Irritated, Brett clenched and unclenched his fist as he went to see who was at his door. It had better be life and death or someone was going to have a broken nose. Still bare-chested, he didn’t give a damn if whoever was pounding on his door knew exactly what he’d been doing when they’d been blowing up his phone and pounding on his damned door!
With a little more force than was necessary, he flipped the dead bolt and pulled the door open just as a fist was about to make contact with it again.
Instinct kicked in.
In two swift moves, the fist was behind the back of the person connected to it and his face was pressed up against the door instead.
“Shit, Brett, calm the fuck down!” a familiar voice said, although admittedly, it was hard to recognize at first since the mouth it came from was almost eating his steel front door.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Brett released the arm and checked to make sure he was right about who it was.
“Looking for you. Don’t you answer your phone?” Jeremy was the last person he’d expected to find at his front door given that he hadn’t seen him since they’d both left the Army after their last deployment.
“I was busy.” Brett deflected answering the question. “Why are you calling me? Why are you here?”
“I know you were.” That snide smirk was familiar. “Your girlfriend and I have some business to take care of.”
Brett had no idea what that meant. “What kind of business could your ugly mug possibly have with a fashion photographer?”
“She knows,” Jeremy said, as eloquent as ever.
“Was that you lurking in the shadows at the resort earlier?” Brett wished he hadn’t gotten sidetracked earlier and had gotten to the bottom of things with Mari instead. He’d brought her here with every intention of finding out what was bothering her, and instead he’d gotten way off track. Now it seemed like Jeremy was somehow involved in whatever it was, which only made him all the more curious, and suspicious.
Seeing how disheveled Jeremy looked and taking note that he reeked of booze, Brett felt a twinge of guilt that they’d lost touch. After he had left the Army, he’d intended for them to stay in touch, but days without contact had turned into weeks, and then months and now years since they’d spoken.
“Yeah, funny how Mr. Sharp as a Tack misses things like that when there’s a hot babe to distract him.”
It was all coming back to him now. Sure, he and Jeremy had been like brothers, but they had come from completely different backgrounds. Jeremy had been raised by his grandmother because his mom never bothered to stay sober long enough to raise her kid. Brett, on the other hand, had grown up with a military father who was gone more often than he was home, but his mother had always been his rock. To him it had always seemed like Jeremy was looking for a missing piece, always pushing things just a hair too far, but Brett had always known that deep down, Jeremy was a stand-up guy—even when he didn’t seem to know when to shut up—like now.
Instead of throwing him out, Brett shot him the bird and tried to laugh it off. Showing Jeremy he was getting under his skin would only ensure this went on even longer than it already had.
“Listen, I’ve got your number—since you called me four times—so I’ll give it to Mari and have her call you tomorrow.” He emphasized the last word to let Jeremy know there was no way he was having this conversation right now. He wanted to hear Mari’s side of things first—he owed her that much.
“You do that, Bro. Otherwise, I’ll be back.”
Was that supposed to be a threat? Brett was still wondering as he closed and locked his front door. Something about his friend was different in a way that didn’t add up.
“Who was that?” Mari asked behind him.
“You don’t know?” Brett asked, watching her expression carefully for any signs of deception.
“No. Am I supposed to?” She had snagged one of his T-shirts off the dresser and he had to fight to keep his focus off the fact that the hem of his shirt was flirting with her bare ass. Damn, if she wasn’t the most tempting thing he’d ever seen.
“He seemed to know you.”
“What exactly am I being accused of here?” She bristled under his stare.
“That was him on the beach earlier when you got spooked.” Again he watched for any sign she wasn’t being honest and found nothing. “I think it’s about time you tell me what’s going on.”
Mari crossed the room and picked her dress up off the floor before heading to his bedroom without saying anything.
“Where are you going?” he asked, following behind her in confusion.
“If we’re talking, then I’m getting dressed.” She glanced in his direction. “You should too.” Her eyes traveled down his chest and abs leaving no doubt in his mind why she wanted him to put a shirt on.
