Page 66 of Craving
He’d told her things no one else knew, and she’d thrown it back in his face. How could he build a life with someone who wasn’t honest? She was hiding something from him, some problem she wouldn’t share. It was delusional to think he could build a life with someone who didn’t even trust him to carry her burdens. He’d practically begged to help her, and she’d thrown it in his face.
He drove away from the traffic of downtown, away from the Winter Festival and all its happiness. On the freeway out of town, he watched the trees rush by as he gripped his steering wheel, letting the night take him where it would. After half an hour of aimless driving, his emotions running riot, Marlon pulled up outside the Elite Security offices, his face grim. He was worn out.
Elton was in his command center. The tech genius was tapping away on his keyboards and liaising with police on the phone. He nodded to Marlon and pulled up the security footage from The Sweetest Thing on one of the spare screens.
Marlon nearly walked away. He didn’t owe Camilla anything, least of all his time and expertise. She wanted to move out—wanted to leave him—why should he try to figure out who was breaking into her place?
But his car had brought him to the building, and his feet had carried him to this room. He sat down in front of the spare monitor and pressed the play button.
By the twentieth viewing of the break-in, Marlon was no closer to figuring out the perpetrator’s identity. Something niggled at his memory. Had he seen this guy in passing somewhere? But—where? He watched the video again. Again. Again. Was that a shadow or a piercing on his face? Brown hair or dark blond?
Pushing away from the desk, he brewed a fresh pot of coffee, then sat down at the desk once more. This time, he started running through video footage of the bakery’s front door from the start of the footage they’d collected, looking for anyone who matched the size and build of the man who had broken in.
Every time Camilla appeared on the screen, his stomach gave a lurch. He wanted to throw up. A dozen times, he reached for the power button to shut the computer down, but his hand stilled before he did it.
Someone had tried to hurt her business—hurt her. He was full of anger and hurt and betrayal, but the thought of Camilla being unsafe while she worked through the night…
That was worse than knowing she’d be moving out by the end of the weekend.
Maybe he could treat this as a job. Wasn’t that what he liked about working in this industry? He could take on jobs, take care of his clients, then leave them behind when the contract was over. Maybe if he treated Camilla as an Elite Security client, it would wash away the past month. He could make sure she was safe then move on. His house would once again be a place where he could exhale. Alone. How it should have been all along.
They had just over two weeks of footage to go through, and even watching it at double speed, it took hours. Elton wrote some kind of script to speed the process, automatically flagging potential suspects in the footage, but that didn’t speed things up enough for Marlon’s liking. They still had to review everything the script had flagged, then change the parameters and do it all over again.
It was slow, tedious work, and it made Marlon’s stress wind tighter and tighter in his chest, like his ribs were caught in big steel straps slowly winching themselves shut. He felt like he was missing something, but he also felt like he shouldn’t care about this at all. Every minute he spent watching the bakery footage was tearing him apart.
“Is there anyone who wants to hurt her?” Elton asked for the thousandth time. He’d asked the question a dozen different ways, but every single one of them had the same answer:
“I don’t know.”
And wasn’t that the truth? Marlon had no idea if someone wanted to hurt Camilla. He’d seen the panic in her eyes, but she hadn’t wanted to share its cause. Did he know anything about her? They’d teased each other, laughed, shared bits and pieces of their pasts…but what did that mean, really? He’d thought he was falling in love with her. Was he delusional? He didn’t even know her well enough to love the first thing about her.
As he watched people zip in and out of frame on the screen at inhuman speeds, his mind played Camilla’s voice on repeat: You keep wanting to ride to my rescue, but I don’t need that.
She had him figured out, didn’t she? She could tell that he liked walking around like some kind of pathetic, puffed-up hero. He’d always relished taking care of everyone around him and pretending they needed him.
She didn’t need him to be her protector. She hadn’t even wanted the security system in the first place until he’d forced her to accept it.
Marlon glared at the screen.
“You don’t look too happy, boss.”
He glanced at Elton, who was sipping sludge-like coffee out of a mug with a glittery cat on its side. Marlon shook his head. “Just want to find this guy.”
Elton pressed a key, and one of the screens switched to an image of Camilla in her bakery’s kitchen, pulling perfectly baked cakes out of the oven. She touched the tops of them then turned around to face her work surface again, where more ingredients were laid out.
She stood still for a long moment, staring at the counter. Then her shoulders shook with heavy sobs all of a sudden, like a wave of emotion had come out of nowhere.
Marlon’s heart clenched.
“You want to head over there?” Elton asked casually. “I can handle the CCTV footage.”
Camilla’s body stilled, and he watched her straighten her spine. She took a deep breath, then moved to the ingredients in front of her.
Marlon hesitated, but her voice played in his head again. If he showed up at her back door, he’d be trying to ride to her rescue. Camilla didn’t need him to do that. She said it to his face. “She didn’t want me there.”
“I’m sure you can sit in the corner and keep quiet.”
“She didn’t want me there,” he repeated, voice tight.