Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Trick’s loft wasn’t big enough for pacing, not really, but that hadn’t stopped me.
I moved from the windows to the couch to the kitchen island and back again, replaying the same half-dozen scenarios until they blurred together.
Every version ended the same way: Kenna Scott was a problem, and I didn’t know what to do about her.
I felt like I’d worn a groove into the floor by the time the lock turned. I stopped short when Rogue lifted his head off the couch, ears pricking toward the door. Trick wasn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow morning, but maybe his ‘fishing trip’ had wrapped up early.
The door opened.
“We need to talk to you about your new employee,” Kenna began as she walked in like she owned the place. As soon as her eyes landed on me, she stopped short, her hand on the door handle like she couldn’t decide whether to fully come in or not. “What the—what the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s temporary,” I replied, unsure how to proceed. Kenna had been following me nonstop for days. And now she’d caught me in her brother’s place. Things had just gone from bad to worse.
“Where’s my brother?”
“Fishing trip,” I replied, using the excuse he had given me.
She didn’t look like she bought it any more than I did.
“Sorry, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to tell him all about how terrible and dangerous I am.
” I couldn’t help but be on the offensive.
If there was any way I would get out of this unscathed, I needed to control the narrative. Or at least…appear to.
“I’ll save us both the time,” Kenna replied. “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t tell him all about the FBI agent who just walked right into your apartment with a key.”
I felt something in me snap—not outwardly, not messily, but with the cold, precise click of a lock sliding into place. All the anxiety, the circling thoughts, the what ifs burned down to a single point of icy fury.
“How about you tell me why you’ve been following me,” I said, accusation in my voice.
“You’ve spent days watching my apartment.
And when you couldn’t find any proof to fit whatever BS theory you had about me you decided you had the right to use your friend to distract me while you interfered with my life, broke into my apartment, and put my dog in danger. ”
Her expression flickered, just for a second, before she recovered.
“What are you?—”
“No, you don’t get to interrupt me,” I said, cutting her off as I began to pace again.
“You don’t get to stalk me, break into my private space, and then stand here like you’re the injured party.
Rogue could’ve been hit by a car. He could’ve disappeared.
And all because you couldn’t stand to mind your own business. ”
Kenna’s jaw tightened.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. No hesitation. No deflection. “I didn’t break into your apartment, and I didn’t let your dog out.”
“You’re telling me it’s just coincidence that someone else other than the one person watching my apartment opened my door?” I said, whirling on her.
“I didn’t even show up to your apartment until an hour ago,” she said, and at least she wasn’t denying that she had been staking me out, watching me far too close for comfort.
“I had another job this morning. Taking photos of a personal injury defendant carrying a ladder if you must know.” Her expression hardened.
“I don’t break and enter. Not unless someone’s life is in danger. ”
“You expect me to buy that?” I asked.
“The images are all time stamped if you want to see them,” she shot back, indicating the phone in her hand. “I wasn’t anywhere near your place this morning. I have an alibi. And unlike you, I don’t cross that line.”
“Unlike me?” I echoed, wrinkling my nose.
She laughed, short and humorless, and gestured around the loft. “You’re the one standing in my brother’s apartment while he’s out of town. You’ve got ties with the FBI. And you expect me not to connect the dots?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her eyes hardened. “That line about the ex-boyfriend almost had me convinced. But you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who needs to escape an abusive relationship.
Not when you can take down a hundred-and-seventy-pound man and barely break a sweat.
And as soon as I talk to Trick, I’m telling him everything.
If you think you can bring him down by working undercover and gathering evidence behind his back, you have another think coming. ”
“Look, if I were trying to drum up dirt on your brother do you really think I’d bring my dog with me to snoop through his things?
” I stepped closer, close enough that she had to look up at me.
“Trust me, if I were who you thought I was, your brother would already be in cuffs. He knows I’m here.
I don’t want to cause trouble for Trick, and I would appreciate it if you would stop trying to cause trouble for me. ”
She held my gaze, searching for an answer. A crack in my facade that she could get her fingers into and peel away the lies. But they weren’t lies anymore. Not for me. I was Hale Hastings now.