Brett opened a dresser drawer and tossed her a pair of sweats. “Put those on.” He grabbed himself a shirt and tugged it on over his head.
“Thank you,” she mumbled as she slid his sweatpants up over her hips.
Her naked hips.
God help him. He was never going to get through this conversation without wanting to pull them right back off. Taking a deep breath, he dug deep and tried to focus on something—anything—else so he could get to the bottom of things.
Twenty minutes later she’d borrowed a hairbrush, washed her face, and settled herself in the corner of his couch to tell her story. He handed her a cup of coffee and took the chair opposite her to put some distance between them, so he could act like a security professional and not just a horny teenager.
“About a month ago I received a letter in the mail, no return address, saying that I had something that didn’t belong to me. I had no idea what it was talking about and chalked it up to some stupid prank.”
“Only it wasn’t?” he guessed.
“Apparently not. About a week after I got the first letter…”
He interrupted. “How many letters have you gotten?”
“Three, so far.”
“Okay, go on.”
“About a week after I got the first letter, a tabloid ran an article insinuating that I had edited a set of photos from a photo shoot to make these models appear thinner, taller, more appealing than they really were.”
“I thought that sort of thing was standard practice in your industry.”
She visibly bristled. “It might be for some, but it’s not for me. I’ve built my reputation on not cooperating with this industry in that regard. Women are beautiful no matter what shape, size, color, or anything else they are!”
“I never said otherwise. I just said I thought that was common practice in the fashion world.”
“It is, and that’s part of the problem with our industry. Anyway, I don’t do that to my images. Clients hire me because of that. And in today’s world, I have a growing fan base thanks to some pretty hefty backlash that’s happened in recent years.”
“So accusing you of doing that was intentional to cause a scandal?” He was trying to follow this as best he could.
“Yes. Absolutely!”
“Okay, what happened next?”
“All hell broke loose,” she answered. “That one tiny tabloid article was picked up by everyone, or so it seemed. Overnight it was a national story. Reporters were outside my house two days later with news trucks doing a live feed on the morning news shows.”
“Slow news day?” he asked.
“Just my luck.” She sipped her coffee for a moment before she continued. “The day the tabloid article ran I got a bunch of hang-up calls. But then when real news outlets were covering it, there was another letter, but this one didn’t come in the mail—it was slipped under my door.”
“So someone was at your house? Even with all those reporters out front?” Now he was getting why she felt threatened.
“My neighbor saw a courier drop off a package at the building office, so my best guess is that someone paid him to also slip an envelope under my door.”
“How’d you put that together?” He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees listening closely.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not inept. I asked my neighbors if they’d seen anyone in the building. Then I asked the building manager who had delivered the package and called the courier. It turned out the guy who had delivered the package had been new and never came back after that day.”
“So he quit?”
“Well, he just disappeared and didn’t come back to work.”
Brett made a mental note to get the name of the courier and check for himself. Something didn’t add up.
“What did that letter say?”
“Basically it let me know that the person accusing me of stealing was responsible for the smear campaign.”
“Wait, did it say you stole something or that you had something that didn’t belong to you? Be specific.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back thinking.
“It’s important that I know the exact wording,” Brett emphasized.
“Why?”
“Because the way you interpreted it may not have been the actual wording. There could be a clue in the words they used that gets lost in the translation of you just giving me the gist of it.”
“Okay, let me think.” Brett realized that she looked tired and wondered how much sleep she’d lost since all this started. “The first letter said, ‘You took something you shouldn’t have.’ I think.”
“Okay.” Brett got up and found a pencil and paper so he could write down the exact phrasing. “What else can you remember?”
“The second letter said something like, ‘Give it up and we’ll go away.’”
“That’s it? Just the one phrase?”
“No, there was more, but I can’t remember exactly. It was something to let me know the two things were connected and if I gave them back whatever they think I had then they would make the scandal stop.”
“But how can they do that now? A scandal kind of takes on a life of its own. You can’t turn it back off as easy as you turn it on, can you?” He was just thinking out loud, but when he saw the look on her face, he wanted to take back every word. She looked crestfallen, fighting tears, and wanting to hide all at the same time.
