Authors: Jade Allen
Rachel paced back and forth along the rug in her tiny living room, able to feel Dylan’s gaze on her but, for the moment, caring very little about his presence. “Do you want something to eat?” He asked her.
Rachel stopped, turning slightly to look at the man sitting on the couch, staring up at her with a slightly sardonic smile curving his lips. “What?”
Dylan shrugged, stretching his arms over his head, glancing around the room. “I asked if you wanted something to eat. Worrying is hungry work.” He stood in a quick, fluid movement that made Rachel take a few startled steps backward, glancing at her before he walked towards the kitchen. For a moment, she simply stared at his back, her mouth slightly open in shock. He had had the audacity to accost her in a parking lot, to bully her into giving him her car keys, and when they had arrived at her apartment, he had taken her keys with him, holding a hand out as they approached her door to forestall her. He had walked right into her house after unlocking the door and left her standing outside before beckoning her in behind him.
“What are you doing?”
Dylan turned, one dark eyebrow raised as he glanced at her. He had taken the sunglasses off when they came into the apartment; he had wide-set, dark hazel eyes that seemed entirely too full of knowledge for Rachel to comfortably meet them. “Getting something to eat. I thought I’d get you something as well—cranky women tend to be hungry women.”
Rachel crossed her arms over her chest as the blood rushed into her cheeks. “I am not a cranky woman!” she said, knowing she sounded petulant but unable to help herself. “Even if I was cranky, don’t you think mysterious threatening phone calls and random strangers who force you into your car and take your keys are perfectly good reasons?”
Dylan leaned against her fridge, his gaze traveling up and down over her body, taking her in. “I didn’t force you into your car,” he said slowly. “I advised you very strongly to get in your car and let me drive us to wherever you wanted to go.”
Rachel pressed her lips together, taking a deep breath. “You’re still a random stranger and you—you bullied me into doing what you wanted.” She scowled at him, resenting herself for going along with it and resenting him for being there, looking completely unfazed by her irritation.
“That tends to come with the territory of being hired to protect someone. And we’re all random strangers ‘til we get to know one another.”
“Stop being so reasonable!” Rachel’s hands clenched into fists. “What do you mean hired to protect someone?”
Dylan pulled himself back into an upright position, turning away from her and opening the fridge. He leaned in, and Rachel heard the sound of the fridge’s contents moving around, shuffling plastic and shifting glass on metal racks. “This looks promising,” Dylan said, standing up once more and producing a Tupperware container full of leftover steak tips and mushrooms. He looked around and plucked a wrapped up baguette from the top of the fridge where Rachel had left it.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, losing her instinctive fear as her anger rose up.
“I don’t actually have to, you know,” Dylan pointed out. He moved to the counter, reaching for the knife block with one hand, pulling a cutting board down onto the counter with the other. “There’s enough here for two; sure you’re not hungry?”
Rachel closed her eyes, her fists tightening convulsively for a moment before she took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “How the hell is this my life?” she asked no one in particular, opening her eyes and looking up at the ceiling.
“You got lucky; some people don’t appreciate it when others catch a bit of luck. And here we are.” Rachel tore her gaze from the ceiling and watched as Dylan nonchalantly cut the loaf of bread in half. He cracked the seal on the Tupperware container and opened the microwave door, putting the steak tips and mushrooms into the box with the ease of practice. Rachel took a few steps into the kitchen, pushing Dylan aside; he shifted away from the counter, and she turned towards the fridge once more, withdrawing a packet of provolone cheese.
“So you’re not going to tell me anything?” she said, not even looking at him as she arranged the slices along the halves of the loaf.
“I didn’t say that, now did I? I said I don’t have to tell you anything.”
Rachel sighed. The microwave beeped and she ruthlessly punched the door open button, snatching up the Tupperware container and pulling the lid the rest of the way off. “What will it take for you to tell me what the hell is going on?” She finally looked at him; Dylan was smiling slightly, watching her with a look in his eyes she wasn’t sure she liked.
