Chapter 13 #2
I pushed him out of the way, growling as I did, and eyed my room myself.
While it wasn’t the neatest with clothes strewn about the floor and the bed looking as if I went thirty rounds with a love who didn’t exist, it wasn’t that bad.
I preferred a tidy space, and this was messy compared with how it normally looked; however, it wasn’t the pigsty Fizz claimed it to be.
Especially when I could compare it to my fifteen-year-old cousin Spencer, who didn’t have one square inch of the floor that wasn’t covered by clutter.
Thinking about his room made me shiver in revulsion.
I really hoped he grew out of that soon.
His room smelled and looked like a pigsty, not mine. “It’s not that bad.”
“Nah, I just like teasing you. Now, come on. We need to let Debbie do her job, and you need to eat. I almost considered calling the doc to give you an I.V.” Fizz moved behind me and dropped his hands on my shoulders to guide me out the door.
As soon as we crossed over the threshold to my room, I noticed a petite woman with gray hair waiting outside.
She looked to be in her fifties and reminded me of Sophia from Golden Girls, something my mom always made me watch with her when I was a kid.
There was something about her, something off, and I reached up to rub the middle of my chest. “Excuse me, but?—”
“Keep moving, Max,” Fizz ordered and refused to let me stop. If I didn’t continue to walk, the force he was exerting would have had me falling to the ground.
“Fizz,” I snarled.
“No. You can complain to me once you eat something.” His words and tone were sharp and clipped. When he sounded like that, I knew he wouldn’t back down. Times like these, it was best to do what he said.
Fizz practically threw me into a chair and then grabbed a plate from the microwave and slid it in front of me. “Eat now, talk later.”
“And if I don’t want to?” I asked to get a rise out of him. Wasn’t I the boss, the one who called the shots, the person he was supposed to listen to?
“You may be my boss, but let’s face facts here, your safety and life are my job. Therefore, I’m in charge.” He winked, and I threw a forkful of scrambled eggs at him. “Very mature, Max.”
“I thought so,” I snipped as my stomach growled. Fizz heard it, I could tell by his snicker, but it was so strong, it made my whole abdomen vibrate. Ignoring him, I tucked in and practically inhaled the food set before me, not really tasting anything.
“Do you want anything else?” Fizz took my plate and set it in the sink, running a little water over it.
I started to tell him I was full but thought better of it. I was starving and the… I stopped to think. For the life of me, I wasn’t sure what I had eaten besides eggs, which hadn’t been enough to fill me up. “Do we have any bagels?”
“Yeah. I’ll get it toasted for you.”
“I’ll do it.” I got off my seat and strutted over to the refrigerator, trying to covertly peer down the hall. I wouldn’t be able to see anything since she was in my room, but that didn’t stop me.
“Want to tell me what’s wrong?” Fizz questioned inches from my ear in a quiet whisper.
I screamed and jumped. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing, but apparently something is wrong with you. So what is it?” He continued to speak softly and stretched his upper body around my back to look down the hall.
I opened my mouth to tell him but thought better of it. Usually, I could tell him anything. While it was true that we were employer and employee, he was also one of my friends. Yet this, I didn’t understand it myself, so how was I supposed to tell him? “Nothing.”
Grabbing my bicep, he pulled me away from the fridge and the hallway, and into the pantry on the opposite side of the large kitchen. “Try again,” Fizz demanded when he shut the door.
“Does someone need to get laid? Manhandling the client now?” I was fully aware that I sounded more like a spoiled rich asshole than someone who thought of this man as a friend.
He did nothing except lift an eyebrow, more than likely seeing through my act. This man had been with me longer than anyone and probably knew me better than my own parents.
My fingers dove into my hair, a sure sign of my nervousness and agitation, and I sighed.
“I don’t know.” I held up my hands when he narrowed his eyes.
“Seriously!” I rushed, attempting to keep my voice low.
“When we passed that woman, I felt something strange. I don’t know what it was.
” I couldn’t remember her name and tried to think of a time when I’d seen her before, unable to recall a single time I’d been home when she’d been here.
“She passed all the security checks,” he mumbled as he stared at the door, no longer focused on me.
