Chapter Thirteen
Unlocking the door to my office I sigh happily as I walk in. Hearing Demon try to hide his laughter has me rolling my eyes. He tells me multiple times a day that I sigh too much. We playfully fight over it, but I know it doesn’t really bother him.
Demon has become like a brother to me, and to the girls as well. He’s now been my bodyguard for six weeks. None of us thought it would take the police this long to catch Bradley. It’s not like he has gone away or anything. I’ve received two more notes and a freaking fruit basket. The notes didn’t come with phone numbers this time, instead they came with website links.
Each note was taken straight to Erik’s office. He let me see what the first web link was but not the second. The first one was another video from Bradley. This time he was inside a cabin, a run down old nasty looking cabin. The video was only a couple minutes long, but all Bradley did was ramble on and on about how good our time together was. It made me sick to my stomach to hear him talk about all of that.
When Erik wouldn’t let me see what the second web link was I knew it had to be bad. I know Greg saw whatever it was because he told Riker he didn’t need to see it.
Things with Riker are good right now. Our relationship has gotten a lot stronger these last six weeks. We agreed to take things slow, take time to get to know each other better before jumping into anything too fast. I’m still staying with him, but we are still sleeping in different rooms. Other than living together we are trying to be a normal couple in the beginning stages of dating. We try to go out to eat at least twice a week. It’s a little different for us since we usually have to bring one of the bodyguards with us. Demon is my main guard, but no one can work twenty-four/seven, so Greg asked my cousin Steve to help when Demon couldn’t be with us.
Now you tell me, does taking your cousin along on a romantic date with your boyfriend sound fun to you? Yeah, I didn’t think so either. Riker has been cool about it but I can tell it’s a little weird for him too.
On the nights we stay in we don’t need a guard. Riker has a security system that the White House would be jealous of. So many codes, locks, and buttons. I’ve set it off too many times to count. I hate that thing.
No one was surprised when I gave up my apartment two weeks ago. Staying there again just wasn’t going to happen. Mr. Jinks was really nice about everything. He let me out of my lease early and even gave me back my security deposit when he didn’t have too.
Most of my things went into storage but I did move some of my stuff into my room at Riker’s place. It took us two days to pack up everything and only one day to move it all. On moving day, I was surprised to see Luke, Brice, and Dean show up to help. It was awkward at first, but I found out they, just like Riker, had really changed since high school.
“Darcy?” Luke called my name as I was heading back to the bedroom to get the last two boxes from in there.
Turning around I see him walking towards me. When he first showed up today I was worried about what would happen, but he has been really nice. I was wrong to judge him, and all the others. People can change.
“Whatcha need Luke?” I ask him.
“I wanted to talk to you for a minute.” He looks behind him, causing me to do the same. I see Brice, Dean, Heather, Missy, and my mother picking up more boxes from the living room. “Alone, please?” Luke whispers quietly to me.
I nod towards the bedroom. He follows me inside and shuts the door. I don’t feel scared of Luke but I’m not sure I’m really comfortable being alone with him for too long.
“I want to apologize.” He says as he walks over to the window.
“What for?” I ask him. He wants to apologize? Wow, that’s something I never dreamed of happening.
“For a lot of things.” He sighs as he turns to face me. “For school, for hurting you with my words, for thinking I was better than you, for saying shit about you……for everything.” I see the regret in his eyes and it really touches me. “Also, for what happened at Cali’s. Yeah, I was drunk, but I shouldn’t have said what I did. Riker should have beat my ass that night.” Luke laughs, and I can’t help but giggle.
“He wanted too.” I tell him. “But he said he didn’t want to leave me.”
Luke’s face turns serious. “You’re good for him Darcy. I’ve never seen my friend so happy. I am truly sorry for everything I’ve done to you.”
“Thank you.” I walk over and give him a big hug. It startled him at first, but he hugged me back after that.
