Page 73 of Chad's Chase

THIRTEEN

He will my shield and portion be,

As long as life endures.

Iwatched Chad like he’d just spoken monkey language.

Who the hell did I have left on earth to ‘watch over me’? I almost laughed. “Okay, um, I’m officially confused.”

Getting to his feet, Chad drew me up from the chair. “Let’s talk in the living area so Viv can clean up this mess.”

Still a little nervous, worrisome, and overly bemused, I let him lead me through the open-floor plan, and we took up residence on the couch. Chad lifted my feet up onto his lap and began massaging my soles.

Okay. This was nice. Really nice.God,pleasedon’t let me die.

“I don’t know who ordered protection over you,” Chad admitted.

“Chad…” I sighed, frustrated, “I’m getting more and more confused by the second.”

Concentration dedicated to my feet, his brows furrowed as he said, “When Nadia first brought you to my attention, I took immediate precautions.”

“Ah, so it was Nadia who ratted me out.”

“Yeah, before she got so disturbingly smitten by you.” He glanced over at me and shook his head. “How’d you manage to turn a completely straight girl gay?”

With a chuffed smirk, I replied, “Same way you managed to turn a completely gay girl straight.”

Bringing his attention back to my feet, he abandoned that little digression and hopped back on the main topic. “I went by your apartment and installed cameras so I could always be two steps ahead of y—”

“That’s impossible,” I said, wagging my head, disbelieving. “I swept my apartment for bugs every night.”

Lips compressed, Chad gave me a pointed look, as if saying I’d had no idea who I was dealing with. “Ah, yeah. My guys found your bug detector and tampered with it so you wouldn’t pick up on the ones we planted.”

“You…argghh!” I tried to kick at him, but he firmly held my feet in place.

“Did you forget you were trying toassassinateme?”

Out of valid excuse to throw a bitch tantrum, I huffed and relaxed back into the couch. “You jerked off on all the girl-on-girl action that went on in my apartment?”

“That would imply I’m a pervert,” he deadpanned.

“Did you?”

Refusing to entertain me with an answer in the positive, he ignored it altogether and continued with the original topic. “A man broke into your apartment when you left for work one night. He didn’t seem to be digging for anything like a burglar would; just snooped around and checked stuff. Flipped through notebooks and drawers. Like someone searching for clues to back up a conjecture. Two nights after that, when you left for work, a completely different person broke in. Wired up a cam in your bedroom and left. Soon as he left, I went and got rid of it. That’s when I decided playtime was over. So… I organized a plan—which I predicted you’d play right into—to get you here.”

“In the garden…was that planned, too?”

“Yes,” he confessed.

“It was a distraction,” I stated instead of asking.

“Yes.”

Mortification licked at my veins, or maybe it was irritation, or indignation, rather. “And then you want to give me shit about our fucks not meaning anything to me.”

Fingers still massaging my soles, he spoke in an annoyingly calm tone. “That’s not important right now.”

Like hell it’s not. But I let it go…for now. “So what did you do on the fifth floor?”