Once we’d gotten home and put up everything she’d chosen, we went to work on painting the spare room, then decided to go out to eat. We’d gone to Ben’s favorite restaurant in the next town over to celebrate his birthday—that had been the day before. After visiting the cemetery, we’d gone back to the warehouse to set up the extra room and had just finished when Grey was called in to cover a shift at The Brew. I’d finished a piece I’d been working on while she was gone, and went to pick her up for dinner, which led to us driving over to our dock to just relax.
We’d been lying there talking for hours when her words began to get slower and then stopped altogether. And now I couldn’t stop looking at my beautiful girl as she clung to me while sleeping on my shoulder.
“Grey,” I whispered, and my smile widened when she grumbled in her sleep. “Babe, it’s time to go home.”
One eye cracked open then shut again, and she cuddled closer against my body. “Not yet,” she mumbled.
“It’s been a long day. Let me take you home and put you in bed.”
Her eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t open her eyes as she muttered something I couldn’t understand.
“What was that?” I asked on a laugh.
“I said: ‘You’re getting there.’ ”
“Getting there, huh?”
She made some sort of affirmative noise in her throat, and her eyes slowly opened when I slid out from underneath her to hover over her.
Placing my mouth against her throat, I moved up until my lips were barely brushing her ear. “I’ll slowly undress you from the front door to the loft,” I breathed into her ear, and glanced down when her body shook slightly to see her arms covered in goose bumps. Settling down between her legs, I dropped my voice even lower. “Then I’ll lay you down on the bed and memorize every part of your body with my lips and hands . . .”
Grey’s fingers dug into my back, and her lips parted on a soft exhale, but she didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to bring you to the edge again and again until you’re screaming in frustration.” Moving away from her ear, I looked directly into her dark gold eyes that were now locked on me. The heat and want were clear in the way she was staring at me. “Then I’m going to spend the rest of the night wrapped up in you . . . inside you.”
A soft moan blew past her lips and she whimpered my name.
“Is that okay with you?” When she just nodded, I placed a soft kiss on the corner of her mouth and pushed away from her to stand up. After I’d helped her up, I nodded toward the car in the lot as I handed her my keys. “I’ll get the blanket, wait for me in the car.”
My phone started ringing as I was gathering up the blanket, and I answered without looking at the screen. My mind was on nothing but Grey, and what was coming for the rest of the night.
“Hello?”
“Is this Mr. Easton?”
“This is, may I—”
“Mr. Easton, this is Janelle, I’m with ADT Security. I’m showing that your intruder alarm is going off, did someone accidentally trigger—”
“What? No! We’re not home.” I took off running for the car, and Grey stepped out when she saw me.
“Do you want me to notify the police, Mr. Easton?”
What kind of question was that? Our alarm was going off and we weren’t home. Why wouldn’t I want the police contacted? “Yes!”
“What’s—”
“Get in the car, Grey,” I barked, and opened the back door to shove the blanket in there, then got into the driver’s seat as the ADT employee spoke.
“I’ve alerted the police for you, and they’re on their way. Are you out of town? If so, can someone you trust go to your residence to speak with the police?”
“No, we’re not out of town. We’re driving back to my place right now.” I took off from the lake, not caring about how fast I was going or that Grey was staring at me in shock.
“It’s safest for you if you don’t go inside until the police are there. I’ll let them know you’re on your way.”
“Thank you, I appreciate it.”
“Of course. Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Easton?”
“No, that’s all.”
As soon as we ended the call, I dropped my phone into one of the cup holders and started talking before Grey could ask what was happening.
“The alarm was triggered at the warehouse.”
“Are you serious?” I’d expected her to freak out, or to be yelling at me because of the way I’d snapped at her. But her voice was soft and shaky. “Why does this keep happening?”
“I don’t know, but hopefully the cameras got a picture of the person.”
“Are you going to call the police?”
I glanced at her and offered her a reassuring smile. “Security company did that for us, they’ll be there right before us or after.”
“Okay.” She blew out a harsh breath before repeating, “Okay.”
“If there’s anything there . . .”
“I want to see. I need to.”
Grabbing her hand, I brought it up to my mouth and placed a kiss on the inside of her wrist. “All right, I’m here for you.”
“I know, Jagger.” She laughed softly and squeezed my hand. “If there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it’s that you’re always there for me.”
I looked over to see her smiling at me, even though the smile was strained from the fear of what we might find at the warehouse. I’d vowed I would figure out who was harassing us like this, and I hoped we would identify the person tonight. I couldn’t let Grey continue to be tormented even if it wasn’t affecting our relationship the way I’m sure this person had planned. I knew even though she was doing better than she had in the last two years, it was still hard for her. There was no way it wasn’t; it was still hard for me. No matter how much time passed, I would always think I’d taken my best friend’s girl from him; and having it thrown in our faces every couple weeks didn’t help push away those thoughts.
We pulled up behind three police cars from the city next to us, and I had Grey wait in the car while I went to talk to one of the officers.
