The Trouble With Bodyguards: Part 2 (6 page)

              “What do you mean?” she asked, pouring creamer into the coffee and stirring it before taking a sip of the steaming brew.

              “I mean,” he said, “do you need more time to rest, or are you planning on going back to the office today?”

              “You know,” she said, leaning on the counter, “I hadn't really thought about it yet. With everything that's happened in the last week, work has been the furthest thing from my mind. But now that you bring it up, I do have a ridiculous amount of work to do in order to finish this project by deadline, and being out for this long has put me way behind schedule.”

              “You think that you are ready?” he asked, concern in his eyes.

              “I think that with you by my side, watching out for me,” she continued, coming around the counter and kissing him gently, “I am ready for pretty much anything.”

              No.

              No. No. No.

              He had taken her from him, stolen her away just when they were finally together at last. Jake sat, the heat of the sun turning the car into an oven, making sweat break out on his skin as he watched his brother open the car door for her and kiss her before she slid inside.

              That fucker. He had said that he didn't want her, that he wasn't going to take her away. Liar. Jake knew, the minute that he had found Rick in his damned room, that was what he was after. He had seen her on the television, right when Jake had, and must have started dreaming at exactly the same moment that he would have her for his own. He had probably gone into his room hundreds of times, without Jake even suspecting anything, just to gaze upon her beautiful, kind, loving face. Probably jacked off to her pictures, the filthy pig. Probably thought of her as a whore, another bimbo that he could fuck whenever he wanted to. He didn't know, he didn't see how wonderful she was. He didn't know that she was the only one that could see life for what it really was, pain. Beautiful pain, that's how she had put it. She understood.

              As his brother pulled out into the street, Jake clenched his fists, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his palm, breaking the skin. Blood welled up there, trickling warmly down to his wrists, staining the cuffs of his white shirt. Fucker, he thought, taking her. She doesn't want to be with you, my brother, she wants to be with me. I deserve to be with her. I have loved her since the beginning of time, and there will be no other who will have her.

              “I don't care what you have to do,” Alex said into the phone as she paced around her spacious office, “just get the proofs to me in an hour. We are way behind schedule on this, and we need to get things rolling.” Hanging up the phone, she tossed it onto her desk. Sighing heavily, she flopped into the chair behind her desk, thrusting her fingers deep into her hair, frustration and stress clear on her face.

              Rick sat in an armchair in her office, a magazine open on his lap. “Is there anything that I can do to help?” he asked, standing and crossing the room toward her.

              “Unless you know anything about photo editing,” she said, smiling weakly at him. “Unfortunately, I don't think so.”

              “Um,” he said, “sorry. Not my expertise.”

              She blew out a breath. “Thanks for the offer,” she said. “I think that you'll just have to hang out. I have so much to do, I'm going to be here for the next week going over this stuff. I just feel bad that you are going to be here with nothing to do.”

              “I'm here to keep you safe,” he said, leaning over to plant a soft kiss on her lips.

              “Do you think,” she said, hesitantly, “that you could get us some lunch?”

              “Um,” he said, looking around the office.

              “I promise that I won't move a muscle,” she said, smiling up at him. “And there are going to be people in and out of here all day. I just didn't have a chance to eat this morning, and it looks like I'm going to be glued to my desk all day. I could seriously go for a pizza or something.”

              Rick's stomach growled audibly, and they both laughed. “You promise you won't go anywhere,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “The last time I left you alone...” He trailed off, not finishing the statement. They both knew what had happened the last time that she had been in the office without him.

              “I promise,” she said, putting her hand over her heart. “Now, will you go get us some food, before we both pass out from malnourishment?”

              “Okay,” he said, “I'll go get food. But if anything strange happens, anything at all, you lock the door to this office and call me immediately on my cell phone, you got it?”

              “Yup,” she said, “I got it.”

              “All right,” he said, “I'll be back in a few. Pizza?”

              “Anything,” she said, “I'm starving. I could eat a horse.”

              “I don't think that any of the places around here serve horse,” he said, chuckling at his own joke, “but I'll see what I can do.”