Luke helped me with the last boxes in the bedroom and the rest of the day went by pretty nicely. I told Riker later that night what Luke had said, and you could see the relief on his face. I know he had been worried about me getting along with friends but there’s nothing to worry about. I think it will take some time, but I really do believe we will all be good friends.
James was the only friend who didn’t show up to help that day. Riker hasn’t spoken to him since Greg told us about James buying the apartment next to mine. Even though Bradley lied to James, and even threaten his family, Riker hasn’t been able to forgive James for not coming to him and telling him what was going on.
I shake off the thought of James as I walk into my back office. Seeing the empty second desk makes me a little sad. Morgan quit on us about a week after Riker and I returned from his cabin. He claimed his brother wanted him to go back to work for him, but I think the craziness of what was going on here had more to do with his leaving us. Luckily when Porsha and Gigi started Gigi split the computer work with me. She has a BA in business management so handing over the books to her was fine by me. I still helped with the payroll and do all the ordering, but she took a lot off my plate.
Seeing a box on my desk has me stopping dead in my tracks. That wasn’t there last night when I left.
“Demon!” Half a second later Demon is standing next to me.
“What’s wrong?”
I point to the box. “That wasn’t there last night.”
“Got a problem, a box is on Darcy’s desk, she says it wasn’t here last night.” Demon is already on his phone.
All I can do is stare at the box. It’s a plan brown box. About the size of a book. From where I am I can’t see any writing on it. In a normal world if someone walked into their office to see a package laying on their desk they would just think someone dropped it off while they were gone. In my crazy world it could mean a psycho killer has been here and has left me something.
“Darcy?” I hear my sister call from the front office.
Demon gently pushes towards the door while he’s still on his phone, probably talking to Greg.
“Don’t get to comfortable.” I say as I walk back into the main office seeing that all the girls are there, even Porsha and Gigi who usually only work in the afternoons three to four days a week. We were gonna have a staff meeting this morning, but I don’t see that happening now. “I don’t know if we are gonna be staying here today. There was box on my desk this morning that wasn’t there last night. Did one of y’all leave it there?”
Everyone denies leaving the box there or even knowing about the box.
“Did you ask the cleaning lady?” Porsha asks as she makes a cup of coffee.
“What cleaning lady?” Missy asks before I can.
“The one who came in early last night. She said she usually doesn’t start cleaning the building until well after midnight, but she wanted to get an early start because the yoga studio’s floors needed waxing.” Porsha explains.
“Porsha, honey we don’t have a cleaning lady.” Heather tells her cousin. Porsha looks confused until it hits her that the so-called cleaning lady probably wasn’t who she said she was.
“Oh my God!” She squeals. “I’m so sorry Darcy! Oh my God! She looked like a cleaning lady, she had a bucket and supplies and everything. She even knew the code to the door. She was surprised to see me here, she said she hadn’t been told about any new workers. She said that she only liked to come when the offices were empty. She said she knew that once your car was gone Darcy, that no one would be here. I’m so sorry Darcy.” Porsha starts sobbing. We all go to her, hug her, and reassure her that it wasn’t her fault.
“Do you think you can describe this lady?” Demon asks from behind us. He must have come out when he heard Porsha squeal.
“Yes,” Porsha nods. “She was average height, white, dark eyes and dark black hair that was twisted up in a bun. Um, she had on jeans, a white t-shirt, and she had a black backpack. Other than the cleaning supplies that’s all she had with her.” I can tell Porsha is trying her best to remember everything and anything about this woman.
Demon’s phone buzzes. He reads the text that just came in then looks over at me. “Greg wants all of us down at his office right now.”
“What about the box?” Tonya asks.
“Erik is on his way to deal with that.” Demon answers her as he moves us towards the door.
None of us fight him. It would be pointless to even try. We just grab our bags and head for the door. Demon makes sure everyone knows where Greg’s office is before he all but shoves me into his truck and pulls out of the parking lot.
Greg’s office is on the other side of town so it’s gonna take at least twenty minutes for all of us to get there. I call Riker to let him know what was going on. To no surprise to me he already knows and is on his way to meet us.