“Explain the FBI agent.” She crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter like this was an interview she had scheduled. Like she was ready to grill me for answers and then catch me up in a lie.
I winced. “I can’t. Not without…” I let out a frustrated grunt.
“Where are you from?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“When did you move to Bend?” she asked.
“I can’t answer that, either,” I replied.
“Wow, you’re really painting a picture here,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “Why here? Why now? Why my brother?”
I didn’t respond. I had nothing I could give her. No documents. No clean story. No version of the truth that didn’t put me in deeper danger. And I couldn’t even explain why I couldn’t explain.
“I was told he’s trustworthy. He’s doing me a favor. That’s all I can say.”
“Shit. You’re one of his other customers? He made you a fake ID, didn’t he?”
I didn’t want to verbally acknowledge it—after all, I still didn’t trust Kenna. But my silence spoke volumes.
“God dammit, I told him a hundred times…” She trailed off. “If you’re not undercover…” she said slowly as she took my failure to reply for what it was. “You’re hiding. But not from an abusive ex, am I right?”
Her expression shifted—not to sympathy, not quite, but to recalibration. As if she were mentally redrawing the map she’d been working from. I stared back at her, searching her face for some kind of subterfuge, something that would prove I was right about her and finding nothing.
That was when it hit me.
If Kenna hadn’t broken into my apartment, then someone else had.
The lamp that never stayed plugged in. The missing creamer. The string cheese wrapper I’d convinced myself I’d misplaced. The smell of cigar smoke in a bathroom where no one smoked.
I’d been so focused on Kenna—on the obvious threat—that I hadn’t let myself see the pattern.
“And you can’t talk about it, because it might put you in more danger.
” She’d softened considerably. And to her credit, she wasn’t accusing me anymore.
Instead, she seemed more like a supportive friend than an adversary.
Maybe because she’d seen more than one relationship gone bad.
After all, she had saved Melody from being the victim of a potential date rape.
I exhaled slowly and looked at her. “What did you see while you were watching my place?”
“What?” she asked, thrown off by the change in direction our conversation had taken.
“You’re right, I am hiding,” I said, as close to the truth as I could get.
“But if you weren’t the one to break into my apartment, that means that someone else did, and I need to figure out who.
Because I’ll never have the chance to take the stand if they kill me first, so anything you can tell me, anything you’ve seen, I need to know about it. Please.”
“Kill you?” Kenna said, alarm in her voice. “I don’t know anything. I didn’t see anything. Are you—it sounds like you’re implying that you’re in witsec.”
“If I was, do you really think I would be able to say so?” I shot back. “It doesn’t matter. If it wasn’t you who has been breaking into my apartment then it means someone has found me.”
“Who?” Kenna asked and then shook her head before I could even think of a proper response. “You can’t tell me that. I get it. But are you sure it’s them?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. I wasn’t sure of anything, at this point. “But I have to play it safe. What other choice do I have?”
“Well, you could do what I would do,” Kenna suggested, raising one perfectly manicured eyebrow.
And though I’d never actually confirmed what she thought, I could see in the way that she stood that she wasn’t on the attack anymore.
She had found a story that made sense to her, an explanation for who I was that fit her preconceived notions. Who was I to correct her?
“And what would you do?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“Hang back,” she replied, “Keep an eye on the place from a distance. Take pictures if anything strange happens.”
“A stakeout,” I said, and she grinned at me.
“Look, I don’t want to cause you trouble, especially because it sounds like you’re in enough already. I was just worried you were looking into Trick.”
“Definitely not,” I said. “If anything, he’s helping me. Too much.”
“Yeah, that big heart of his gets him in trouble sometimes,” she said. “Come on, let’s see if we can’t catch your stalker in person.”
“What?” I asked as she headed for the door.
“I figure I owe you. Plus, if you’re not telling the truth and it’s all one big lie, I’ll have you right where I want you,” she said with a wink.