“No.” She packed so much hurt and emotion into that one word his heart broke for her a little bit.
He knew what it was like to define yourself by a career and face the very real possibility of having to watch it end. He swallowed the bitterness that climbed the back of his throat and reminded himself he loved his job now and he didn’t have to crawl through the desert to do it.
“I’m sorry. That was just me thinking out loud and it was stupid. Ignore it. Tell me the rest of what happened.” He came to sit beside her and took her hand, fooling himself into thinking he could keep his hands to himself.
“No, you’re right. There’s no putting this back in the bottle now.” She sniffled slightly and he cursed under his breath.
“We will figure it out. Somehow we’ll figure it out. If you didn’t do anything wrong, then we’ll prove it and we’ll fix the rest.” How in the hell was he going to do that? He had no idea, but the words were out of his mouth so he’d better figure something out. Fast.
“There was one more letter.”
“Okay.” He could already tell he wasn’t going to like whatever came next.
“This one was sitting in the center of my bed when I came home one night.”
Sonofabitch. What was Jeremy doing mixed up in this? That’s the real question he needed to answer and now he wished he had broken his nose when he had the chance earlier. Even if he wasn’t the one who had put the note on her bed, he had it coming just for knowing the people who had.
* * *
Mari was exhausted. Correction, she’d been exhausted several hours ago. Now she was asleep with her eyes open. Mostly because she was afraid of what her imagination would conjure up if she closed them. Ever since she’d walked in to find proof someone had been in her apartment she’d tossed and turned at night and more than once woke up from a dream where someone was standing over her in her sleep.
“What did the third note say?” Brett asked. He was standing up now, pacing the living room because he said he could think better on his feet. “Specifically,” he added with a look in her direction.
“The third one said, ‘Ready to give it up yet?’”
“That’s it?”
“There was a copy of one of the photos from the news stories tucked in the envelope too. I guess just to make sure I got the point that they were responsible for all this mess.”
“Yeah, I get that. What I don’t get is what they think you have and how they expect you to give it back if they don’t tell you how to find them or who they are.”
“I never even thought of that.” She ran her hands through her hair and felt the exhaustion rolling through her in waves. “I should get back to the resort.” She desperately wanted to sleep and maybe if she was lucky enough this would all have been a bad dream when she woke up.
She looked at Brett pacing his living room making notes in a notebook about everything she’d said. He was gorgeous. Making love with him had been the stuff of dreams. Mind-altering, bone-meltingly amazing in every conceivable way. She really hoped that this wasn’t a one-night stand because the idea of never being held by him again made her feel a kind of emptiness she didn’t think was possible.
“As much as I want to persuade you to stay here instead, I want to dig into this and see what I can find out and I’d rather have you safe at the resort than here alone while I do that.”
“What does that mean—you want to dig into this?” She unfolded her legs from the couch and stood, indulging in a full-body stretch with her arms over her head and her back arched.
Brett’s arms came around her waist and pulled her close, her arms dropping to curl around his shoulders as naturally as if they’d been doing it for years. Mari marveled at how during what was the most stressful and uncertain time she could ever remember in her life, with Brett she felt completely relaxed and comfortable. This was the first time she’d been in his home and she had felt like she was walking into her own home. If her home was a beautiful house on the beaches of Mimosa Key and not an apartment in New York City.
“It means that as much as I’d like to live out my personal fantasy and strip my clothes off of you, now that you trusted me with what’s bothering you, I’d like to find out who’s behind it and why.”
“Do you think your friend is somehow involved?”
“It certainly looks that way.” He kissed her softly. “That’s one of the many questions I’d like to find out the answer to.”
“What are the rest?”
“I’ll tell you on the drive back to the resort, while I ask you a few more questions.”
Brett pulled his pickup into a parking space and shut off the engine and headlights.
“I can walk from here,” Mari assured him, reaching for the door.
“Not happening,” he answered, climbing out and meeting her at her door. “The resort has top-notch security, but I’m still not risking it. I’ll walk you back, check out your villa, and see you safely locked inside before I head back to town.”