Riker, Greg, and Steve are all outside waiting for us when we pull in. Before I can even get my seatbelt undone Riker has my door open. The worried look on his face scares me.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” I reach for him, letting him lift me out of Demon’s truck.
“Greg will explain when we get inside. I just needed to see with my own eyes that you were ok.” He kisses my forehead before lowering me to the ground.
I let him lead us into Greg’s office. Greg’s office building used to be a regular house. He converted it into an office about a year ago. Greg kept the full kitchen and one of the bedrooms the same so if he needed to stay here he could. Everything else was converted into offices, meeting rooms, or storage rooms.
The sun room on the back of the house is the best part of this place. Greg says it’s one of the meeting rooms but it’s really a man cave. It has three large sofas, four over stuffed chairs, a giant flat screen TV, and a small bar in the far-left corner. It’s the room that can hold the most people, so I knew that’s where we would all be going.
Riker pulled me down on his lap after taking a seat in one of the chairs. Greg waits for everyone to get settled before starting.
“I’m waiting to hear from Erik about the package left on Darcy’s desk. He texted me a minute ago and said that they are there now, and we should know something soon. Demon filled me in when he got here about the cleaning lady. Porsha,” Greg looks over at her. “I understand you are the only one who saw her, right?”
Porsha nods. “Yes, and I swear I didn’t know she wasn’t a real cleaning lady. I’m usually never alone at the office but I had gotten behind on two of my projects and wanted to finish them before I went home.” She glances over at me. “I’m really am sorry Darcy.”
“No one is blaming you Porsha.” I tell her calmly. “Just tell Greg everything he needs to know.”
“Erik is sending over a sketch artist, I’ll need you to work with them to see if we can find this woman.” Greg tell Porsha. “But for right now we need to deal with something else. I pulled the security footage from last night and there’s a problem. You know we setup new cameras in your office and the hallway, so we should have seen who this woman was. But when we looked at the feed we couldn’t get a clear picture of her face. It’s like she knew where not to look. We don’t know how she would know that but somehow she did.”
“Inside job?” Riker asks Greg.
“Could be.” Greg answers him.
“Hold up.” I stop both of them. “No way in hell is this an inside job. No one in my office would do this.” I look around at all the girls. “I’ve known these women all my life. They wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.”
“Darcy that’s not what he is saying.” Riker tries to calm me down.
“Really? Because it sounds like both of you are trying to say someone inside my office is helping Bradley.” I snap at him as I climb off his lap. He tried to hold on to me, but I smacked his hands away. One thing I’ve never been ok with, and will fight anyone who tries to do it, is someone disrespecting people I love and care about. I will protect, stand up for, and fight for the people in my life. My family by blood and my family by choice. They stand with me and I stand with them.
“They may not know that it’s him they are helping.” Greg defends himself. “Just let me ask everyone a few questions. I’m not singling anyone out right now. But this woman had the code to your office. A code you yourself told us that only your workers have. Please Darcy just let me do my job. I don’t want to believe that someone in this room is helping Bradley, but I can’t just check them off the list because they’re your friends.”
I want to believe that no one in this room would ever do anything to hurt me but Greg is right. He has a job to do and the sooner he figures out that none of us are involved the sooner he can find out who really is.
Scanning the room, I say. “Answer everything as honest and as detailed as you can. I don’t believe for one minute that any of you are helping that sick freak.” I turn to glare at Greg. “You watch how you word your questions. You disrespect any of us and we are out of here, got that?”
“Darcy he’s just doing his job!” Riker snaps at me. “He’s not trying to disrespect anyone!” I know he’s just standing up for his brother but why can’t he see that I’m just doing the same for my family?
“And I’m just protecting my friends and family from this bullshit!” I snap back at him.
