CHAPTER 18
Axel woke with a start. The first sensation he was aware of was something wet on the bottom of his foot and the second was an obnoxious buzzing sound. He jerked his foot back and opened his eyes at the same time. It took a moment for him to adjust to the light, but when he did, he saw Lucy’s big brown eyes staring at him from the foot of the bed.
Brynn’s bed. That’s where he was.
He turned his head to the side.
She was nowhere to be seen. The vibration sounded again and it dawned on him that it was his phone. He checked the nightstand but it wasn’t there. He sat up, swinging his feet off the side of the bed and picked his sweats up off the floor. When he did he felt his phone in the pocket.
He pulled it out and saw that he had two missed calls from Nate.
Shit.
There was a voicemail, but he didn’t bother listening to it. He pressed the phone icon to dial him back.
“Where are you?” Nate clipped. The man got right to the point. Axel appreciated that.
Axel ran his fingers through his hair as he looked around Brynn’s bedroom. He figured that whoever was on surveillance duty last night would’ve noted him going into Brynn’s house and also noted that he hadn’t left.
“In the main house.”
“So you know that you have company.”
“What company?” Axel was on his feet pulling his sweats on and looking around the room for anything he could use as a weapon. “How many?”
“Two. But it’s not that kind of company.” Axel could hear the amusement in Nate’s voice. “It’s your sister.”
“My what?” Axel froze.
“Where are you?”
“Main house?”
“Where?”
“Bedroom.” Axel couldn’t believe he was having this conversation, and he also couldn’t believe that he’d slept through Brynn getting up and not one but two fucking people coming to the door.
“Izzy just showed up at Brynn’s front door.”
What the hell?
“You said two.”
“Jessa Myers is there, too.”
Damn. It was a regular full house.
“Thanks for the heads up.” Axel knew that with the developments of last night, he needed to speak to Seth and get reassigned. “Is Sloan in today?”
“No.”
He hated bothering his boss on his day off, especially to tell him that he’d fucked up. Literally. But this couldn’t wait until Monday.
“If he comes in, can you let him know I need to speak to him?”
“Will do.”
Axel disconnected the call and started to head out to the front room, but stilled after two steps. He’d spent the night with Brynn, but he wasn’t sure she’d want Jess to know that. And he wasn’t sure he wanted Izzy to know that.
The hallway led directly into the front room and kitchen, the only two rooms that you could enter or exit the house from. He glanced around the bedroom to assess his options. There weren’t a lot of good ones.
Not having a better idea, he slid open Brynn’s window, popped the screen, and climbed out. He’d seen this exact scene play out in movies.
His feet landed in the flower bed with a thud and knew that Nate was probably getting a kick out of watching this on surveillance. He replaced the screen and was about to turn the corner to walk around to the back of the house when he felt someone watching him and realized that Nate wasn’t his only audience. He turned his head, slowly.
Mrs. Dobrowski was walking across the street. When they made eye contact he froze for a brief moment, unsure of what to do. She may look like the stereotypical sweet, little old lady, but in this case looks were definitely deceiving.
The Betty White lookalike was infamous in Whisper Lake for few things: knowing everything about everyone, running her knitting group The Needlepoint Mafia like a crime organization, and being the ringleader of a much smaller group of women that liked to play matchmaker.
In theory, none of those things should strike fear in Axel. But somehow, two of them did. In the few interactions he’d had with Mrs. D, she’d proved a worthy adversary in her interrogation skills. A lesser man would’ve surely broken. And although from what he’d heard, she and her cohorts had limited their meddling to residents of Whisper Lake, he feared that she’d make an exception with him and he’d become their next target.
Lifting his hand in a casual wave, he did his best not to look guilty sneaking out of Brynn’s bedroom window. He thought about saying good morning, but since that was out of character for him, he decided to just continue on his way and pretend as if his behavior was totally reasonable.
In his experience, that was where a lot of people went wrong and got caught when they were doing things they shouldn’t be. They behaved strangely. The key was not to do anything out of the ordinary to raise suspicion. If he had a good reason for climbing out of Brynn’s window at seven in the morning, he wouldn’t care if Mrs. D saw him or not, so that was exactly how he should behave.
When he got to the backyard, he heard voices and realized that Brynn must be taking Izzy up to the apartment. She knew he wasn’t in it, but she was smart. She was doing exactly what he’d done with Mrs. D. If Axel hadn’t spent the night at her house, he would most likely be up in the apartment.