Mari found the gesture delightfully old-fashioned and normally the type of thing she’d have scoffed at and declared her feminist nature loudly. Maybe it was the fact that she was exhausted, or maybe it was that she couldn’t separate the smell of him from her own scent on her skin, or maybe it was just that he didn’t give any indication that he was doing it because she was some fragile, helpless female. It truly seemed like he was just being protective and after struggling through this mess on her own for the last several weeks, the idea of letting someone else help carry the burden appealed more than she could have guessed.
If anyone could untangle this mess, she figured it would be Brett. He’d already put together pieces she hadn’t even realized meant anything at all.
As they walked through the quiet resort in comfortable silence, Mari couldn’t help but smile. Despite all the craziness in her life that had brought her here, she was content and happy to be here in this moment.
Brett’s large hand engulfed hers as they walked. So much had changed in the few hours since she’d left her villa and walked to the cocktail party. “Do you know that I didn’t even want to go to that party tonight?” She laughed.
Brett laughed too. “Me either. I was pissed when Michael asked me to go in his place. He never asks me to do that sort of thing.”
“What a coincidence.” She sighed contentedly.
“Mari, did you leave the door of your villa open?” Brett was already pulling her behind him as he asked the question and Mari’s nerves were instantly on alert. Any trace of relaxation she’d been reveling in moments ago was gone in a flash.
“No. I absolutely closed and locked the door. Could it be housekeeping?” Mari could see a sliver of light spilling out the front door of Rockrose. A chill swept over her that had nothing to do with the air coming off the water.
Brett pulled his cell phone from his pocket and flicked his thumb over the screen to unlock it before handing it to her. “Call Luke McBain. Tell him your name, tell him the name of your villa, and tell him that I’m with you…say my name, do you understand?”
She nodded and scrolled through the contact list until she found the number and hit dial. Brett physically moved her by her shoulders until she was standing against the villa just behind the door where she wouldn’t be seen. She didn’t even have time to process what he was doing before he disappeared silently into the villa. Fear gripped her like a vice squeezing her lungs. When Luke answered, she almost couldn’t speak for a moment.
After she managed to relay the information, Brett had instructed her to stand there holding the cell phone in her hand. She didn’t have to wait very long before Brett reappeared in the doorway.
“They’re gone. I think I scared them off.” Brett’s voice was calm, and Mari let that calmness wash over her and settle her frayed nerves.
“Who was it?” she asked, following him back inside. “Did they take anything?” Now that the fear had passed, she was mad. How dare someone do this to her? She hadn’t done anything to anyone and she certainly hadn’t done anything wrong. This was a beautiful resort and here she was still dealing with someone stalking and harassing her.
“Nothing that I can see, but you’re gonna be pissed,” Brett answered and Mari immediately saw why. Her camera was smashed on the floor inside the door leading out to the patio, presumably the way the intruder had escaped when Brett came through the front.
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, rushing to pick up the pieces of broken plastic, glass, and electronics. All that remained of her oldest camera. The one she’d saved her money for in college and carried around the world with her.
“Wait, don’t touch anything.” Brett grabbed her and stopped her before she could reach it. “There could be fingerprints.”
“Oh, yeah. I didn’t think of that.” She felt a small flicker of anger grow. “I’m so sick of this.”
Brett nodded. “Me too, and I just found out about it an hour ago.”
* * *
Mari woke up alone in her bed at Rockrose the next morning and for a moment all she thought about was how she missed the warmth of Brett’s body curved behind hers. Quickly that bubble of happiness burst and the memories of last night came back in waves. Whoever was behind this had followed her all the way to Barefoot Bay and broken into her villa. Somehow an Army buddy of Brett’s was involved, which made things more complicated, to say the least. It was time to stop hiding and being afraid. It was time to get down to the business of finding out what this was about, and rescuing whatever she could salvage of her career.
From somewhere outside of the bedroom she heard the low rumble of Brett’s voice. She glanced out the window and was surprised to see the sun high in the sky. She’d barely slept at all since this all started, but last night in Brett’s arms she had the best night’s sleep she had had in a long time.