“Ok, that’s enough.” Greg yells over us. “I’ll be respectful Darcy, I promise. I agree with you, I don’t truly think anyone in this room is involved. However, if the police start to think someone here is involved then it will save them, and us, a lot of time if I already have the answers they’ll need. We can record this like an interrogation. I can send a copy to Erik and that will be that. Everyone here will be in the clear and then we can hunt for who really is helping Bradley, because we know someone has to be helping him. There is no way he can be working alone.”
Damn it, that actually makes sense. “Whatever.” I mutter as I squeeze in between Heather and Missy on one of the sofas. Riker shoots me a hard look but I’m not dealing with him right now. I do believe with everything in me that he only wants to protect me, keep me save, and only wants me happy, but right now I feel a little betrayed. These women are my family, the ones who have been there for me long before Riker came back into my life.
“Steve turn on the cameras.” Greg tells Steve who is standing by the door. Steve pushes a few buttons on a panel on the wall and we all hear a beep sound. “We are here to do a group interview to find out if there is any new information in the case of Bradley Smith. The people being interview are, Darcy West, Melissa West, Heather Yost, Kristy Grace, Tonya Tomlin, Riker Deeks, Demon Gates, Steve West, Porsha Yost, and Gigi Yost. Myself, Greg Deeks, will be in charge of today’s interview. Is everyone ready to get started?”
“Do you need to take a breath after all that?” Gigi sneakers. That was a mouthful. I’m sure he had to list who was all here for the record but that was weird hearing all our names being called out like that.
Greg rolled his eyes at Gigi before continuing. “I need to do a small recap as to why we are here before I start asking any questions. This morning Darcy found a package on her desk that wasn’t there last night when she left. The last worker to leave the office last night was Porsha and she left after the cleaning lady showed up. Only no cleaning lady is employed by Darcy’s company. Porsha has told us everything that she remembers about this woman and has agreed to work with a sketch artist later today. As of right now we have no information on the package, I’m waiting to hear from Captain Marshall about that.” Greg picks up a folder off one of the end tables. “Right now, I mainly just need to know about who’s been in and out of the office other than the daily workers. Has there been any visitors? Clients? Maintenance workers? Delivery people?”
I try to think back over the last several weeks. Delivery people are out because we always meet Mark, our UPS guy, down at the main door to get out packages. We have had a couple visitors but they’ve all been family members, either mine or one of the girls. My parents have stopped by at least twice a week to check on me. Tonya’s brother Zack has had to drop her off several times because of car trouble. Each time he came up to say hi but never stayed long. The only client that has been in the office is the lawyer from upstairs and that was only once. He likes to get his wife a something new each month from us. As for maintenance workers, we have had a couple of them.
I tell Greg the list of people who have been in the office. When I get to the maintenance people he starts asking more detailed questions. He wanted to know why they were there to fix. How long they were there for, did they have helpers with them, did they have to come back several days in a row, did they have company shirts on.
I tried answering everything as best I could. Some of the girls remembered a little more than I did so they filled in what I couldn’t.
“Did you contact your landlord to request any of this work to be done?” Greg asks me.
“No, but that’s not unusual. If something is messing up in one of the other offices, he usually sends someone over to check on our office just to make sure nothing is wrong there. I remember the plumper saying that a pipe had busted in the yoga studio and he needed to shut the water off for a couple hours. He came back about two hours later saying it was all fixed and turned the water back on. We did turn down one guy, he was an exterminator. He claimed that the lawyer had found some roaches in his office. He wanted to spray but Porsha has a bad allergy to heavy chemicals. We told him we would keep a watch out and if we found any bugs we would call him. We haven’t seen any roaches so far.”
“Anyone else?” Greg asks us all.
“Darcy, what about the guy that came to change all the light bulbs.” Tonya reminds me. “He said your landlord wanted all of them changed to LED lights because they are safer and don’t burn out as fast.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about him.” I nod.
“Did all of these people have work orders? Did you have to sign anything before they left?” Greg asks me.
“I know the plumper did, but I don’t remember about the other two.” I answer him.