              Rick walked out of her office, stopping at the receptionist desk to leave his cell number with the woman behind it, along with strict instructions to call him immediately if anything out of the norm should happen in the time that he was gone. He needed to stay vigilant, but he was going to go crazy if he had to sit in Alex's office and do nothing for the next week. There were only so many games that one could play on their cell phone before they started to lose their marbles.

              Stepping out of the elevator, Rick scanned the parking garage for danger before walking to his car. He knew that his brother must have seen him, that night at the old hospital, and he didn't know what he was capable of doing.

              Rick had headed straight for the apartment that night, furious that Alex had gone without him, abandoning him in the city to find his own way home. Hailing a cab, he thought of a handful of choice words to share with her, cut short when he burst into the apartment only to find it empty and quiet when he arrived. He paced, rage boiling inside him as he waited for her to turn up. It was stupid, her running off without him, when she was in such danger. But she didn't know, didn't understand what was at stake here. He should have told her, should have explained the whole thing to her by now, so at least she knew what she was up against.

              But how, he thought, how does he explain this to her? She would think that he was just as much of a lunatic as his brother. She would probably have him arrested, for not disclosing what he knew about the attack on the delivery boy. He would definitely be fired, and then he wouldn't be able to find his brother, or to protect her.

              The hours slipped by, the sun setting in the west, and as the sky darkened outside the apartment windows Rick began to worry. She should have been home by now, even if she had stopped somewhere; it didn't take that long to drive across town. He ran through all of the possibilities in his mind, that she had gone to her father's house didn't make any sense, unless she was planning on telling him that they should fire him, that she didn't need him anymore. Perhaps she had stopped at a bar for a drink, to celebrate the fact that she had stolen a moment of freedom from him. But that didn't make any sense either, as she would have had hours of editing to do after the shoot today, and he knew that she would get right to work.

              Of course, he thought, that had to be it. She wanted to get to work on the photos, and she knew that he would be here, furious that she had left him in the city alone, so she had gone to the office. Rick scooped his keys off the counter, running out of the apartment and down the stairs to the parking lot.

              Pulling into the parking garage beneath her office building, he had been relieved to find her car in the space reserved for her. He took the stairs, climbing them two at a time, ready to lay into her when he found her, pissed that she could be so stupid as to be in an empty office by herself at night when there was a man actively stalking her. Storming into the lobby of her office, Rick's heart dropped into his stomach as he noticed that the lights in her office were off, and that when he checked the doors they were tightly locked.

              Her car was here, he thought, but she wasn't? Maybe she had been in the elevator, headed home for the evening, while he was climbing the stairs. He ran back through the office, anger boiling in his bloodstream as he burst through the door into the stairwell and headed back down. Throwing the door open, he pulled his keys from his pocket, ready to speed back to the apartment and really tear into her.

              He froze in his tracks, rage turning to cold fear as he noted that her car was not where it had been, but that her handbag was lying on the ground near where it had been. He crossed slowly to the spot, scanning the garage for any sign of another soul, and saw none, only a single car parked several spaces away, hidden in a dark corner of the lot. He scooped up her purse, quickly searching through it, noting that her cell phone and wallet were inside, but that her keys were missing.

              She could have gone home, just somehow forgetting her purse, but Rick had had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something was terribly wrong, and he needed to find her, fast.

              He jumped into his car, heading out of the parking garage and into the night. He pulled onto the freeway, speeding through traffic, praying that she had returned to the apartment, that he would find her safe and sound. But her car wasn't in the lot when he pulled in a few minutes later, and a quick glance at the windows told him that no lights were on inside. Panic gripped him as a stream of possibilities flooded his brain. She had been taken, he knew it had been by his brother somehow, he just didn't know what he would have done with her once he had her.

              Where would he take her? And would he be able to find her before something terrible happened?

              He thought of his brother, of Jake, and all of the things that they had been through together, things that had made them who they were today. He thought of their youth, the days spent playing softball with the neighborhood kids in the park, laughing and enjoying the summer sun. He thought of his mother, of her standing in the kitchen, making waffles and bacon on a Sunday morning, the smell of freshly ground coffee in the air. He thought of the hospital, of how foreign, how alien that place had felt, how it had been its own special kind of hell.