Throwing back the blankets, she made a quick stop in the bathroom, grimaced at the sight in the mirror and did her best to tame her wild mane of hair, and brushed her teeth before following the scent of coffee to find Brett.
She was surprised to find him sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by papers and folders. He was on the phone and looked up only long enough to smile at her and point at the coffee pot before returning to his conversation.
Mari poured herself a cup of coffee, splashed a few drops of creamer from the refrigerator, and turned to look over his shoulder at the papers he’d accumulated. Where on earth had he gotten all of this and how long had he been up?
There were photocopies of the notes she’d found in her apartment as well as police reports and newspaper and magazine articles about the scandal. None of them detailed the threats, of course. All the reporters cared about was highlighting her fall from grace. One headline shouted, “Body Image Advocate Photographer Outed as Worst of the Bunch.” She grimaced and looked away.
She’d worked hard to build a reputation in this business as a photographer who didn’t cave into pressure and thought women’s bodies were beautiful the way they were so why bother altering them to make them fit some unattainable ideal? The models she worked with were gorgeous creatures who worked hard both on diet and exercise regimes that would make Mari cower in fear to attain the industry standards. Yet many of her peers didn’t think that was enough and digitally altered them, removing shadows from where nature placed them and adding them where nature didn’t. Lengthening some body parts and shortening others. Mari found the entire practice ridiculous and was lucky to have found her niche with designers and editors who agreed with her. It was a small but growing group and she had proudly led the charge. Now it was all gone in the blink of an eye because somehow she’d made the wrong person angry without even realizing it.
“Hey?” Brett had hung up while Mari was lost in thought. “You okay?” He tucked a stray hair behind her ear as he stood up and kissed the bridge of her nose. Such a simple gesture but Mari reveled in the comfort it gave.
“Yeah. I’m good. Just, I don’t know…” She trailed off, not sure how to explain how she felt seeing all of this negativity about her spread out on the table in front of them.
“Pissed off?” Brett asked.
Mari laughed, placing a hand on his chest and absorbing the warmth he radiated. “Actually, yeah I am. I’m sick of this. I’m tired of hiding, I’m tired of being afraid and frankly, I’m tired of being tired! I didn’t do anything wrong and I shouldn’t have to feel like I did.”
“Good, because I couldn’t agree more. I say we stop playing defense and start playing offense instead.”
“How did you get all of this?” She gestured to the paperwork. “And what time did you get up?”
“I got up about two hours ago. It was hard to leave you alone, trust me.” Another kiss but this one on her mouth took a little longer than the first. “I called a buddy in NYPD last night while you were in the shower, another time I didn’t want to leave you alone by the way, and he had all of this sent over to the resort. It was at the front desk when I walked over there this morning.”
“Wow,” she whispered, in awe of how much progress he’d made in just a few hours when she’d been dealing with this on her own for more than a month. “Impressive.”
“Just wait.” His grin promised so much she had to fight to keep her knees from buckling. “I have a few more questions for you but let’s get you some food first.”
Right on cue, her stomach rumbled loudly. She slapped a hand over it as if she could muffle the sound. “Oops.” She giggled. “I think my stomach would agree that is a good idea.”
“How long will it take you to get dressed? I want to make one more phone call before we go.”
After assuring him she’d be speedy but not so speedy he couldn’t make his phone call, she headed back into the bedroom with a lightness to her footsteps she couldn’t deny and didn’t want to. Whatever today was going to bring, she felt confident she could handle it with Brett by her side. The only question mark in her mind was what would happen to them after this problem was resolved. With determination, she pushed that question aside for now and focused on the happiness growing inside her instead.
