Chapter Thirteen #3
Kayne was right to trust his instincts. They were rarely wrong. But instincts honed by emotion sometimes cut too deep. Anja’s were sharpened by evidence.
She exhaled. “Okay. Here’s what I think.”
His shoulders tensed.
“I think you made a poor choice, and it put you on our radar when you didn’t mean it to.”
Relief poured out of him in a shaky breath. “Thank you. I really wasn’t trying to cause trouble.”
“I believe you,” she said. And she did. “But I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
The way he said it, with his voice dropping low and his lids lowering to half-mast, almost had her reconsidering her magnanimity and planting her booted foot squarely in his family jewels.
“If you see anyone—anyone—lurking where they don’t belong, or acting unusual,” she said, holding his gaze, “you come find me immediately.”
He nodded so hard she wondered if he’d hurt himself. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
“And Joel?”
“What?”
She stepped closer to anchor the seriousness. “If you’re lying to me, I’ll know.”
His throat clicked. “I’m not.”
“Good.” She stepped back. “Get back to work.”
He practically jogged away, desperate to put distance between them. When he was out of earshot, Kayne emerged from around the corner, arms crossed.
“You buy his story?” Kayne asked.
Anja didn’t look at him. “I do.”
Kayne grunted. “I don’t.”
“I know,” she said calmly. “That’s why both of us are on this case. You catch the wolves. I catch the liars.”
“And which is he?” Kayne pressed.
She finally met his eyes. “Neither. Right now, he’s a scared kid who almost buried himself by accident.”
Kayne exhaled through his nose. “Your reading of him was cleaner than a lie detector.”
“I was homicide,” she said with a shrug. “People lied for a living. I got good at spotting when they didn’t.”
He gave a single nod. “So we scratch him off the list?”
“No,” she corrected softly. “We move him lower. But we don’t mark anyone off. Not yet.”
Kayne’s gaze was focused and dangerous. They both knew someone out there was circling Chloe. And unlike Joel Erickson, that person wasn’t making mistakes.
#
Dinner with too many bodyguards and not enough breadsticks. That’s what this scene should be called when the movie of Chloe’s life was made.
They chose a quiet corner booth at a small, brick-walled trattoria tucked between a florist and a shoe repair place. It was Leo’s idea. He’d claimed the lighting was forgiving and flattering in crisis situations.
Chloe suspected the real reason was deliberate. Kayne needed his back against the wall. Anja needed sightlines to every exit and shadow that didn’t belong. And Leo needed Chloe where he could see her breathe.
She slid into the booth beside Leo, the cracked leather cool against her legs. Kayne took the seat across from her, long frame contained but coiled, like a rattler poised to strike. Anja settled beside him, composed as ever.
Chloe smiled at the red-checkered tablecloth and tried to let the smell of garlic and basil convince her this was normal.
It didn’t work.
This was, without question, the least relaxing dinner of her life.
The server appeared, cheerful and oblivious, took drink orders, scribbled happily, and vanished. And then silence.
Three sets of intense eyes swung to Chloe. It felt as if she were the lone witness to her own kidnapping.
Anja folded her hands on the table. “Okay. We’re all here.” Her voice was calm, but it carried weight. “Tell me everything from the start. I’ve read the file, but I want to hear it directly from you.”
Chloe stared at her napkin, folding and unfolding it until the crease blurred. “Can we not do the whole interrogation vibe?” she asked lightly. “I was really hoping for a breadsticks-first approach.”
No one laughed.
Kayne leaned forward, forearms braced on the table. His voice was almost too gentle. “Chloe, we need to lay it out. All of it.”
They already knew this, but she lifted her eyes. “Fine. It all started with Fraiser Talbot.”
Then she told them about the altered photo, how seeing her own face twisted into something intimate and wrong had made her stomach flip. The first near-miss outside the gym. The second one, worse. The break-in. Her beloved plants destroyed.
She didn’t embellish, nor dramatize. She’d gotten very good at minimizing. But saying it out loud, stringing the incidents together instead of compartmentalizing them as she had been doing, it sounded bad. Really awful.
She’d told herself it was coincidence or rotten luck. That the universe was being dramatic again.
Now she looked around the table. Kayne’s mouth was tight, a muscle jumping near his cheek. Leo had gone still in that way he did when he was cataloging damage. Anja’s eyes were razor-focused, already running scenarios.