“Every man has a price,” he said.
Rachel held his glance for a moment longer and turned her attention back onto the food, reaching blindly to pull the silverware drawer open and taking out a fork. She arranged the leftover meat and vegetables on top of the cheese, put one half of the loaf on top of the other, and cut through the sandwich in a few fast movements, snatching up one half and retreating back into the living room. Dylan followed her into the living room and sat down with the other half of the sandwich and they both ate in silence.
“Let me get this straight,” she said, licking her fingers and brushing the crumbs off of her lap. “If I want to know who’s threatening me, who hired you, and why anyone has the slightest interest in keeping me alive, I have to
pay
you?”
“I seem to recall that you have a lot more money than you’re used to having—a fair windfall. I don’t think you’ll miss a thousand or so, do you?”
“A thousand or so,” Rachel said, looking at him levelly. “How exactly are you supposed to keep me safe if I don’t know who you’re keeping me safe from?”
“You don’t need to know; not right now. If the time comes when it’s necessary to your survival to know who it is, then in accordance with the job I was hired to do, I’ll tell you. Consider the thousand an expediting fee.”
Rachel turned her mind onto the problem; she had never lacked for intelligence—in spite of her dead-end career, she had always been relatively quick on the uptake, and if it weren’t for the multiple shocks of the day, she cherished the thought that she probably would have put together more of the situation sooner. “Let me see how much of this I can figure out on my own,” she said, eyeing the man a few feet away from her. “I somehow became the beneficiary of a large chunk of money that someone took great pains to send to me anonymously.” Dylan nodded. “Some other people—you won’t tell me who—are upset that I got this money and want to take it from me.” He nodded again. “Someone else hired you to keep me from getting killed.”
“I’ll give you this for free: the same person who gave you the money hired me.”
Rachel thought for a long moment. “Why on earth would someone give me a boatload of money if they knew they’d also have to hire someone to protect me for having it?”
Dylan shrugged, still smiling faintly. “Maybe they thought you deserved it. Maybe they like you. It’s not really a question I asked. I was told to keep you alive, to make sure the money doesn’t get taken from you.”
“How much are they paying you?”
Dylan chuckled. “If I’m not going to tell you who they are, how do you think you’ll convince me to tell you how much they’re paying?”
“How much money do you want for that?” Rachel raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms over her chest. Dylan’s smile spread over his face.
“That piece of information isn’t for sale, love. Besides, you’d be a piss-poor investment for my client if you were the type to fritter your money away so easily.”
Rachel stood. “Get out of my house,” she said, keeping her voice calm with an effort.
“Can’t do that—orders. I don’t take payment from someone without doing the job.”
“I don’t even get a say in this? What if I leave?”
“Then I will be leaving with you.”
“You can’t follow me everywhere.”
“I can follow you anywhere that matters.”
Rachel frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dylan shrugged. “You’re unlikely to be assaulted in the bathroom. One window, one door—you’re on the third floor so it’d be tough for someone to climb up and get to you there.”
“My whole apartment is on the third floor; wouldn’t my bedroom be just as unlikely?”
Dylan smiled, his lips twitching, his dark eyes gleaming with suppressed laughter. “Are you asking if I would follow you into your bedroom?” Rachel’s blood rushed to her face. “The answer is yes; your bedroom’s a much larger space than your bathroom. Sure they’d have to climb to get at you easily, but there’s that convenient balcony off the side. Besides, if you’re in your bedroom, chances are fair you’re sleeping—easy to sneak up on you.”
“They said…” Rachel pressed her lips together, feeling a spurt of fear. “They said that they know where I am at all times.” She glanced at Dylan, swallowing against the dry, tight feeling in her throat.
“That they do,” Dylan agreed. “Which is why I’m here. They know I’m here—that will have put them off their strategy for a little while. For the moment, you’re safe.”
