When six in the morning rolls around and I’m still alone, I decide to take a jog. I don’t know if leaving the apartment is even okay though, so I decide to text Seth: Unless I hear otherwise, I assume I can take my morning jog and go to work. Brandon Senior is expecting me. I’m leaving for my jog in exactly thirty minutes. Message sent, I head upstairs, change into a sports bra, grab my headset, and then head downstairs where I down a protein shake, which I barely manage to stomach. At the thirty-minute mark, my phone beeps with a message from Seth: Normal activity is acceptable.
I grimace at the phone. “Normal activity is acceptable,” I repeat, and I try to take comfort in the hidden meaning of that formality. Clearly everything is fine with Shane if “normal activity is acceptable.” He’s just not talking to me or coming home. Oh yeah. I really need that run. Heading to the foyer, I intend to depart quickly but find myself gun-shy to open the door, as if Adrian Martina, not Shane, will be standing there. I inhale and will myself to get by my nerves, yanking open the door and exiting into the hallway. Stopping just outside our apartment, I make sure I’ve locked up, and as I start walking, I really hate how uneasy I am. Running is my sanity. It’s my escape, and yet I’m second-guessing my choice right now, despite Seth’s approval. I halt and turn around but grimace at my nerves. This is our life. Martina and my brother’s hacker hellhounds aren’t going away. I can’t hide in our apartment or I might as well go find a safe house and live in a hole. Besides, it’s better that I run off steam before I see Shane again than end up responding to him emotionally and blasting him, which solves nothing.
Heading down the hallway, I enter the elevator and flash back to Shane doing his best to strip me naked in the car last night. He’d needed me then. He clearly needs space now. I’d respect and understand that if I wasn’t so sure this silence is related to his vow to do whatever necessary to beat Martina, while all but assuring I won’t know the details. He doesn’t want me to know what he’s doing because he doesn’t want me to talk him out of it. I don’t even want to know what that means he’s doing right now. I exit the elevator with this in my mind, but quickly find I’m distracted by my surroundings. Scouting for trouble, I find only a few businesspeople here and there, and nothing and no one dangerous.
Exiting to the front of the Four Seasons, I’m thankful the familiar faces are not chatty ones, and I make a fast escape down the sidewalk. Turning on my music, a Jason Aldean song Shane and I both enjoy, I insert my headphones and start running. Soon I’m feeling the burn in a good way, but it’s not blocking out my thoughts as I’d hoped. One minute I’m replaying my night with Shane, and the next I’m back in a memory I despise. I’m tied up, while my tattoo artist ex-boyfriend, if you could call him that, Bobby J, is fucking another woman in front of me. Because of course, dating a professor who used me wasn’t enough. I had to rebound with his complete polar opposite, a man with a propensity for kink, while letting myself become his sex doll. I stop running, bend over, and press my hands to my knees. Damn it, why am I going there now? Why? I hate that time in my life. I hate that person I was, who I don’t even know as me.
Why now?
I start walking, a coffee shop in my sights, and with each step my surroundings come back to me, a prickling sensation beginning on my neck. Actually, I think I’ve had it for a while now. Like I’m being watched or followed. My gaze catches on a horse and carriage parked at the curb, and I approach it, stopping to admire the horse, stroking his nose, while discreetly scanning left to find a tall dark man with a hoodie walking in this direction, along with two men in suits, who pass him and keep walking. Glancing right, there is a lady with a dog. Normal people. Normal activities. And yet that feeling of unease remains.
Turning away from the horse, I eye the coffee shop again and hurry in that direction, seeking the shelter it offers, not to mention the caffeine for my sleep-deprived body. Entering the shop, I am immediately calmer and really regretting this run as I make a fast path to the short line. As I’m standing there, waiting to place my order, my mind goes to my brother and the hacker operation hunting him and me, then moves to Adrian Martina. Will there ever be a day when I run again and don’t look over my shoulder? I order my coffee and turn. My heart lodges in my throat as the man from outside enters the shop and pulls down his hoodie. To my distress, his eyes meet mine, and there is no question in my mind. He’s here for me.
I turn, fully intending to race for the bathroom, but a lady and her three kids step into my path. My heart is thundering in my ears. Time seems to stand still as I step around them and dash for the too-distant back of the shop, finally turning down the hallway, but to my distress, once I’m at the ladies’ room door, it requires a pass code I don’t have. I rotate again just as the man I’m running from enters the hallway and, my God, he’s big, broad, and in my path.
“Who are you and what do you want?” I demand.
“Emily,” he says, making it clear that I’m right. He’s here for me. “I’m Cody.” He holds up his hands, his dark hair curling in slightly at his brow, his eyes meeting mine. “I’m the new head of your security detail.”
“Security detail?” I ask incredulously. “I have a detail now?”
“You do,” he says. “Starting today.”
“And as the head of this detail no one told me about, you sneak up on me? How about introducing yourself and letting me know you’re with me?”
“That’s what I’m doing now.”
“You should have done it sooner, and how about someone calling me and telling me you’re about to corner me?”
“Someone was supposed to call you before I approached you,” he explains. “I had no idea he hadn’t. I’ll call him so you know I’m with him.”
“No,” I say when he reaches for his phone, and I see a tattoo of a cross exposed on the back of his hand, more ink disappearing under his black hoodie sleeve. “Just show me a text message from him or a business card.”
“How about both?”
I nod, and he reaches into his pocket to hand me a card with a security firm listed. He follows that by handing me his phone with a text message from Seth about me that reads: Emily’s jogging in thirty minutes. I’ll make contact and let her know who you are. Shane wants to meet you once she’s safely at work.
“Obviously he didn’t make the contact he promised,” Cody says. “And I promise to give him hell.” I hand him back his phone and he adds, “As I’m sure you will as well.”
“Oh yes. I will.” I stick the card into my pocket. “Thank you. And now I just want to get my coffee.”
“Understood. Let me key all my numbers into your phone and then I’ll leave.”