Page 34 of Heart of Stone
My friends would lose their minds if they heard what I was about to do, but Maestro’s advice was to be confident in my decisions, and I knew sticking with Gunner was the right choice.
Just like Maestro told me to, I locked my eyes with Gunner’s, and told him, “Okay. Iwantto come with you.”
He was surprised, but pleasantly so. “I really thought that was going to be more of a problem.”
“I was under the impression that we don’t have time for arguments, or anything else, really. What do I need to pack?”
“Huh. I didn't think I’d get this far without you shutting me down, so I hadn’t thought about it yet. Obviously bring clothes, but also grab all your personal documents.” He paused, frowning. “The REAL documents, not that fake shit I saw in the office. I’m talking about your birth certificate, social security card, everything. If we had time, I’d tell you to burn any mail with your name on it, but something tells me we’re not getting that far today.”
Remembering how quickly the situation outside had escalated, I shook my head. “No, I don’t think we are either. What else?”
“Honestly, I think that’s it. I’m going to call my team here once we leave and they’ll stay on the property overnight. They’ll be here tomorrow, too, so we can get anything you’ve left behind. Can you think ofanythingI need to know before we leave that might help us get out of this mess sooner?”
“Hold on. Let me think.” I closed my eyes and retraced my steps from the last two days mentally. I was so tired that I knew things were slipping by me, and I wanted to make sure I’d covered all my bases before we left the Lace Elm house.
My thoughts stuttered to a halt when I recalled the moment right before I checked the house over last night; the password post-it!
Gunner exclaimed when I popped to my feet, running upstairs to retrieve the yellow paper with the password scrawled on it. He took it carefully, fingers brushing mine, scanning it with his eyes before looking at me.
“And this is a password to what, exactly?”
“Come here,” I replied, motioning for him to follow me into the living room.
I pulled the laptop down from the middle of the bookshelf, blowing the dust off it like some old tome from an ancient library. Six months was a long time, and after the first attempts to break into the thing, I had put it away and ignored it.
“I think it’s to his laptop. It’s password protected, and I made a mental note to try it out after I found it yesterday, but it slipped my mind. Should we try it?”
Gunner looked torn, but with a muttered curse, he shook his head. “No, as much as I want to, we should leave it for my technology guy. The more advanced digital security programs will fry the hard drive if it thinks someone is fucking with it, so I don’t want to risk it.”
We closed the post-it in the laptop and left it on the bookshelf where we found it. I expressed my disbelief at how casually we were storing what might be the most important part of our puzzle, but he swore that as soon as we left, his team would be on their way. No one was going to get into the house with Stone Security’s best on site, not without significant firepower.
I had questions about why a security firm had so many trained soldier-types, but from the way Gunner looked, it shouldn’t be a surprise. This was certainly not a man to surround himself with weaklings.
I packed my bag, flicking away the hesitations that kept rising in my mind one by one. If I let them roll in of their own accord, I’d probably curl up in a ball and refuse to move. It was all too crazy to comprehend, and I planned on taking things step by step until finally the chaos ended.
I threw my own laptop in, taking a few minutes to block out my appointment calendar for the next few days, before loading up a duffle bag with enough clothes for a week. After grabbing chargers and the documents that Gunner recommended I bring, I was as ready as I would ever be. Which was, truthfully, not very, but there was nothing else to be done. I was leaving today with the big, sexy security guard, and hopefully by next week I’d be safely back in my house with no more creepy things to worry about.
Ugh. Sexy security guard. I had to stop thinking like that. I knew it was probably trauma bonding, or just the sheer fact that he was the first man I had shown any interest in for such a long time, but whatever was brewing inside me involving Gunner in the physical sense had to go.
My feelings really were all over the place.
He waited for me at the bottom of the stairs, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, looking way too casual for someone who had participated in a firefight and knocked someone's molars down the street. I wondered if his hand hurt.
“Do you need any ibuprofen, or ice, or whatever, for your hand? I just keep thinking—”
He chuckled. “About the teeth thing. Yeah, I know you do. And no, I don’t, but thank you. I’m pretty good at throwing a punch at this point in my life, so it’s rare that there is any collateral damage.”
Gunner took my bag and loaded it into his Range Rover. It looked a little bland on the outside, but he explained that the windows were made of ballistic glass and the sides were thick enough to absorb almost anything that could be thrown our way. I hopped into the passenger seat and buckled my seatbelt, looking out the window at my home, and feeling a surprising wave of sadness.
“This doesn’t seem real,” I said more to myself than anyone else.
“This sort of stuff never does, but I swear we’re going to keep it as brief as possible. Are you ready?”
I took one last look at the house, thinking about my unmade bed, blinking Keurig, and all the other little pieces of my life that were still waiting for me. I would be back soon. I had to be.
“Yeah. I am.”
I didn’t even sound convincing to my own ears.