Why wouldn’t she take his sister there?
Which brought him back to the panic that had been held at bay while he figured out his escape.
What was Izzy doing here? And how in the hell had she gotten here?
He knew he couldn’t make it up the stairs before they got up there, so he decided to pretend as if he was just coming home.
When he turned the corner, the three ladies were crossing the back deck.
Axel had planned on pretending to be shocked to see Izzy but it turned out no acting was required. It had been a little more than a month since he’d dropped her off at school and she looked different. Older. Her round face had thinned out, showcasing the high cheekbones that she’d inherited from her father. This made her lips and eyes look even larger.
Brynn was the first to notice him. They locked eyes for an all-too-brief moment and there was an unspoken I-didn’t-know-what-to-do between them. But it was over in the blink of an eye.
“There you are!” Brynn smiled widely before outstretching her arms as she presented his sister. “Look who’s here!”
“Hey,” Izzy smiled widely and Axel could see that she was nervous. “Surprise!”
“What are you doing here? Are you okay?” His brows pulled together.
“I’m fine.” Her smile faltered and she spoke through clenched teeth.
It was obvious that his questions had irritated her.
But that was tough shit considering she was supposed to be seventy-five miles away at school.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s so good to see you, too, big brother. I missed you.” The sarcasm that dripped from her statement was impossible to miss.
“I miss you, too, but I still want to know what you’re doing here.”
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jess and Brynn watching the exchange like they were front row at Wimbledon.
“Well!” Brynn clapped her hands together cheerfully. “We’ll let you guys catch up.” She turned and practically shoved Jess, who looked like she had no plans to move, back into the house.
Without speaking, he grabbed Izzy’s bag that was slung over her shoulder and went up the wooden steps. She followed behind him silently. When they got into the apartment, he hadn’t even shut the door before she was making her case.
“I’m not going back there.”
Before they talked about her going back, which was definitely going to happen, Axel wanted to know how she got here in the first place.
“How did you get here?”
She shrugged defiantly. “I hitched a ride.”
Axel’s muscles tensed with fear thinly veiled in anger. She had to be kidding. She would never be that stupid. But even if she took a bus, that was still dangerous. He could feel himself about to lose it when she continued.
“A nice trucker named Bubba who was hauling vegetables gave me a ride.”
His nostrils flared and he tried to keep calm as he took in a deep breath through his nose. His fists bunched at his sides. This was not the time for her to be joking around. She was supposed to be in Chicago at Mercy Prep, not in his apartment in Whisper Lake. But he knew that losing his temper wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
As he set down the bag and tried to get himself under control, Izzy calmly pulled out her phone.
“What are you doing?” he gritted out, he couldn’t believe she was going to text or Snapchat or whatever, now.
“I want evidence in case you try and kill me.”
“Izzy,” he growled.
“Oh my god. Calm down.” She put her phone away. “I Ubered. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to hitchhike?”
He almost asked her if she really wanted him to answer that but refrained. The last thing he wanted was for things to escalate.
“I’m not going back there, Ax. And if you make me, I’ll just leave again.”
“Nothing happened. It’s just horrible there.”
“I’m sure you’ll make friends if you just—”
“I have friends, well one friend, Tia, but that’s not the point. I don’t want to be there. Every day I felt like I was losing myself and I was scared that if I stayed another day, I wouldn’t ever be the same person. I would either become as horrible as those girls to get back at them, or I’d be a shell of myself to survive it.”
“Iz, you have to give it—”
“I swear to God if you say time, I’ll scream.”
He believed her.
And he also believed that it really was horrible there. He knew his sister, and though she could be dramatic about some things, he could see that she wasn’t over dramatizing this. Things were really bad there.
“Fine. Just let me pack some things and make a call and we’ll go back to Harper—”
“Why can’t we stay here?” she pleaded. “I love it here! Did you know that they have a real, like legit castle? And that all the stores have a storybook or fairytale theme? There’s a restaurant called Lanterns that has a mural from Tangled.”
He knew.
“And the Drawbridge Diner has a real, working drawbridge. And there’s the Princess and the Pea B&B. A coffee shop called the Cobblestone Cafe. And a sandwich shop called Bite Me.”
