“Something like that.”
“It might not be business,” I say. “You’ve slept with a lot of women, Damien. Even if you weren’t serious about them, that doesn’t mean they weren’t serious about you. And one of them might be the jealous type.”
“Agreed. And we’re pursuing that avenue, as well.”
“What about the anonymous letter that came to Stark Tower? Or the text I got in Munich?”
“Nothing yet,” Damien says. “But we haven’t given up.” He glances at his watch, then he pulls out his phone and makes a call. “Anything?” he says, then frowns as the person on the other end speaks. “Good thinking,” he finally says. “That just might work out well for us.”
“That was Ryan,” he says to me after he ends the call. “The cameras at the entrance and the parking garage caught our culprit. Tall, wiry. Completely covered in a black hoodie and sunglasses. Kept his or her head down, but Ethan says the gait looks to be male, and quite possibly a teenager.”
“A teenager? But—”
“I’m guessing someone hired him. Our perp loiters around the convenience store, asks a kid if they’d like to earn a few extra bucks.”
“Oh.” It makes sense.
“Fortunately, there are cameras in strip malls. We might get lucky.”
I nod. It’s a solid plan, but I’m not holding my breath.
“I’m going to assign someone from my security team to you.”
My head snaps up. “The hell you are. I’m not living my life under surveillance.”
“It’s necessary.”
“You don’t have the Secret Service following you around.” It’s one thing to stay with Damien, to take reasonable precautions with my life. It’s something else entirely to suddenly live in a glass jar like a politician or a celebrity.
“I have a team available when I need them. But there’s no indication I’m in danger.”
I start to say that I’m not in danger, either. But considering I’d just agreed to move into Damien’s house because of flying rocks, I can’t really backtrack now. As much as I don’t want some dude in a black suit with an earpiece monitoring my every move, I also don’t want to be stupid about this.
“Nikki,” he says gently. “Do you think I could survive if something happened to you?”
I draw in a breath because I know how he feels. If something happened to Damien, I am certain that I would shrivel up and die.
“All right,” I say. “But not someone who flanks me, and not an obvious tail. But if you want to have someone hang out at the office if I end up renting it, I won’t object. And I’m guessing you already have access to that tracking device we had installed in the car.”
“I could access it,” he says. “But not without some trouble. I’d rather install something I can monitor openly.”
“Done,” I say.
“And your phone,” he says.
I frown. “What about my phone?”
“I want to be able to track you with it. There are apps that will allow me to do that. I’m going to install one.”
“Just like that? No ‘Mother May I’?”
“No,” he says and holds his hand out for my phone.
I hand it over.
He downloads the app, fiddles with the settings, then gives it back to me.
The he takes his own phone out of his back pocket and repeats the process. A moment later, my phone buzzes. I glance at it, open the new app, and see a red dot indicating that Damien is right there in my apartment. “So you’ll never lose me, either,” he says.
“Oh.” I hold tight to my phone, still warm from his hand, and suddenly I’m speechless. Maybe it’s the stress of the evening, maybe it’s hormonal, but for some reason, adding that tracker to my phone is about the most romantic thing I can think of. “Thank you,” I whisper.
“I’m never letting you go, Nikki,” he says, taking my hand and pulling me close.