* * *
Brett took a long drink of the cold beer that he was nursing waiting for Jeremy to show. So far he was thirty minutes late and counting, but Brett wasn’t budging until he got some answers, so the name of the game was waiting, at least for now. He tried to recall every detail he knew about Jeremy—how Jeremy never went home even when they’d gotten the rare leave around the holidays or how he always drank more and partied harder than anyone else in their unit. But the most significant memory that stuck out was the day in Fallujah that he’d told Mari about just the other night. The irony wasn’t lost on him—it was a night he never talked about to family or friends he’d known for years, but with Mari, the story had just poured out of him. Then a knock at the door had brought a guy he hadn’t even thought about since that night years ago in a dusty desert town that had almost cost him his life, and probably would have if Jeremy hadn’t pulled him back just in time.
Absently he rubbed the scar on his chest. It was the only visible one he had from that night. The others were more like flashes of nightmares that came less and less frequently now. The sounds and smells of that night—of that entire country—would never leave him completely but with time and distance, they faded a little more every day.
“Hey, sorry I’m late.” Jeremy slid onto the stool next to him with a glance around the room. “Where’s our mutual friend?”
“Not here, and nowhere you’ll find her.” Brett had made sure of that before he’d left her. He figured that hanging out with an FBI agent and his boss at the security company was about as safe as he could keep her without doing it himself.
“You lied?” Brett had implied that Mari wanted to meet with Jeremy when he’d texted, he figured it was the surest way to get him to show up on short notice. “I’m surprised, Bro.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re mixed up in? And while you’re talking tell me who too.” Brett made sure there was just enough of an edge to his voice to let Jeremy know he wasn’t kidding around.
Jeremy got up as if he was going to leave, but Brett blocked his path with his foot. “You can leave, obviously, but the people here know me and like me, so if you make a scene, I can promise you who will be the one who ends up on the wrong end of things, in every way possible.”
Jeremy sat back down and gestured to the bartender for a beer. “How do you know her?”
“None of your business.”
Jeremy’s eyebrows shot up. “Listen dude, I thought we were friends. If you want to do this the hard way, that’s fine by me.”
“We were friends. And that is the only reason you’re getting the courtesy of this conversation before I turn over everything I’ve got, including your fingerprints on my front door to match with those from the break-in at Casa Blanca last night, to the cops.”
That got his attention, so Brett kept going.
“Did I mention that the local FBI is already involved since things have officially crossed state lines?” That was a pure bluff. He’d only briefed Dex enough to make sure he didn’t let Mari out of his sight and at the same time ensure that Dex knew what he needed to know to keep his own family safe while she was there.
He watched as his friend turned over the options in his mind trying to figure a way out of the mess he was in and probably already realizing there wasn’t one.
“I’ve been freelancing, basically hired muscle, working for a guy.”
Brett snorted. “Hired muscle?”
“Shut the fuck up, man. We didn’t all get a college education out of our years in the military. I gotta do what I gotta do!” After that little burst of indignation, Jeremy settled back down. “I don’t ask any questions. I just do what he asks me to. He told me to get something from your booty-call girl.” At the term, Brett bristled enough that Jeremy immediately changed his tune. “Your friend, I mean, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I figured if she was scared she’d give it up faster.”
“What’s the thing he wants and who is he?” Brett was officially done messing around with all of this nonsense.
“I’m not giving up his name. You can turn whatever you’ve got into whoever you know but trust me, what the law will do to me is nothing compared to what would happen if I rat him out.”
Brett took a deep breath and fought the urge to pound his fist on the bar. Right now they were just two guys having a beer in town, and that’s how he intended for it to stay. If he caused a scene, then he’d have a lot of explaining to do and he’d rather not. Mimosa Key was a small town at its heart and the gossip mill could spread a story faster than the six o’clock news.
“You’re a disgrace, you know that?” He didn’t wait for him to continue. “Then tell me what he wants.”
Jeremy flinched at the insult and took a drink of his beer. Just like last night, there was no mistaking the fact that he’d been drinking heavily, and from the looks of him, probably daily. He looked like he was living out of his car, definitely hadn’t showered, and Brett wondered if he’d eaten recently. Signaling the bartender, he ordered them both a burger and fries and ordered Jeremy a Coke instead of another beer.
Jeremy watched silently and just nodded when the bartender walked away. For the first time since he’d found him on the other side of his door, Brett could see a glimpse of his old friend sitting next to him.