That was the one establishment he hadn’t quite worked out. His confusion must’ve shown on his face because she quickly explained, “It’s from Alice In Wonderland. The drinks have a sign that says Drink Me. And the food in the glass counter has signs that say Eat Me. Apparently, they’d planned on naming the shop Eat Me, but the town voted it down because it was too crass. Which I don’t really understand because it’s not like bite me is any bet—”
“How do you know all of this?” Axel was sure that Nate had called him as soon as his sister had arrived, so he wasn’t sure where she was getting this information.
“I researched the town on the drive,” she answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I’m sorry Iz, but we have to leave.” He honestly didn’t have a choice.
“No, we don’t. Whisper Lake High has an incredible IB program—”
“IB?”
“International Baccalaureate.” Again, she said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And Brynn said—”
“Ms. Daniels,” he corrected her.
She lifted her arms, palms facing forward. “I tried that, she asked me to please not call her that because it made her feel old.”
He grinned, thinking of Brynn saying that. Everything that woman did made him smile.
“Anyways, when I told Brynn,” she emphasized, “that I left Mercy Prep and was planning on enrolling in Whisper Lake tomorrow, she said that she could take me to the registrar’s office and speed up the process.”
“That’s nice of her, but we can’t stay.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “You said that you’re not going to be done with the theater for a couple more months.”
He obviously hadn’t told his sister the real reason he was here. The fewer people that knew it was a cover, the better.
“And I love it here!” she exclaimed.
“You said that you were going to love it at Mercy Prep.”
“No, I didn’t.” She shook her head. “I said that I wanted to go because of their academic program. I never said that I would love it. And it wouldn’t have counted if I did because I’d never been there. I’m here and I love it.”
“You got here two seconds ago.”
“I know. Don’t you believe in love at first sight?”
Not before meeting Brynn, but now…now he wasn’t sure.
His phone buzzed and he pulled it out and saw that it was Seth Sloan. “I have to take this.”
He started to walk back out, but Izzy beat him to the punch. “It’s okay. I’ll go. I want to talk to Jess about her salon. Did you know that she owns the Mane Attraction?”
He did, but he wasn’t sure how his sister knew that. He doubted she could find that out on Google. “How did you…?”
“I told her I loved her hair, and she said that she owned a salon called The Mane Attraction. I asked her why it didn’t have a fairytale name and she said that that’s what it was named when she bought it, but she was thinking about expanding so that it also had a barber shop and she wants to call it Beauty and the Beast. She’s so cool.” Izzy said in one breath before shutting the door and practically skipping down the steps.
And that speed of talking was how she’d managed to fit so much in in the less than five minutes she’d been there before he’d seen her.
Axel lifted the phone to his ear, not sure how to tell his boss how badly he’d fucked things up. “Sloan, I need to—”
“I know things have gotten personal and that Izzy is there.”
Well, that was easy.
He watched as his sister bopped across the deck and before she even made it halfway, the sliding glass door opened and Brynn and Jess joined her with huge smiles on their faces. It was so odd to see two of his worlds collide, but what was even more odd was just how not-strange it felt.
Too bad it was over.
“I’m going to be packed and ready to go as soon as you can get a replace—”
“Nothing about your assignment has changed on our end.”
“I slept with Brynn,” he said bluntly just so there was no confusion. “And my sister is here.”
“This is an owl job. Eyes only. There’s no imminent threat. We are monitoring all communication and the web and there’s been no searches for Brynn. Nothing to raise any flags that anyone knows who she is.”
“But I slept with Brynn,” he repeated.
“This isn’t The Bodyguard and you’re not Kevin Costner.” Seth joked. “This is an observe and report job. Technically, Brynn isn’t even our client. And do you think you’re the only guy that’s blurred those lines? You’re not. Dax and Billy, they both had the same issue.”
Axel had heard that the two men he worked with had once protected their now wives, but he didn’t know the circumstances.
“What about Izzy?”
“Like I said, I don’t believe that her being there compromises your job or that she would be in any danger.”
Axel watched as Izzy spoke animatedly to the two women she’d just met. Her arms flying in the air as Brynn and Jess laughed at something she’d said. In that moment he realized that Izzy looked like Izzy. His Izzy. The little girl that he’d missed so much.
“So are we good?” his boss asked.
“We’re good.”
Or at least, he hoped they were.