BRANDON’S POV
I paced across the floor of my office, pacing in a thousand different directions within my head. He, the super-investigator I had hired, would be walking in any minute from gathering information on my tail. That man? I’d decided it was Arlys. That was the norm for what probably was her tactics. Something in the back of my mind kept telling me it was something more elaborate, though.
“Come right in,” I muttered across the room, trying to act composed, though my heart was racing at an awful rate and my mind was full of a hundred thoughts.
And there was Chad, walking through that door. The expression on his face is so serious that it will never waste a word. He’s one of those men who speak so little, but when he does, it always counts. I respect him, but now more than ever I wanted some direct answers.
“Chad,” I nodded toward the chair, “what have you got for me?”
He sat, crossing his leg over the other as he always did whenever he was keyed up about something. “I found your tail.”
My heartbeat quickened. “And? Was it Arly’s?”
Chad shook his head. He never pulled his eyes from mine. “Nay. He said it wasn’t her, and from what I could see, he’s telling the truth.”
I furrowed my eyebrows and sat back in my chair. “You’re sure?”
“Abso-bloody-lutely,” Chad corrected most forcefully. “I’ve seen my share of liars and he hadn’t any of the tells. He is frightened, but not of Arlys, not even really because of her. He’s scared of somebody else.”
“Who is who?” I demanded. My frustration was starting to push my anger to the surface. “If it wasn’t Arlys, then who in hell was it?”
That was when Chad’s voice broke, and only that much gave me the shivers. “The point is, Brandon, for the life of him he doesn’t know,” he said to me, “that he is working for supposedly an anonymous fellow, good pay, had to do some shadowing of me, gathered bits and pieces of information, and is reporting back to his employer, no names, no faces, only instructions.”
An uncountable number of thoughts ran through my mind while I tried to put the pieces together. “Anonymous? Do you really want me to believe that someone went to the extent of hiring a pro to tail me and doesn’t know who it is? What kind of game is this?”
Chad shrugged again. His face darkened, and his countenance became grim. “Could be anything. Maybe somebody’s just testing the water; how you would react, you know. Or maybe they are cooking up something bigger and this is just the first step.”
I raked a hand through my hair. The pieces fell into place: if not Arlys, then who? And why now? Enemies, I’ve got plenty of them. The very experience was tying pieces together. Whoever was now into this was not playing games-seriously.
“Did he give you anything else?” I tried very hard to keep my voice level. “Any clues, anything that might point us in the right direction?”
Chad shook his head again, this time frustration now marbled across his features. “Nothing concrete. Blabbed some really weird shit, though. After one of his reports, he supposedly gets a message back, saying it was a warning. It said to stop tailing you or there would be consequences.”
“A warning from whom?”
“That’s the point,” he jerked forward in his chair. “It wasn’t from his client. He feels it was from somebody else, somebody who is watching you too.”
That felt like being punched in the guts, somehow. So there was another one apart from this one? Just how many people were following my every movement? This thing was getting more and more complicated by the minute, and the more clear I grew, the less I seemed to understand.
“What in heaven’s name is going on, Chad?” I whispered. “Why me? What do they want?”
His eyes locked onto mine, and he wrinkled up his face in a scowl, quite serious. “That is what we need to figure out. Whoever it is, they are playing dirty games.”
I settled back into the chair, spinning in my mind. All this was to be about Arlys, her vendetta coming to a head, her sick game. Now there was a new player in this game-one who could be every bit as dangerous or worse. The worst part-it was just that I didn’t really know who it could be or what he or she could want of me.
“Just keep on digging,” I finally told him, quite bluntly. “I want to run into someone for this, pronto.”
Chad nodded from his chair. “Make it soon, Brandon. Whoever this is, they aren’t messin’.”
When Chad left the room I was left to think. All of those thoughts spurted into the room like jigsaw pieces that did not fit, and the more that I tried the more confused that I became. Couldn’t be Arlys, so who was it? And what could, in such a cowardly concept, be the cause to attempt to keep from being found?
I stood and walked across to the window. Before me stretched the city, a maze of towering buildings and interconnecting streets that all of a sudden became repulsive to my eyes. Somewhere out there, someone was watching me, following me. But who, and why?
A million questions began to pound my face, and I had this most ridiculous feeling of missing something tremendously huge-like for real, I mean, something that would totally change everything. I needed answers and I needed them fast.