It felt terrifyingly big.
“Which brings us to the most recent incident,” Kayne said.
Chloe winced. “The sticky note. ‘You won’t see me until it’s too late,’” she recited quietly. “It was in my office, under my keyboard. Someone got close enough, not just to my workspace, but to me.”
Anja nodded once. “He’s confident now. Comfortable. He’s testing proximity.”
“Why are you so sure it’s a he?” Leo wanted to know.
Chloe didn’t look at him because she knew exactly where his mind went. Danica. Blood and complications she wasn’t ready to touch.
“I’m just going with statistics,” Anja expounded calmly. “Stalkers aren’t exclusively male, but it is disproportionately so. Roughly seventy to eighty percent.”
“So what do I do?” Chloe asked before Leo could voice his concerns about her sister. “Move? Hide? Stop coming to work?”
“No,” Kayne said immediately. “You keep living your life with us beside you.”
“And you follow every instruction we give you,” Anja added. “This isn’t paranoia. It’s survival.”
Leo squeezed her shoulder. “I know you hate feeling controlled, but this is different. This is someone stepping up toward harm.”
Her throat closed. She looked down at her lap, fingers twisting together. “I don’t want to be afraid.”
“You’re not,” Kayne murmured. She looked up and met his eyes. “You’re being smart.”
The server returned with drinks, smiling and oblivious to the fact that four people were currently planning the defense of Chloe Giordano’s entire existence.
When she left again, Chloe released a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “So, okay, what now?”
Kayne leaned forward, voice low and final. “Now? We hunt.”
Anja nodded. “We set traps. Tighten security. Interview everyone. Monitor access logs. Whoever this is, they’ve already made mistakes. They’ll make more.”
Leo looked between them, torn between relief and terror. “And until then?”
Kayne’s gaze locked on Chloe.
“You don’t take one step without one of us, cher,” he said. “Not one.”
#
Kayne paid the check without looking at it, and Leo argued out of habit while Anja clocked the room again. Chloe stood when they did, pulling her jacket on as if it were armor she wasn’t yet convinced fit.
Outside, the night had teeth. Cool air slid beneath his collar and settled deep, the kind that crept into bone and stayed. The street was quiet in that deceptive way cities get after dark, when everything looks calm enough to lie to you.
Kayne stepped behind Chloe as they exited, close but not touching.
He could feel the hitch in her breath when the door swung shut behind them and caught a whiff of her floral, clean scent.
Shampoo, maybe. Chloe radiated sunlight and discipline.
Someone who took care of things because no one else ever had.
His job was to walk her to the car. His body did it automatically. Scan left. Scan right.
Check glass reflections and doorways. Be aware of movement that didn’t match the rhythm of the street. Nothing flagged, but that didn’t mean a damn thing.
She hesitated on the sidewalk, fingers gripping her phone. He saw the moment she remembered she wasn’t supposed to move alone anymore. The pause was brief, but the impact wasn’t. It hit him harder than it should have.
Kayne placed his hand on the small of her back to guide her. Her muscles jumped.
“Easy, cher,” he murmured. “I got you.”
She nodded a little too fast and let him steer her the last few steps. Her trust landed on him like a weight he welcomed and resented in equal measure.
The SUV unlocked with a soft chirp. He opened her door before Leo could because Leo hesitated, and Kayne didn’t.
She slid inside, paused, then looked up at him. Streetlight caught her eyes, turning them glassy and too honest. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, almost apologetically.
“Yes, I do,” he replied.
Because this wasn’t about doors.
He closed it gently and straightened, pulse steady, mind already running through the next hour, the next route, the next mistake the bastard stalking her would make.
They said goodbye to Leo, and he peeled off toward his own vehicle. Kayne slid inside and watched Chloe until the engine turned over. It didn’t matter that Anja was buckling into the back seat.
Chloe glanced at him once more before turning away. Something twisted low in his belly.
That was new.
Kayne exhaled slowly, grounding himself in what he knew: procedures, threats, lines of fire. He didn’t do feelings. Feelings got people sloppy. Feelings got people dead.
But as the taillights disappeared down the block, one thought cut through with uncomfortable clarity: This wasn’t just a job anymore. Whoever thought they were going to get to Chloe, well, they were going to have to go through him first.
And that wasn’t going to end well for them.