              Jake would want to be somewhere where he felt safe, comfortable. He would want Alex to feel as though she were loved, as if he were taking care of her. Rick tried to think, since his brother had become what he had become, where did he feel safe?

              And then it hit him. There was only one place where Jake had felt safe since he had changed. Only one place where he was comfortable enough to be who he really was. The place where he could have conversations with the darkness itself, without a thought that someone else might be listening, his room, his sanctuary.

              Rick pulled into the street, his tires squealing as he tore off in the direction of the house in which he and his brother had grown up. It had remained empty since he had taken the job with Alex, since he had been staying at her apartment for the last few months. He had been so focused on keeping her safe that he had not thought to return to their family home to seek out his brother. Of course he would go there; it was the only place that he knew.

              Turning the corner into the neighborhood where he had grown up, Rick's heart was racing in his chest, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He prayed that he was right, that he would find her there, and that it was not too late. Part of him feared that his brother might do something awful, unspeakable, and the thought that he might walk into that house to find her dead, murdered by his brother's hand, took the breath from him as he pulled into the cul-de-sac where they lived.

              Her car was in the driveway, and Rick breathed a sigh of relief. The house was ablaze with light, all windows illuminated, reminding him of evenings when he was a child. He expected to find his mother in the kitchen, an apron tied around her waist as she basted a turkey in the oven, sipping at a glass of wine as she prepared dinner for her family. His father would be in the living room, watching the nightly news on the television, his shoes discarded in front of his chair.

              But no, he thought as he climbed out of his car and headed for the door. They were long gone, his mother dead and his father having left them alone to fend for themselves. This was no longer the happy home that he had known as a child. His brother's illness had taken that away from them. He turned the handle on the door, and it swung open before him.

              “Jake?” he called out, stepping into the entryway. Pictures of the family still hung on the wall, memories of a happier life that had slipped away. “You here?”

              No sound returned to him, and he crept into the kitchen, his senses heightened by the adrenaline still flowing through him. His body tensed as he turned into the living room, and he scanned the room for any sign of life. The television was on, the sound muted, and the eerie sight of Alex's face, mouthing the words from the interview that had first drawn his brother's attentions, made Rick's stomach clench with fear. His brother must have recorded it, at some point, in order to watch it again and again. The coffee table was littered with paper, torn bits of pictures, from what Rick could see. He stepped farther into the room, and getting closer, noted that these were the pictures from his brother's walls. The images of all of the women with the blackened, blinded eyes, torn into shreds and tossed onto the tabletop.

              He turned, peeking briefly into the kitchen, before heading toward his brother's room. The door was closed, as it always was, and he reached hesitantly for the handle. His heart hammered in his chest, his breath ragged with fear as images flashed through his mind of what he might find on the other side of that door. It might be empty; he might be wrong about where his brother would have hidden his trophy. She may be dead, a bloody mess on the mattress, surrounded by her own image, repeated hundreds of times on the walls of her tomb. He sucked in a breath, steeling himself against whatever horror he might find as he gently turned the handle.

              A hand wrapped around his face, nails clawing at his eyes, violently yanking him back from the door. Rick lost his grip on the handle, panic flooding him once again as he tumbled onto the hallway floor. His brother rolled with him, his eyes wide with fury as he clawed at Rick's face, attempting to blind him, to protect his prize.

              “Jake,” Rick called out, trying to fend off his brother's attacks, his arms up to shield his face as his brother slashed at him.

              “No!” yelled his brother, climbing atop him, pummeling him with his fists. “NO! You cannot have her!”

              “Jake, wait,” said Rick, shoving his brother off with his arms, tossing him against the wall of the hallway. A knife suddenly appeared in his hand, fear and rage in his eyes as he wielded it at his brother, the only family that he had left.

              Rick thought of the delivery boy, whom his brother had stabbed for only doing his job, because it meant being close to her when he could not. He wondered how long his brother had been watching him with Alex, spending each day with her, and each night in her apartment. He knew that he must have been watching, must have seen. Fear fueled his body as he righted himself, standing with his hands out, begging for his brother to calm down.

              “Jake,” he said, “you don't have to do this.”

              “You cannot take her from me,” Jake said, lashing out with the knife, barely missing Rick's upheld arms. “I will not let you have her. I will fucking kill you.”