“Are you Mr. Easton?” he asked as I walked up to him.
“Yes, you can call me Jagger.” I offered him my hand, and looked over to the wide-open door. Someone had turned off the alarm, and other than the officers, the warehouse looked normal from the outside. “So what happened that you can see?”
“No signs of forced entry. Is it possible you left the door unlocked?”
“No, not at all. We’ve been paranoid about the alarm and locks since the last time this person came and messed with our cars.”
His eyebrows rose. “You know who’s doing this?”
“No, we don’t. But someone has been harassing my girlfriend and me for about two months now. I’ve been dealing with Officer Rand about all this.”
He nodded and wrote something down on a small notepad, then gestured toward the door with his pen. “If you didn’t leave the door unlocked, then the person had a key. I don’t know how long they were in there, but we cleared the entire space, the person isn’t in there anymore. You’ll have to look to see if anything is missing, but it looks like the alarm startled the intruder and they bolted. Come look inside, I need to ask you about something we found.”
Turning around, I gestured for Grey and waited until she was by my side before taking her hand and following the officer. A dozen feet inside the doorway near the kitchen counter was a plastic container on its side with torn papers spilling out of it.
“Is this yours?”
“No,” I answered, and tightened my grip on Grey’s hand. When the officers began taking pictures, I turned to speak in her ear. “They said there was no sign of forced entry, the intruder had to have had a key.”
Her face was covered in shock when I pulled back. “That’s impossible. No one else has a key and Charlie’s didn’t work.”
“I know, but I locked that door.”
?
??I watched you do it. It just doesn’t make sense.”
We glanced around the large room to see if anything looked out of place, and then followed an officer throughout the rest of the building and up to the loft to see if anything was missing. By the time we came back down, the first officer I’d spoken with was waiting for us by the plastic container.
“We need to take all of this for evidence, but I wanted to let you look at it to see if anything in it might help you to give us a name. Because these seem pretty personal.”
He flipped through the only pieces of paper that weren’t shredded; each had a picture on it that Grey and I had seen too often over the last month and a half. The only new picture was one of Ben’s headstone.
I sighed and shook my head. “No, that’s pretty much what we’ve been getting this whole time.”
He nodded and placed the photos back in the container. “The rest looks like it’s going to be the same pictures, just torn up.”
“Figures, that’s not surprising. We have the cameras outside if you want to come look at the recording.”
“That’d be perfect.”
He followed us to the TV, and I knelt down on the ground to open the cupboard that held the hard drive, and started slowly rewinding after we had all the cameras up on the screen.
“There it is,” the officer said quickly, and I continued to rewind until we had an image of the outside of the building looking like it was any other night.
We watched a car pull up, and right away the sight of that car triggered something for me—I just couldn’t figure out where I knew it from. The person stepped out with their back facing the camera, a hood pulled up over their head, opened the back door, and took out the plastic container filled with paper.
Grey exhaled roughly, and my blood started to boil when the hooded figure turned around. The hood only covered her hair, her face on perfect display for the camera.
“But she . . .” Grey began, but didn’t continue.
“This is a fucking joke,” I growled.
“Do you know her?” one of the officers asked as the figure went right up to the door and pushed a key into the lock.
“Yeah. Her name is LeAnn Carson, we grew up with her. I dated her over four years ago.”
The main officer started writing on his notepad again. “Do you have any idea how she got a key to your house?”
“No. No clue.” My conversation with Charlie a month ago came back to me, and I bit back another curse. “She got in here before the first time she ever did anything, and I think I know how. She knows my sister, does her hair, and my sister lost all of her keys—my key was on the key ring. I don’t know how she originally got her keys, but that has to be what happened. We’ve changed the lock since then, though, and I don’t know how she’d have a key to this new lock unless she somehow switched the old one out with the new key I gave my sister.” Looking back at the officer, I gestured toward the door. “My sister’s new key didn’t work when she came over, and I know I checked it before I ever gave it to her.”
“Do you have an address for Miss Carson?”
“No, but I’d bet she’s still living with her parents, and if she’s not, they know where she is. I can show you were they live, but I don’t know the address.”
“That’s fine, there’s a clear shot of the car and plates; we’ll look it up.” He cleared his throat and nodded in the direction of the doorway. “Mr. Easton?”
As soon as he walked to the door, I gave Grey a confused look and stood up to follow him.
“I have to ask because of the personal nature of this situation. Could Miss Carson’s behavior be explained by her trying to make trouble because of your relationship with the woman here?”
“Of course it is,” I responded immediately, and he eyed me curiously.
“Is there anything still lingering between you and Miss Carson that we need to know before we talk with her?”
I laughed loudly and shook my head at the ridiculousness of this night’s events. “Hell no. She approached me at the beginning of summer to see if there was anything between us still, and I told her no. My girlfriend and I run into her every now and then because it’s impossible not to in a town of this size, but she’s with a different guy every time we see her. I figured she was over me. Like I said, my relationship with her ended years ago.”