A moment ago, when he first pulled me into the pantry, he’d been loose, his muscles relaxed, but now, his body was on alert, his muscles tense.
Most wouldn’t notice the change, it was subtle, but I could tell.
“Maybe I’m still exhausted, and it was nothing,” I hedged. It was a possibility, even though I didn’t think that was the case.
Shaking his head, he said, “Remember what I told you about your instincts.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah.” Fizz seemed to think I needed to listen to my inner animal, that my swan would be able to pinpoint danger faster than I could without him.
“Don’t discount what you feel or think. I’ll do some more research on her, and if necessary, I’ll let her go.”
Fizz always had good instincts, too, which made me inquire, “Did you have any odd feelings about her?”
“Later. She should be done soon. Get your bagel and sit down. I need to make a call.” He stepped out of the pantry and left me there.
“Max,” he snapped, pulling me out of whatever stupor I was in, and I hurried out, throwing a bagel into the toaster and myself into a chair before Debbie left my room.
I felt her coming. I didn’t hear her steps on the polished dark hardwood floors, but I felt her. The urge to run and hide was even stronger than it had been when I passed her earlier.
“Is there anything else you need?” she asked, her eyes focused on Fizz.
Shaking his head, he dropped his phone from his ear and answered her with a blinding smile on his face, “No, thank you for cleaning.”
The moment the door closed behind her, and she was gone, a rush of air whooshed out of me. It was like I could breathe again, and anxiety I’d felt since our meeting in the hallway, melted away.
“Better?” Fizz’s sharp eyes were studying me, scanning my face, searching for something, as he leaned against the sink with his arms crossed over his chest.
Without thought, my hand rubbed the center of my chest again. It didn’t feel tight or off now, everything had left with that woman. “A lot better.”
I jumped when the toaster finished, and my bagel popped up, a little more on the charred side than toasted. I couldn’t eat it and disposed of it in the trash while Fizz answered his phone.
“What did you find?” He marched down the hall to his side of the floor, his voice growing fainter.
I had to give it to him, he worked quickly and wouldn’t wait to see what happened with this new maid.
Something felt off, and he acted, using his network of connections.
Would he find something? Fizz’s background checks could rival the CIA, and the woman had passed with flying colors.
Had he missed something? That sounded like an oxymoron if I ever heard one.
Fizz miss anything? I couldn’t imagine that happening in this lifetime.
A rumbling from my stomach reminded me it demanded more food. Shaking my head, I pulled another bagel out of the bag and put it in the toaster turning down the setting to be more golden, less black.
As I stood there waiting, I would periodically glance in the direction that Fizz disappeared, biting my lip, wondering what he learned.
Good? Bad? Was it just me and nothing to worry about?
I turned my head and focused on the front door as I thought about that woman.
Just conjuring her image in my mind had my anxiety rising.
What was it about her that set me on edge.
She was a little more than half my height, old, and shuffled her feet when she walked as if she couldn’t lift them an inch to take a real step.
On her face had been glasses, which made her eyes look three times their normal size.
So why would someone like that make me feel as if danger stood in front of me?
Impatient and needing to do something, I lifted the lever on the toaster, forcing my bagel to pop out.
Maybe if I concentrated on food, everything else would fade into the background until Fizz was done talking on the phone.
Doubtful. Even as I worked on spreading cream cheese on the barely toasted bread, I kept searching for Fizz, willing him to appear and tell me I had nothing to be concerned about, that everything was in my head.
“Come on already!” I exclaimed under my breath in frustration, throwing the knife I’d been using into the sink with such force, it slid up the side and flew out of the sink to land on the floor with a clank.
“Fuck!” I glared at it for a few seconds, seething, but eventually, I bent down to retrieve it and set it in the sink once again. This time, it would not escape.
I picked up my food and carried it to the chair I’d occupied earlier and ate, my focus remaining on the direction I knew Fizz would return.
Time ticked by. I finished the bagel and two cups of coffee before I heard him running—not a good sign—through the apartment, his large feet pounding on the floor, making each step echo throughout the area like a gun firing.
It reminded me of the one time he took me to meet some of his friends so they could teach me some new defense maneuvers.
They marched in with their platoon, each step in sync and precise, making their small group of fifteen sound like one giant.