CHAPTER 8
Grant
Open lips, eyes blinking rapidly, her stiffened posture. I rolled my shoulders, forcing myself to ignore the surprised expression on her face. She shouldn’t have been shocked. I had called and texted, and she had her phone with her. This was what made her impossible to work with. I wanted a phone call. That was it.
Because the stalker left another note.
I crossed the bar and angled beside her, handing a few bucks to the bartender for Hazel’s tab. I grabbed her arm, and her eyes blazed, the surprise dissolving into contempt.
“What do you want, asshole?” she scowled.
The woman next to her, black hair and uncanny eyes, watched us with amusement on her lips, an obvious smirk. I recognized her from the Afterglow.
“It was a simple request,” I murmured so that only Hazel could hear me. “I asked for a call.”
“Not much of a request if you expect me to obey,” Hazel said.
“Do I need to boss you around like a child?” I whispered. I wasn’t a damn babysitter.
“Like you don’t already?”
A twinge of instinct rolled inside of me, remembering how we would have handled a situation like this in Veil Security Services. Thrown her in a cage and waited it out until the stalker was dead.
But Veil Security Services never would have agreed to help someone to this extent.
I pulled Hazel off of the chair. “Excuse us,” I said to the woman.
“Save me,” Hazel muttered.
“You two have fun,” the woman said with a wink in her eye.
I pushed our way through the crowd. Outside, the sunlight was blinding. Hazel wrenched her arm out of my grip and trampled ahead to the car, then slammed the passenger door closed. I took a few seconds, rubbed my temples, and let out a few labored groans before joining her. I had to keep my sanity. But damn it, she pushed my limits.
Deep breath. She ignored a few texts and a phone call. Lots of people did that.
But those people didn’t have stalkers.
I drove in silence. Hazel fidgeted, gazing out the window, then adjusted the air conditioning vents. She glared at me.
“Was that really necessary?” she snapped.
This time the note had come through the postal service. So, again, no one had seen the stalker, and the messages were getting worse:I ought to put a bullet in your stupid little head. You’re a sad excuse for a life.
Letting her go to tutoring alone was easy because I trusted Nate Evans. But I didn’t trust anyone else until we figured out who this fucker was. So until then, I had to watch Hazel. There was no way around it.
I kept my eyes on the road.“Someone is watching you,” I said.
“You suddenly care now? You seemed to think I was overreacting before.”
That had not been my intention. I wanted to treat the situation with careful consideration before we made any rash decisions. I also didn’t want to alarm Hazel any further.
She didn’t know about the written notes. I didn’t want it to scare her when she was finally making some efforts to start a new life.
“It’s my duty to protect you,” I said.
“Like it’s your duty to force me to go to college.”
It was an opportunity that some people would die for. It made my blood boil to hear her say things like that. But I couldn’t give in to the urge to howl at her. That’s what she wanted. A reaction. For me to backlash against her every word.