* * *
With enough of a threat delivered that he was sure he’d bought them twenty-four hours, Brett went to retrieve Mari from Dex and Amelia’s house. Amelia owned the bakery where his boss’s wife worked. He’d met them a few times in social situations, and Michael had made sure he knew Dex was FBI because in their line of work, having law enforcement on speed dial was an important tool to keep handy. Michael and Leslie had met about a year ago when Michael’s celebrity clients Dani Gwendolyn and Baxter Shelter had held their wedding at Barefoot Bay Resort. Leslie, who was now Michael’s wife, had been tasked with making the wedding cake while Amelia was having her and Dex’s first baby.
Now a year later, Michael was the stepfather to Leslie’s two adorable boys and Dex and Amelia were expecting another baby in about six months. Brett never thought he’d look at his friends who had wives and kids with envy but here he was, envious as hell that those two guys went home to a house full of chaos and laughter while he went home to a quiet house and takeout more often than not.
Pulling into the driveway of Dex and Amelia’s bungalow style house, Brett grabbed his phone out of the cupholder and headed up the sidewalk. He couldn’t fight a smile as the shrieks of kids laughing greeted him before he even stepped up on the porch. He wondered how Mari felt about the craziness he was picturing on the other side of the door.
He hadn’t even knocked when the door was yanked open by Leslie’s youngest son, Lucas. “Uncle Brett, you’re back! Does that mean the party’s over?”
“Party?” he asked in confusion. “Why are we having a party?”
“He thinks everything is a party these days. You’re lucky he isn’t insisting it’s his birthday.” Michael laughed as he tussled the little boy’s hair and sent him back into the house. “Did you get everything squared away?”
As Brett’s boss and best friend, he’d given Michael more than the CliffsNotes version of what was happening. The two of them worked well together, their styles complimenting each other perfectly as they each took a slightly different approach to security work. They had a long track record of keeping people safe, including Michael’s wife last year when a stalker of Michael’s had tracked her down and kidnapped her and her kids.
Brett gave him the highlights now, letting him know that his Army buddy had been a friend, but was currently mixed up in something he shouldn’t be. Brett couldn’t be sure whether he’d do the right thing or not. All he knew for sure was Jeremy was taking orders from someone with a lot to lose. The stakes were high and there was no time to lose.
Brett was sure he knew what they were looking for. Now he just had to figure out how he could find it before they did. The scavenger hunt was on and the stakes were high.
His phone dinged in his pocket and Brett pulled it out to see a text from Jeremy. “Shit.” He swore softly, mindful that little ears were everywhere. The last thing he needed was to catch flak from Amelia and Leslie for teaching their kids how to swear. Although he’d personally heard Dex use language hot enough to melt the paint right off the walls.
“What?” Michael stopped on his way down the hall back to the group.
“Jeremy says he gave his boss an update to try to stall and got one of his own. Apparently his boss isn’t happy with the delays and sent in the B Team.”
“So now we have another player in the game and we don’t know who it is?” Michael broke the situation down perfectly as always.
“Exactly.”
* * *
“I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m saying here. I take pictures all the time. Everywhere I go. All the time.” Mari tried to figure out how to explain it to Brett. They were once again at his place. He was in the kitchen and she was sitting on the barstool while he chopped ingredients for dinner.
“I understand that. Can we narrow it down somehow? Where were you right before all of this started? Which camera were you using? Where are those photos now?”
Mari rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in the air. How could she explain to someone so confident—who never hid from anything—that the camera was her buffer to the world? It’s what kept her from having to ever be exposed and vulnerable.
“Brett, I own at least five different camera bodies, plus a slew of lenses. I use them all interchangeably. I couldn’t possibly tell you which one I was using unless I was on a shoot. I rarely go anywhere without one and I’m always shooting. I look at the world through that viewfinder. Always.”
Brett reached into a drawer near the phone and grabbed a pencil and paper. “Write down every photo shoot you’ve done in the last three months. I don’t care how long the list is, we have to start somewhere. Then in a second column list where those photos are now.”