He wrote in his notepad and asked his next question without looking at me. “Could she have someone helping her? I noticed the pictures were of your girlfriend and another man, could he have something against you two?”
“No, uh . . . that was Grey’s fiancé. But he’s, um . . . he died more than two years ago. That’s just what she’s been using to try to get Grey and me apart. We knew that was the purpose this whole time, just didn’t know who was doing it.”
“Okay. Well, we’ll take this evidence and I’ll have someone come by tomorrow to get a copy of the video if that’s okay with you . . . ?”
“Of course it is.”
“Once we have that, we’ll proceed with the investigation. Officer Rand or myself will contact you once there’s news.”
“I appreciate it.” I shook his hand, and automatically looked around until I saw Grey watching us.
“There’s a chance Miss Carson knows we’ll be coming for her. What with the alarm going off, and also, I don’t know if you noticed, but it looked like she caught a glimpse of the camera before she took off. Do you need an officer to keep an eye on the two of you?”
“No, it’s fine. We’ll just set the alarm again.”
“Okay. Well, call us if anything happens, otherwise you’ll hear from us tomorrow about the video recordings.”
He motioned for the other officer who was still there, and once they were gone, Grey and I locked the door, pushed a couch in front of it, and turned on the alarm.
“You okay?” I asked her after we got in bed.
She rolled around in my arms until she was facing me, and got comfortable before answering. “Yeah. I’m glad we know who it is now. I want to say I’m surprised, but at the same time . . . I’m not. I thought it was her not long ago, but stopped thinking that as soon as I remembered seeing her out with different guys.”
“Yeah, same here. I still don’t know how she hacked into Ben’s account. She wasn’t smart enough to pass most of her classes, she definitely isn’t smart enough for that.”
Grey laughed softly, then sighed. “Maybe one of the guys she dates is a computer nerd or something.”
Her eyes slowly closed, and I watched her for a second before asking, “Do you want to move?”
“What’s the point?” she asked without opening her eyes. “It’s Thatch, no matter where we move, everyone will know where we end up.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“But I would like to get out of here at least until the police arrest her.”
I looked down to find her staring at me again. “Like where?”
“Anywhere, as long as we can hide. I’ll call in to work for tomorrow and Friday, I’ll just tell my boss what happened. Then we can find a hotel in a city close to here, we can just drive until we feel like stopping and stay there. We can even go back to Seattle. You can give some of your work to that guy who sells it for you, I can see Janie, and then we can spend the rest of the time alone.”
I smiled down at her and then kissed her softly. “Okay, then that’s what we’ll do. As soon as the police come for the video, we’ll leave for wherever you want to go.”
“Good. What did the officer say when he pulled you to the side?”
“Basically wanted to know why LeAnn might do this, if I still had a relationship with her, and if Ben was working with her since there were pictures of you two in there.”
“Even if he was alive, Ben wouldn’t do this,” she mumbled.
“What?”
Grey was silent for a few minutes, and I’d thought she’d fallen asleep until she said, “It’s something I’ve been thinking about since our cars
had all that stuff pasted and painted on them. Did I ever tell you what Janie told me about Ben when I ran to hide out at her apartment?”
“What she told you about Ben? No.”
“Ben knew how you felt about me.” Grey scooted up on the bed so she could look over at me, and one shoulder moved up in a shrug. “At first I wondered if you’d known that he knew, or if the two of you ever talked about it. But I knew that night in the gallery that there was no way you would’ve ever talked to Ben about me.”
“He knew?” I asked softly. “What do you mean, and how did Janie even know this?”
“One of the nights when we went cosmic bowling, Janie asked him why he never really touched me or kissed me when we were at parties or whatever. And Ben said something about having the rest of his life to hold me, but not being able to do that to you.”
I didn’t say anything as I thought about Grey’s words. Ben had never given any indication that he’d known about my feelings, and I didn’t know how to feel about finding out that he did, or that he tried to tame down their PDA in front of me for me.
“Anyway,” Grey began through a yawn as she slid back down to get comfortable, “I was just telling you that Ben wouldn’t try to keep us apart.”
“And how do you feel knowing that?”
There was another long pause, but I waited, knowing she was still awake. “Comforted,” she finally said. “As should you. I think Ben would want this for us.” Kissing my chest, Grey sighed softly. “Good night, Jagger.”
“Sleep well,” I murmured, but I knew sleep wouldn’t be coming for me anytime soon. Not after what I now knew. Not after my girl had just told me how she felt about the situation. There were too many thoughts and emotions coursing through me to sleep now.
Grey
September 14, 2014
“WAKE UP, BEAUTIFUL.”
I mumbled something even I couldn’t understand, and tilted my head when his lips touched my ear. As I slowly opened my eyes, I felt the pillow dip down in front of me. A pair of green eyes met mine, and I smiled when he wrapped an arm around me to pull me closer.
“Time is it?” I asked groggily.
“Early.”