“Can’t I just—I don’t know—give them the money? I mean…” she licked her lips. “I’m starting to think that quitting my job was a huge mistake.” Rachel cringed.
“That dead-end thing? Of course you should have quit! You’re a smart, beautiful girl and shouldn’t settle for such a thankless job.” Rachel felt her cheeks warming up again at the words ‘smart’ and ‘beautiful.’ He shrugged. “Why should you give up the money? It’s not like the people who want it deserve it any more than you do.”
“Do they deserve it any less?”
Dylan’s gaze shifted off of her face. “That would give you a hint,” he said. “I told you I’m not going to tell you anything about them unless it’s necessary to keep you alive, or unless you pay me a thousand dollars.”
Rachel slid her tongue over her teeth, considering. “So,” she said, glancing around her apartment; it looked smaller than usual with Dylan sitting only a few feet away from her. “What do we do now?”
Dylan shrugged. “It’s your life, love—I’m just guarding it for you.”
“But I can’t leave.”
“You can leave, but I’ll leave with you.”
“What if I had a date?” Rachel smirked.
Dylan tilted his head to the side slightly. “
Do
you?”
Rachel blushed once more. “If I did. What—I mean…” she gestured to him.
“Then I would go with you, introduce myself as your bodyguard, and give you a little privacy.”
“Right, because showing up with a huge, good-looking guy isn’t going to put anyone off.”
Dylan’s eyes glimmered. “When your life’s in danger, I don’t think dating should be at the top of your priorities list. But I thank you for the compliment.”
Rachel stood, deciding abruptly that she needed to use the bathroom. She turned and pretended to ignore Dylan while her heart beat a little faster in her chest, her cheeks burning.
You really only have his word for it that he’s here to help you,
she thought.
He could be keeping you in one place until whoever’s coming after you manages to get here.
Rachel sat on the ledge of the bathtub, staring at the closed door. Somehow she didn’t think it was likely that she could find a way to get through the front door of her apartment without Dylan noticing.
She heard movement from the living room; the groan of the couch, footfalls in the hallway leading to the bathroom and her bedroom next to it. Rachel sighed. In less than a week, her life had gone from one form of hell to another, it seemed. She no longer had to worry about waking up early to go to a job that would never get any better. But now, even though she was financially independent, someone decided that they wanted her newly found fortune. She couldn’t call the cops; she didn’t know the extent to which she could trust Dylan, but she reasoned that anyone who was going to go through the kind of trouble of making threatening phone calls from carefully concealed numbers probably wouldn’t balk—if they had the means—at keeping the police from investigating the situation.
But what do I really know about the situation?
She knew that she had two million dollars to her name. She knew that Dylan had showed up after the phone call, and seemed to know more about the situation than she did. She knew that people didn’t typically give away millions of dollars without good reason. She knew that she was probably in danger; whoever had called her had made it clear that they were determined.
Suddenly, she heard a sound--a crunching, groaning, cracking sound.
“Stay put,” Dylan said through the door. Rachel’s heart started beating faster. A fleeting temptation to follow him flitted through her mind. She heard his steps retreating down the hall, away from her. Rachel looked around the bathroom. There wasn’t much that could serve as a realistic weapon for her; the towel rack didn’t appear very solid, and none of her toiletries were in particularly heavy packaging. Rachel swallowed.
Far away, on the other side of the door, she heard a shout; there was a muffled thud, the sound of boots scraping against the floor, scuffing noises and grunts. Rachel sat down uneasily, thinking that if nothing else, Dylan was demonstrating—she hoped—that his assignment to protect her was genuine.
It could be a set-up,
she thought anxiously.
Lull me into a false sense of security and then lead me straight to whoever is after me.
She didn’t know what to believe; Dylan’s refusal to give her any information—or very little information at all—was difficult to reconcile with the idea of someone who had her interests at heart.
My interest isn’t in his heart,
she thought bleakly.
It’s in his wallet. What happens if they offer him more money?