said under her breath as she took the container and turned her back on me to walk down the hall to her makeshift bedroom.
I didn't give a shit if she thought I was bossy. Charlotte Winters needed to get her fucking head on straight. She wasn't going to like it, but she was going to goddamn listen to me.
I waited until she was settled on her futon and had a mouthful of food before I laid down the law.
"You need looking after," I said. As expected, her blue eyes flared with aggravation. It shouldn't have turned me on.
Since when did I like argumentative women?
Since never.
Charlie started chewing faster so she could swallow and start yelling at me.
I pointed a finger at her and said, "Can it. I know you're a smart, responsible, adult woman. Do you have any self-defense training?"
I could tell she was surprised by the question. Her reluctance was so obvious I had to fight a grin. She shook her head 'no'.
"Can you handle a gun?"
Another reluctant shake of her head.
"Do you have any of the skills you need to defend yourself if you're attacked or spot someone following you?"
This time, she didn't bother to shake her head, just gritted her teeth and swallowed, getting ready to argue back.
"You need looking after," I repeated.
Charlie took a huge bite of her burger and began to chew, her mutinous glare adorable.
"Does Sinclair have you on the schedule for your security system?"
She nodded.
"Tell me it's tomorrow."
Another nod.
That was something. They’d put in a solid system, and if they missed anything, I could upgrade it.
"Tell them you need a panic button. I could get you one, but I don't do a lot of personal security and I don't think I have any in stock. Sinclair will have them."
She swallowed her burger and asked, "What's a panic button?"
"It's a device you keep on you at all times. If anything happens, you hit it and it alerts your security team, and the police, that you need help immediately. I'll have them wire it to my phone, too, since I'm right next door. I can get here faster than they can."
"That sounds like a good idea," she said.
"Charlie, you need to be careful. That wasn't a mugger. A mugger would've knocked you down and taken off with your purse. Whoever that was, they wanted to hurt you. That's a hell of a lot more dangerous than someone who's out to steal something. Hopefully, it's this Hayward guy."
"Why are you hoping it's Hayward?" she asked.
"Because we know he's a threat. This crackpot who's targeting your family is a complete unknown. I take it the Sinclairs have been trying to track down the source of the pictures?"
"Yeah. Since Jacob got the first one a few months ago.
They haven't found anything. No fingerprints, and they said that whoever dropped the pictures off seems to know where the security cameras are, at least the cameras in Jacob's building, because we have them on video but they couldn't identify who it was.
We don't even know if it's a man or a woman. "
"There's no one you can think of with a grudge against your family?" I asked, not surprised when Charlie rolled her eyes at me.
It was a loaded question when talking about the Winters family.
"No one specific I can think of," she said. "But between people who have a problem with Winters Inc. and the way my cousins and brothers have slept their way through the state of Georgia, you could probably put together a very long list of people who don't like us."
"True. But sending pictures of the crime scenes is unusual. That's going back decades. Both cases are closed. Why bring them up now?"
"To mess with us?" Charlie asked. "I can't think of another reason."
I turned the problem over in my mind. I doubted it was about money. Normally, when a wealthy family was targeted like this, money would be my first thought.
But there was no blackmail here. Crime scene photos of the deaths weren't a secret. Someone who wanted money would be better off getting pictures of an affair or the company doing something underhanded.
The only reason I could think of to send the crime scene pictures was to cause emotional upset. Someone wanted to scare them or hurt them.
"We've been hoping they'd make a mistake," Charlie said, "but so far, we haven't gotten another picture since Vance's. Maybe they gave up."
"Maybe. And there's no one other than Hayward who might have a grudge against you? An ex-boyfriend? One of those fiancés you didn't marry?"
Charlie's eyes flew wide. "How did you know about them?"
"You're a Winters," I reminded her. "It's common knowledge that you've been engaged four times and dumped all of them. Are you sure one of those guys isn't out for revenge?"
"Pretty sure." Charlie took another bite of her burger and studied the takeout container on her lap, rearranging what was left of her French fries as she chewed.
Pink flags of color stood out on her cheeks. She was embarrassed. I was curious.
"Really? Getting dumped by his fiancée is one of those things that can push a guy over the edge."
"Not these guys," she said after she swallowed. "Maybe if I'd messed with their golf clubs."
She shrugged one shoulder and took another bite.
"What does that mean?" I pushed.
I should've let it go, but someone had attacked her and it had been personal. A discarded lover was at the top of the list in this kind of crime.
I wanted to know why she was so sure not a single one of her four fiancés would be hurt or angry enough to come after her.
There was no future for me and Charlie, no engagement waiting around the corner, no white wedding followed by the pitter-patter of little feet.
We were the world's worst fit, but I knew if I'd been in love with a woman like her, if I'd had that face and that body and that attitude, and it was all mine and then she walked away . . . I could imagine that kind of loss breaking a man.