“Did you see any work orders Demon?” Greg asks Demon.
“Just the plumper’s, the exterminator didn’t make it through the door, and the guy with the lights said the landlord had taken care of everything.” I can tell by the look on his face he’s upset with himself.
“Don’t do that Demon.” I tell him softly. “Don’t go blaming yourself.”
He smirks at me. “Reading minds, now are you?” He teases before frowning. “It’s my job to keep all of you safe and I missed something. I let someone get inside that shouldn’t have been there. It won’t happen again I can tell you that.”
“She’s right,” Riker chimes in. “You do keep them safe. We had no clue Bradley had help until a few days ago. This isn’t on you dude.”
“Wait, what do you mean a few days ago?” Missy asks. Yeah, what does he mean?
“You didn’t tell them?” Greg glares at Riker.
“I didn’t want them to worry.” Riker mumbles.
“Riker Deeks you promised me you would keep me in the loop on all that was going on. You can’t keep trying to protect me like this. You hiding things from me could end up getting one of us hurt!” I’m up off the sofa and pacing around the room. My emotions are all conflicted again. I’m angry at him for keeping things from me and no matter how many times I tell myself that he thinks he is keeping me safe by lying to me it doesn’t help calm my anger. I need to find a way to make him understand that this can’t keep happening. I don’t want to come across as the bratty bitch who wants everything her way and will throw a hissy fit at the drop of a hat.
Strong, warm arm wrap around me, stopping me from pacing. “If you think for one second I would put you in harms way you’ve lost your damn mind.” He leans down and nuzzles my neck. “All we found out was that someone had been delivering Bradley’s messages for him. The time stamps on the newer videos show that he was making those videos when the first round of videos were being delivered. No one can be in two places at once, so we now know he has someone helping him.”
“That’s something I needed to know Riker.” I sigh in defeat. I don’t try to move away from him. As soon as he holds me like this I feel safe. I love this feeling. Yes, I’m still hurt and a little upset at him but not enough to leave the warm safe place his arms bring me.
“Sorry to interrupt but I only have a few more questions. After that we can deal with what to do from here on out.” Greg says. Riker once again pulls me down on his lap after sitting back down in his chair. I cuddle closer to him, laying my head on his shoulder.
“What more could you need to know?” Gigi asks.
Greg goes on to ask about what each person looked like who came into the office. Also, if we have any for delivered to the office. We had some pizza delivered a couple time but just like with Mark our UPS guy we met them down at the main door. Each of us tell Greg all that we can remember about each person that stopped by the office. Greg takes notes on everything we say. Over an hour later he turns off the camera and tells us we are free to go. I’m so tired it’s not funny.
Going back to work isn’t an option for any of us right now. Erik messaged Greg during the interview and said that they had cleared the box, all that was in it was another note with a new web link. Erik said the link was to a live video feed of my office, so they did another sweep of the office. They found two new cameras and three microphones that weren’t part of our new security system. Erik has already put a call into the FBI to have them do another sweep as well. He’s also going to check on the other girls and see if they’ve had any new visitors and do another sweep on their places.
I told the girls to take a couple days off until we know when we can go back to work. Missy said she’d email the clients who are waiting for their orders and tell them that due to a situation out of our control their packages would be late. I also told her to offer them their money back on the shipping and to give them the option to cancel without paying the cancellation fee.
Riker had to go back to work, so I told him I’d just see him at home later. He made me promise not to try and cook dinner. He’s still giving me cooking lessons but I’m not really picking up on anything. Demon let me pick up a pizza on the way home. I ate a few pieces before going to my room to take a nap. It’s not even noon and I’m worn out. All this stuff with Bradley is driving me crazy. I also wish Riker wouldn’t hide stuff from me. I made a mental note to have a longer talk with him about it tonight.
Crawling into bed I try to push away everything that’s happened today. Instead or worrying about it I think of Riker. I can’t lie to myself or him anymore. I’m truly falling in love with this man. But does he fell the same way?