CHAPTER 60
CARTER
I don’t panic. When there’s danger or something isn’t right, I get calm, which is why I’m a bodyguard in the first place.
What I saw when I pulled up to Emily’s house had the makings of a panic. Busted cameras. Banged-up front and side keypads. Half a Louisville Slugger on the curb.
Her car wasn’t in the driveway. Had she left already? Had she been taken away?
—Are you all right?—
I texted her before I did anything, and I was rewarded.
( . . . )
Maybe, in spite of everything I thought of myself, I had been panicking, because when the three dots appeared, I stopped adding to my mental list of protective measures.
—She’s fine—
—She’s driving. This is Darlene—
—She says why?—
Why? Was she kidding me? Her house was open to the world, her security system was busted, and she was nowhere to be found. Why was I asking?
—Because her security system is all over the street—
A black BMW parked in a dark spot down Citrus Street, too far for me to see the plate.
—She says she got sick of it—
So she’d been the one to trash it. I could live with that, and I couldn’t blame her for getting sick of it.
—Is it connected to LAPD? Because they should be here if it broke—
—She says yes—
—Where are you?—
I got behind a tree, dropping into the shadow, and turned the light down on my phone.
—She says not to tell you. IDK why. I think it’s spite—
A car door slapped closed. A man’s voice came closer, but the ambient noise from Olympic and the distance kept me from understanding what he was saying. I leaned around the tree. It was him, talking on the phone and sticking to the shadowed side of the street. With a backward baseball cap and elastic nylon shorts, Vince had come to win his woman looking as if he were meeting his buddies for a kegger.
—Tell her I deserve it. And keep her away from her house tonight—
I put the phone away when he got close. He seemed as surprised by the busted security system as I’d been, standing back and looking at the camera dangling from a wire.
“Oh man,” he muttered with real distress. “Oh shit no. No, no fucking no.” He punched numbers randomly, stepped back, walked around the corner toward Olympic with his neck craning as if he were tall enough to see over the hedges.
I followed him around Olympic. Cars whizzed by too fast to see anything amiss, even when he went to the driveway gate and pulled it open. Disabling the security system had probably unlocked it.
He didn’t open it all the way. Just enough to slip through. He closed it behind him, which meant I couldn’t follow him without announcing myself.
I took out my phone. I had to make sure she wasn’t in there. I had a message from her.
—I don’t need you to tell me what to do. I am a grown woman and I can determine where I should and shouldn’t be. I’m with my friend and we’re having a good time—
Vince is in your house.
I typed it but couldn’t send it. She’d be afraid, and I was tired of seeing her afraid. And she deserved an answer that wouldn’t drag her away from feeling like a grown woman.
Torn between getting to Vince and talking to Emily, I had the choice made for me. I could hear Vince on the other side of the hedge, talking on the phone.
“Dude, I don’t fucking know. Oh man, this is so bad.”
He sounded truly worried—caught between whining and growling. Pacing back and forth like a caged animal while above me, the gate rattled.
“If I call the cops, I have to tell them why I’m here, and she’s got that fucking paperwork . . . Don’t . . . Dude, no . . . Because I don’t like cops, that’s why. And they’ll blame me instead of that new guy.”
His voice drifted in and out of range as he paced. He was invading her space, violating her privacy even if she wasn’t there. But I’d already smashed his face, and nothing had been accomplished. He’d barely slowed down.
“Yeah . . . Kyle found out he’s one of the bodyguards.”
I froze. How much more did they know?
“Sure. He probably did this shit . . . ,” he continued. “Right . . . she’s getting deeper and deeper with Darlene. Like that time she was up there and everyone was looking at her. Dude, I saved her from that, okay? She never appreciated it . . . Right . . . No one wants to be with someone everyone else is looking at. I don’t even know, man. Don’t even know. It’s like, not attractive, yo.”
I smiled to myself. I had no business being amused. Vince was on Emily’s property, and I was on the other side of the fence. But one aspect of Vince’s motivations became crystal clear. He didn’t want anyone looking at what he thought was his. He was turned off by it. That was why he didn’t want her onstage.
The way to get rid of him for good was inside that realization somewhere.
“And now, this?” he said. “This? It’s like, it’s all trashed. Fucking shit!” He yelled as if the broken security system was a personal affront.
Unsnapping the holster at my side and slipping out my Glock, I swung open the driveway gate. It clattered, and Vince turned to me at the sound. He put his hands up in front of him as I advanced, aiming at his head because it was scarier than aiming at his chest.
“Dude.”
“Drop the phone.”
He reached back and put it on the table, snapping his hands back up.
“Sit.” I tipped the gun to a little ledge between the path and the big tree.
He navigated to it with his hands still out, acting as if he were the one calming me down. Maybe he was. I was the guy with the gun, after all. Stepping into the light, he still had yellow bruising around his left eye. Weeks had passed. I must have done a number on him, yet here he was, persistent, stupid, possibly in the only kind of love he understood.
“I was just passing by,” he said.
“Sure.”
“Did you see this shit?” He pointed to each busted camera.
“She’s all right.”
“You break it, asshole? She piss you off?”
I wasn’t sure if he was brave or reckless, but if he called me an asshole to get a rise out of me, he had the wrong guy.
“She’s not here. And you know you’re not supposed to be. That restraining order’s real, and it’s not toothless like the last one.”
He couldn’t keep still. He kept pointing to the cameras. As if bursting, he cried, “The keypad! Did you see it?”
“Vincent—”
If you stopped and listened, you could always hear police sirens in Los Angeles. So when the whine came from far away, Vince wasn’t affected.
“No, no, this is not good. I need to talk to her.”
“She’s doing her own thing,” I said. “She’s not even the same person she was a month ago. So you can keep stepping on your own dick. Your stupid plays keep me employed. But even if you got her back, you wouldn’t like what you got.”
The sirens got closer. How long had it been since she left my house? Forty minutes? Ten to get here. Ten to trash the place. With a twenty-minute response time, she could be dead.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is not about you. It’s about us. Me and her.”
“Don’t come and check the block again. Don’t come in here even if there’s a neon sign with your name on it. And I swear, if anything happens to that cat, I’m going to skin you.”
“I didn’t kill Socks.” He stood up with his finger out. “That was my cat too.”
The sirens came down Olympic and stopped at the driveway. Vince’s face went blue then red then blue again.
“Stay there,” I said, holding the gun on him. I was engulfed in chaos seconds later.
“Freeze!”
Shit. I took my finger off the trigger and held up my gun, getting to my knees.
“Occupant has a restraining order against—” I had the wind knocked out of me when I was pushed down. I let them disarm me. In those few seconds, Vince took off. I didn’t see where he went because I was wrestled to the ground and cuffed.