"So?"
"None of them loved me, okay?"
Charlie put the takeout container on the floor and pulled her feet up on the futon, propping her chin on her knees and wrapping her arms around her shins. Sitting like that, she looked about sixteen.
"Every single one wanted to marry me because I'm a Winters. None of them wanted me. With the first two, it took me a while to catch on.
"Number one was cheating, which was a pretty good giveaway. Number two kept asking me to spend money on him. Number three interrupted his proposal to take a phone call from a client. And I was never really engaged to number four. He just told everyone we were engaged."
"Why would he do that? He had to know you wouldn't go along with it."
"He did. But he was trying to impress a prospective employer. We'd been dating, so people knew we were together, and by the time I spread the word that we'd broken up, he had the job so it didn't matter."
"That sucks," I said.
It did. I'd assumed Charlie would be a target because she was gorgeous and sexy. How would it feel to realize the person you thought you'd spend your life with was only interested in your family and your bank account?
She deserved better than that. I was unreasonably grateful that she hadn't married any of those assholes.
"Yeah. It wasn't fun. So you know you can believe me when I tell you I don't want a relationship.
I'm kind of burned out on the whole Where is this going?
Let's get married. thing. I'm tired of trying and being let down.
I'd rather be on my own. I watched Aiden with Elizabeth for years.
I always swore I'd never get married if I wasn't really in love, and then—"
Charlie let out a long sigh.
"You didn't love the guys you got engaged to?"
I couldn't imagine Charlie agreeing to marry someone she didn't love. She was too headstrong, too focused. She'd never commit the rest of her life to someone she didn't really want to be with.
She'd be tired of him before the ink was dry on the marriage license.
"Well, technically, number four wasn't an engagement. Neither was number three. If he hadn't taken the call in the middle of proposing, I still wouldn't have said yes. He was fun and a nice guy, but I didn't love him.
"But the first two guys . . . I did think I was in love with them. I was too young, I think. Looking back, I cared about them and they were important to me, but I don't think it was really love. Not the kind that lasts."
"You want a beer?" I asked, changing the subject.
At her nod, I snagged the discarded takeout box and went to go get us two beers. Charlie's answer to my questions left me feeling oddly deflated. I don't know what I wanted to hear, but her lack of hope was depressing.
It wasn't that I thought marriage was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I hadn't seen a single example worth repeating when I was growing up.
Watching my mother with my stepfather was enough to sour me on the idea of marriage for life. I had no intention of ever finding a wife.
But Charlie . . . the idea of Charlie turning her back on marriage, on family—it just felt wrong. I toyed with the idea of looking up those first two fiancés, the ones who really hurt her.
I knew she wouldn't thank me if I did, but I was keeping the idea on the back burner. I didn't like the idea of some golf-playing dickhead breaking Charlie's heart.
I went back into the room to find Charlie curled up exactly as I'd left her, her un-scraped cheek resting on her knees, arms wrapped around her shins.
Handing her a beer, I set mine on the floor unopened and said,
"I need to run next door and change and grab a few things. I'll be right back.”
"K."
I didn't like leaving her alone in her house, even behind locked doors. If she'd had a first-aid kit, I wouldn't have bothered going home, but she needed some ointment on that cheek and the raw spot where her hair had been yanked out.
I'd done my best to clean her wounds, but she'd hit the dirt hard, grinding soil into her opened skin. She'd heal better if I took care of it the right way.
I was back a few minutes later, staying next door only long enough to trade my tuxedo for gym shorts and a T-shirt and grab my first aid kit. I let myself back into Charlie's house, locked the door behind me, and rechecked the windows and doors on the first floor to make sure the house was secure.
I'd feel better when she had that security system in.
"Stay just like that," I said when I found her sitting in the same position. "I need to clean your face again."
Unzipping my first aid kit, I grabbed the disinfectant spray, antibacterial ointment, and a band-aid for her temple.
"What the hell do you have in there?" Charlie asked.
I followed her glance to my kit. I was so used to it that the size didn't seem weird. To a civilian, it must've looked like serious overkill.
The size of a small duffel bag, it had everything I needed to handle almost any injury. I'd trained in the Army as a field medic, among other things, and my skills had grown out of necessity in the years since.
I tried to answer her question without freaking her out.
"Just stuff. Band-aids, antibacterial spray, ointment, butterfly bandages, sutures. Stuff."
I could tell by the piercing look she gave me that Charlie wasn't buying my explanation, but she didn't push.
Quietly, she let me spread ointment on her cheek and temple, then pull down the shoulder of her T-shirt to check for bruising.
Her eyelids drooped. Between the adrenaline crash after the attack and her full stomach, I knew she was ready to pass out.
I got two ibuprofens out of the kit and handed them to her. The low hum of a car engine pulled up to the house.
"Take these and meet me in the kitchen," I said. "Brennan is here."