Mari took a sip of the wine Brett had insisted on stopping to buy on their way home and started trying to think. “Let me grab my date book. It will help me to look back at what I had booked then.” She walked into the living room and grabbed her purse off the sofa, digging to the bottom for her date book. Carrying the calendar back to the kitchen, she sat down and flipped back a handful of pages to try to recreate her life in the last few months.
While Brett cooked, she created the list he wanted. As she wrote, she realized that there was a third column she needed to make too. That list would contain the extra shots she took. Seeing everything through her camera lens was her safety net, so she literally shot everything she saw.
In the third column, she wrote what she could remember from her random shots. She photographed things in nature she thought were beautiful or unusual. She sometimes shot architecture if she saw something that intrigued her. Occasionally she would even photograph people if she could do it without being obtrusive.
It was that last thought that stopped her short with the pencil hovering above the paper.
“You took something you shouldn’t have.” She said out loud, rolling the sentence around in her head and considering all the possible meanings.
“What’s that?” Brett asked from across the kitchen.
“The note said, ‘You took something you shouldn’t have,’ right?” She stood up to go around the peninsula to get closer to him, convinced her idea was right. “What if instead of referring to stealing something or taking an object, it meant taking a photograph?”
“Definitely a possibility I suppose. What are you thinking?”
Quickly, Mari ran through her idea and then filled him in on her habit of shooting pictures all the time, whether she was on an assignment or not.
“So you potentially could have taken someone’s picture and that’s what started all this?” Brett took the second omelet out of the skillet and transferred it to a plate.
“What do you think? Does that sound lame?” Mari wanted Brett’s opinion but also wanted to see if he believed her.
“Not at all. I think it makes a lot of sense actually. We know you didn’t steal anything, and you don’t have anything that doesn’t belong to you, so the took almost has to imply something else. Taking pictures is what you do for a living so that adds up.”
“Do you have a computer here that I can use?” She asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“I back up all of my photos, before and after processing, to a cloud server for safety. If I can log in from here, then I can go through the photos and try to narrow down what they’re looking for.”
“And then what?” Brett asked, setting their omelets on the table and turning to face her. “Because just knowing what they’re after isn’t going to make this stop. In fact, it might make the entire situation more dangerous.”
“What do you want me to do? I thought that was the whole reason I was making that list for you.” She was frustrated and tired. In figuring out this potential piece of the puzzle, she’d finally felt like they were making progress and now Brett seemed to want her to hold back.
“That is the reason for the lists, but I also want you to think about this as just the first step not the key to the whole problem. I don’t want you disappointed when we figure out what they want and you can’t just go right back to your glamorous life like Barefoot Bay never happened.”
Mari almost laughed out loud. “My life is far from glamorous, I can assure you. I live alone in a one-bedroom walk-up in New York City. I work long hours. I travel a lot, and sure, some of that is to exotic and glamorous places, but I rarely get to do anything but work and fly right back home.”
“Sounds lonely,” Brett replied.
“I love my work, but I guess this forced break is making me realize that outside of work I didn’t have a whole lot going on in my life the last few years. Sure, I built a successful career, but that’s not the same thing as a successful life.”
Brett retrieved a laptop from down the hall and sat it on the kitchen counter. “Let’s eat, then we can look through the photos and see what we can find. We’ll figure out the next steps as we go. Knowing who we’re dealing with is the first missing piece we need.”
Mari tried to enjoy the omelet Brett had made, but it was hard to swallow around the words stuck in her throat. She wanted to say so many things in response to his comment about her leaving and acting like this never happened, but she didn’t want to say too much or assume things about his feelings that he hadn’t said yet. She knew for her that whatever came after this mess, her time with Brett, the time had changed her forever. She no longer ached to hide behind her camera and use it as a buffer between herself and the rest of the world. She felt more open than she had in a long time. She hoped that tying up the mystery wouldn’t also mean putting a bow on her and Brett’s budding relationship. She wanted to say all of that and more. She wanted to tell him that she would never forget her time here, even if he wasn’t interested in pursuing a relationship with her. But she choked back the words just like she choked down her eggs.