Page 22 of Reckless
“You can’t be serious.”
“Well, I wasn’t before, but now I’m interested. You wouldn’t go out on a date with me?”
“We can’t be having this conversation,” she says, more to herself than to me. “You’re a client. I’m working with you. Stalker issues aside, going out on a date with you would be highly unethical. I have enough to deal with as it is.”
“But if we weren’t working together, you’d be interested?” I say jokingly, but when she pauses, the catch in my throat is my first clue that maybe it really isn’t a joke.
Maybe I do want her to say yes.
“That’s neither here nor there, considering we are working together.”
She chews on her bottom lip and fidgets with the necklace around her throat. I know fear. This isn’t fear. If I pressed her, I could get her to say yes. As though she can read my mind, she trembles.
I have a feeling Phoebe Hart could be the most challenging risk of them all.
If she hadn’t trembled, I wouldn’t have backed down. I would have encouraged her to accept my offer. I would have persuaded her back to my sorry excuse of an apartment, and I would have seduced her into bed. But she did. And it reminded me of the story she just told me.
That little full-body shiver had the words locking in my throat because, deep inside, I wanted to tremble too. No woman has ever made me consider the consequences of my actions. What if I got her back to my place, and it went south? What if I did or said the wrong things, which is very possible, and fucked everything up?
Knowing myself and knowing how none of my relationships have ever been anything more than a come-and-go type situation, I say instead, “We’re here.”
“Where exactly is here?” she asks, no longer fidgeting.
“Whoever emailed you rerouted the email through various servers, but Cole’s guys were able to track the IP address down to an apartment here. I’m going to go take a look. You wait here. After, we can talk about where you want to go for dinner on our date. It can be your treat if me paying gets your feminist back up.”
I leave her stewing in the parking lot and head toward the main entrance of the apartment building. I’m carrying— there aren’t many times when I’m not—but for a second, I miss the backup that came with being in the military. Someone always had your back. The camaraderie and brotherhood are second to none.
The apartment the IP leads to is registered to Smith Johnson, the same name as Phoebe’s internet troll. Guaranteed fake, but I check the names on the mailboxes, which are ancient and peeling, but not so bad that I can’t see the fucktard is in apartment 5B.
The front door opens and closes behind me. I take a discreet look over my shoulder and find a thoroughly pissed off Phoebe glaring at me.
“I thought I told you to stay in the car.”
“What makes you think you have any right to tell me what to do?”
“That isn’t what I said or what I meant, and you know it. It’s safer for you to wait in the car.”
“Screw that. I’m not waiting in the car while you track down this asshole. I’m going with you. I’m the one they’re after. It’s my life they’re screwing with. If anyone deserves to be there, it’s me.” She opens her suit jacket and turns to show me a Glock strapped in a flank holster close to her kidneys. “I can take care of myself.”
“I’m not saying you can’t, but I’d feel better if you were out of harm’s way.”
“If I cared about how you felt, I’d ask. Now let’s do this. Which apartment?”
She starts up the stairs because, for some god-awful reason, there’s no elevator. I jog to catch up to her. “Fifth floor, apartment B. But if you’re coming with me, we’re going to do this my way.”
“Or what?” she asks with a challenging glance back at me.
“Or I’ll hog-tie you and throw you in the car. Unless you also have years of actual military training that helps you to navigate possibly hostile situations?”
“Fine. What is your way?”
“You stay behind me at all times. Don’t do anything stupid. If shit goes down, you get the hell out of dodge. Don’t try to be a hero.”
“Fine.”
The fifth floor is deserted, which should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. The place is a dump, literally falling apart, and should probably be condemned. It doesn’t make sense that someone in the cast or crew would live here. Crackheads don’t exactly have the brains to hack into an email or keep a steady job with a production. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and I wish I knew exactly what the fuck was going on.
Phoebe follows close behind, keeping silent and alert like I instructed. Girl has steel ovaries, that’s for sure, and I respect the hell out of her for it.