Chapter Twenty-Nine

Brielle

All my life, waking up early has been the bane of my existence.

Until today.

I find myself sitting bolt upright in Allen’s bed at six-twenty a.m., wide awake and ready to hurry back to the hospital to be by his side.

I power through a shower, throw on jeans and a t-shirt, and wrangle my wet hair into a messy bun before I add socks and tennis shoes to my look. The moment the second set of laces are tied, I am moving at a fast walk out of the bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen for some coffee.

Mari grins at me from behind the counter. “Well now, don’t see that every day.”

“What?” Braeden, our guard on duty, asks.

“She is up, dressed and in the kitchen, and it’s before seven, and I didn’t hear three different alarms go off.”

“Smartass,” I mutter as I pour myself a cup.

“Ah, there’s the ‘morning Bri’ I know and love.”

I ignore her and ask, “How soon can we get back up there?”

***

When I walk into the private room that Allen was moved to sometime during the night, my heart leaps for joy. His color is much better, and the clarity of his gaze tells me the anesthesia has left his system.

“Hi, baby,” he says with a lustful grin, and I color as the spectators in the room pointedly look anywhere else but at the two of us.

“Hi,” I say softly, and close the distance between us to kiss him. “You really had me worried.”

He attempts a shrug, then grimaces. “We got him, that’s what counts.”

“You’re going to be okay, that’s what counts,” I correct him sternly, and I hear Tucker chuckling quietly across the room.

“Any updates, Detective?” I ask as I pull a chair up close enough on Allen’s left side to be able to hold his hand.

“Bitzmore admitted to stalking you,” Tucker says flatly. “He was the one in the treehouse, and in the van, and he left you roughly half of those messages. But he had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him who his female accomplice was. He seemed genuinely surprised.”

“Why me?” I ask. “He lost his realtor’s license over two years ago, and no one has seen or heard from him since. So, why me? And why now?”

“Good question,” Tucker answers. “From what I gather, he holds you at least partly responsible for losing his license. Claims you ‘ratted him out to the board’, as he put it.”

“That’s absurd,” I retort. “I didn’t even know about the crap he’d pulled until after his license was revoked. I don’t know how he got onto the board’s radar, but it sure as hell wasn’t me.”

“Noted. Anyway, he says he was approached mysteriously about four months ago and offered a lot of money to, quote, ‘make you sweat a little’.”

“To what purpose?” Allen asks, his jaw clenched.

“He doesn’t know. He just said he was paid fifty thousand to follow you and send you threatening texts and voicemails. Since he blames you for the whole license thing, he agreed to do it.”

“Who hired him?”

Tucker sighs and runs a hand over his face. “That’s the thing. He says he does not know. No names, and he never met anyone face-to-face. Everything was done through emails from dummy accounts and electronic funds transfers.”

“Can’t you trace the money?”

“We’re working on it, but all that’s going to take a few days, at least.”

“What I’d like to know is where he learned to use a high-end sniper rifle,” Pete interjects.

Tucker sighs again. “Bitzmore has military training. He got kicked out when they realized just how well he had managed to fake out the psych screening. As far as the gun? He says his phantom employer provided it – along with the promise of another two hundred thousand if he succeeded. We’re working that angle too.”

I look at Allen, then at the detective.

“So, what now? Can I go home, at least? Sounds like the threat of being shot at is past now.”

“Are you nuts? No,” Allen says immediately. “Someone was willing to pay Bitzmore a quarter of a million dollars to kill you, Brielle. There’s nothing that says he was the only one hired for the job.”

My temper finally gets the best of me, and I can feel my chin jut out in defiance when I retort, “Then I guess it’s time to set another trap, isn’t it? Only this time, at my house, not out in public. I don’t want any more innocent bystanders getting hurt.”

“I agree with Allen,” Tucker says instantly. “That is a bad idea. Supremely bad.”

“Good, then we’re all agreed,” I snap. “But it’s happening anyway. Help me or stand aside.”

“Could you guys give us a moment, please?” Allen says solemnly, and the room empties quickly.

“Not doing this, honey. No way in hell,” he snarls the moment we are alone.

“It’s not your decision.”

He fists his left hand in his hair and tugs, his lips pulled back to show his gritted teeth.

“You are so…. frustrating, Brielle,” he manages to growl, and it is obvious that he is straining with the effort of holding back more colorful language. “Someone took a shot at you just last night in case you’ve forgotten. And now you just want to return to your house and play like it’s all over?”

“To lure whoever is left and catch them so that I can get on with my life, yes.”

“You’re out of your mind,” he grumbles. “Seriously.”

I reach over, gently untangle his hand from the hair he is on the verge of pulling out and wrap my hand around his firmly.

“The alternative is to hide indefinitely and let some shadow-person dictate how I live the rest of my life. And to me, that is not living, Allen. That is barely existing. I already spent fifteen years barely existing, and I am not going back.”

“There’s got to be another way,” he mutters unhappily, then pins me with a stare. “I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t,” I say with a bit more confidence than I actually feel, “because this will be on my turf this time.”

A knock at the door interrupts us.

“Sorry, but there’s been a development,” Tucker says as he pokes his head in the doorway. “I need to get to the station. Don’t decide anything just yet, all right?”

“All right,” I concede.

***

Three hours later Detective Tucker is back.

“Your pal Bitzmore was holding out on me,” he says tersely. “He now admits to placing an ad for a female voice-over artist. He hired her and had her read what he told her were excerpts from a thriller novel as an audition for making an audiobook. Then he ran those samples through the modulator and sent them to you. He paid her with a money order mailed to a P.O. box, and they only ever talked online.”

“So that’s it,” I exclaim. “That’s the last piece. We’re clear.”

“No,” Allen stresses. “We still need to find out who hired Bitzmore, honey.”

“If that part ever even happened in the first place. Bitzmore lied at first about any female accomplices,” I point out. “What’s to say he didn’t lie about the rest of it, as well?”

“I intend to find out,” Tucker promises us both. “I’ll be in touch.”