Page 3 of Tracing Her Stolen Identity (Secure Watch #2)

The doorbell rang in eight minutes, which meant Reece had either broken some laws or was closer to their old neighborhood than he’d thought.

Skylar rolled to the door and grabbed the handle, taking a steeling breath before opening it.

She hadn’t seen him since he’d graduated from college and left for a job elsewhere.

She had attended the University of Wisconsin Superior across the bridge for a degree in art, but she had promptly dropped out after a year when she discovered making money as an artist had nothing to do with a degree.

While he’d attended college, Reece had lived at home, which was next door to her house.

They’d grown up that way, spending most of their waking hours together as kids, but their social time had become less and less as he made new friends in college and his high school relationships became less important to him.

When she became less important to him, but she’d wanted it that way, hadn’t she?

Skylar had told him in no uncertain terms they would never be more than friends, even though he had made it clear several times that he wanted to date her.

She’d had her reasons back then. Reasons that didn’t seem nearly as important to her anymore.

“Skylar!” He pounded on the door, drawing her from her thoughts as she jumped and yanked on the handle.

The man standing on her ramp took her breath away. “Back up,” he said, his words clipped. Once she was clear, he closed the door behind him as he assessed the front room. “Holy hell.” The two words were said in one breath before he knelt to make eye contact. “Are you okay?”

“Shaken but not hurt,” she answered, inhaling his scent. He still wore Stetson cologne on his body and a Stetson hat on his head, but everything else about him, besides the color of his eyes, was bigger, stronger and sexier than she wanted to face right now.

As he gazed at her from under the brim of that black hat, his one blue eye and one gray eye sparked with the same kind of familiarity she was sure was in her own.

Their childhood years ran through her mind as she came face-to-face with the boy who was now a man.

Reece, the boy she had called Land because he called her Sky, had always been tall, but even squatting, he could meet her eyes in the chair.

His curly blond hair peeked out from under the hat and nearly touched his collar.

It was either a sign that he liked it long or hadn’t had time to get it cut recently.

She remembered how she used to play with his hair, twirling the curls around her fingers, when she was a little girl.

She wanted to do it again and then let her fingers travel to his face to touch the shaped, tightly trimmed goatee that cupped his chin.

She wouldn’t do that, though, because they weren’t friends anymore.

“Thank you for coming. I didn’t know what else to do until I remembered you were back in town.”

“I suppose everyone knew I was back in town after the Red River Slayer case ended.”

“That, but also, your mom told my mom, who told me.”

“Does anyone else live here?” he asked, and she could tell the idea that more people might be mixed up in this made him nervous.

“No, I live alone, other than while renting the other half to Mrs. Valentine. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m the only one involved as far as I know.”

“Good. Well, that’s not good, but I’m glad we only have to worry about your safety right now. Let’s get your things and get out of here.”

“What? No. I can’t leave my house like this!” She flung her hand around at the mess behind him, but he was already walking toward the bedrooms, the ones he knew well, considering he’d spent half of his childhood here.

Reece spun on the heel of what she noticed to be a pair of black snakeskin boots. “You can and you will. We don’t have time to clean it up right now. Besides, my friends from Secure One will come in, look around and see what they can find.”

“Don’t you want to know what’s happened?”

“Not here,” he said with a tight shake of his head as he mouthed bugs . “We need to get out of here. Where’s your phone?”

Without thinking, she dug it out of the bag under her chair.

As he walked back over, she handed it to him.

Did he think someone had bugged her house?

A glance behind him at the destruction in her living room made her admit it was possible.

The computerized voice started again, and she dragged her gaze to his, his brow up as he listened to the message.

A shudder ran down her spine at the laughter.

Would she hear that in her nightmares for the rest of her life?

The idea worried her, but she bit back the whim per and straightened in her chair.

When the video ended, Reece grabbed a pen and paper from the table drawer near the couch and turned back to her.

Passcode , he mouthed, and she took the paper, scribbling the numbers down before handing it back to him. If he realized the significance of them, he didn’t say. Instead, he tore the paper off the pad and tossed the phone and the paper into the drawer.

“I’ll let my guys know where to find it, and they’ll take it to my boss.”

“Mina Jacobs?” Skylar asked, not surprised when he lifted a brow.

That was always his “explain” action when they were kids.

“Secure One and Secure Watch have made the national news multiple times, Reece. I don’t live in a cave.

The Spiderweb site your friends pulled down still terrifies me when I think about it. ”

Last year, the company he worked for might have saved the world in a roundabout way.

They were involved in a situation on the dark web where one bad actor wrote a program that would slowly give him control over every camera in the world and the ability to collect all that data.

The idea of that information in one person’s hands was terrifying, and she had looked at security cameras in a whole new light ever since.

“Fair. I suppose that’s why you called me?”

“No.” She glanced down at her lap rather than meet his eyes. The last thing Skylar wanted to see was his reaction to her following statement. “I called you because even though it’s been a decade since we’ve seen each other, I still trust you.”

In a blink, he was kneeling in front of her again, his hands on her wheels.

“You can trust me, Sky.” His gaze darted left and right, maybe out of nervousness about the situation or because he kept using her childhood nickname despite his apparent desire not to.

“Tell me what you need and I’ll gather it.

I don’t want you to roll over any glass and get it stuck in your wheels. Remember what happened that one time?”

Her palm burned at the memory, and she held it up—a long, jagged scar puckered the skin even now, nearly a dozen years later.

Reece ran his finger across the scar, sending a shiver of familiarity through her.

He had always done that to her, and she was disappointed to know he still could.

She’d thought she had Reece Palmer out of her head forever, but it turned out to be more of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing.

“I suppose a trip to the emergency room for stitches would be inconvenient.” Her wink told him she was teasing when she dropped her hand to her lap.

“That suitcase is packed,” she explained, pointing at the rolling suitcase in the hallway.

“I just got back from a trip, but I need more meds.”

“Tell me where they are and I’ll grab them.”

“Lower kitchen cabinet to the left of the sink. But you don’t know what I need.”

Before she finished speaking, he was already walking to the kitchen. When he returned, he had a baggie full of pill bottles. He grabbed the one she’d set on top of the suitcase, stuffed it in and then unzipped the top of her bag to stash them. It wasn’t orderly, but it got the job done.

“Stay here while I take the bag to my truck, then I’ll return for you.”

“What if we’re overreacting?” she asked, rolling aside so he could get to the door with her suitcase.

“Do you want to find out?” Slowly, he raised his brow again as he waited for her answer.

Binate’s voice stuttered through her mind, and she shook her head as her heart rate picked up.

“I didn’t think so. Wait right there.”

Reece disappeared out the door, and she let out a breath for the first time since he’d walked through it. She’d done many hard things in life, but spending the next few days with grown-up Reece Palmer would be the hardest thing she’d ever done.