IWOKE UP FEELINGbetter that morning than any day I could remember in my life. When Mark and I weren’t fucking like animals making up for lost time, we held tight to one another and just breathed each other in. I was deliciously sore in all of the right places when the sun came up and didn’t care that I’d probably only had a total of three hours of sleep. The water was running in the shower of my master bathroom and there could only be one person standing beneath the spray.
“This shower is really something,” Mark said when I opened the glass door and stepped inside. I could see how tired he was by the lines that formed around his eyes, but his green irises glittered with happiness.
Mark turned and put his face under the water and I pressed up against him. He stiffened in my arms until I brought my hands up and began rubbing his shoulders. It wasn’t the first time he tensed during intimate moments, including the time I blew him in his kitchen. I was determined to be a patient man when it came to my relationship with Mark. I would take things as slow as he needed me to, because now that I had him…
My thoughts slipped right out of my mind the moment Mark turned in my arms and kissed me hungrily. Those kisses led to other early morning oral exercises. I didn’t think anything could ruin my day after the shared shower and quick breakfast, but I was very wrong. I hadn’t received any more threatening messages since the first one and had written it off as a joke or a wrong number. I had been too worried about Mark taking on the mercenary job to give much credence to one anonymous text message until we found the message on my porch.
Mark’s firm voice penetrated my shock and I pulled out my phone to call the police like he’d instructed. I told the dispatcher what we’d found and they said an officer would be en route. I followed Mark to the room that housed the security monitors. He began playing back film from the time he arrived, his eyes scanning each monitor for any little sign of the person who’d left the threat. He was in the zone, completely unaware of my presence in the space with him. I should’ve told him about the text right then, but I didn’t.
Around 3:00 a.m. the monitors went completely black, as if the camera feed had been cut off. “That’s just fucking great,” Mark snarled. “I wonder if the alarms had been bypassed too.” He was prepared to call the alarm company and demand some answers, but the police arrived.
Officers Jones and Dade didn’t seem overly concerned about the tortured animal on my porch until I was forced to confess it was a follow-up from a text I had received and had chosen to ignore.
“Why wouldn’t you report that to your head of security?” Officer Jones asked, nodding his head in Mark’s direction.
Mark’s expression was completely blank as he looked at me, but I knew his mind was anything but. I could tell by the strain around his mouth and eyes that we’d be having a heated discussion after the police left.
“Honestly, Officer Jones, I’ve never had any kind of threats like these before and I thought it was a prank or a wrong number.” It was all true. I wasn’t really loved much by my family, birth or otherwise, but to think one of them would want to harm me was ridiculous. I made them a lot of money, so what would be the point of killing me?
“Regardless,” Officer Dade replied, “these things have to be taken seriously.” He looked at his partner and said, “I’ll take a look outside to see if this perp left behind any evidence while you continue the interview.”
I could tell Mark was torn between going to assist Officer Dade or stay with me to hear the answers to the questions I was asked. In the end, he stuck by my side as I answered question after question. No, I didn’t know of anyone who’d want to hurt me. No, I’d never had any prior threats to the text message. No, I couldn’t think of any enemies. The questions kept coming and my answers remained the same. I had no idea where these threats came from.
Officer Dade returned sometime later and said that he didn’t find any evidence around the perimeter of the house or the gated front and back entrances. Mark filled him in about the cameras being cut off and how he was going to call the alarm company to see if the alarms had been shut off when they had arrived.
“Let’s go do that now,” the officer said and followed Mark out of the room, which left me alone with Jones.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” I asked him.
“No, thank you,” he replied politely. “We shouldn’t be much longer.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice before he added, “Which might not be so good for you, yeah? Your bodyguard looks pretty pissed that you didn’t tell him about the text message.” The look in the cop’s eyes changed from sympathetic to suspicious. “Is there anything else you’re leaving out?”
“No, there’s nothing.” I looked beyond him to see if Mark and Officer Dade were on their way back yet. There was a glimpse of something in Jones’s eyes that I didn’t like.
“This isn’t a ploy for the attention of your bodyguard, is it, Mr. Heston?”
“What? No! What kind of unprofessional question is that?” I was shocked that Jones thought I had turned off the cameras, mutilated some poor animal, and wrote a threatening message with its blood all over my front porch and then crawled back into bed like it was no big deal.
“It happens all of the time,” he said with a careless shrug, “regardless of a person’s economic or social background.”
“I can assure you that I had nothing to do with the text or the poor animal on my porch.” I couldn’t remember a time I had felt more insulted.
“Sorry, sir, but it’s my job to ask tough questions.”
Moments later, Dade and Mark returned to the living room wearing matching scowls. “Alarm company states that the alarm went off line at the same time the cameras did. They said that a call was made to the house to see if everything was alright and a man, who identified himself as Mitchell Heston, answered the phone and reported that it was a power glitch and everything was fine,” Dade said. Both he and Jones locked their suspicious gazes on me.
“It didn’t happen,” Mark replied firmly. “I was here all night long and the phone never rang.”
“Does the alarm company call your landline or your cellphone?” Jones asked me.
“Cellphone,” I replied.
Jones looked at Mark with a raised brow, as if that explained everything. He surmised that Mark wouldn’t have heard my cellphone ringing in another part of the large house. Mark took one step forward and leveled Jones with a dark look.
“His cellphone didn’t ring at all last night and I would know since my phone was charging right beside his on the bedside table.” Mark didn’t have to say anything further, as it was obvious that both police officers understood exactly where Mark had been when the supposed phone call came in. I hoped that negated their suspicion that I would need to ensnare my bodyguard’s attentions since I already had it.
“Can I see your cellphone again?” Dade asked me. I handed it to him and he scrolled through the incoming calls and found none during that timeframe. “I’ll have to verify this with your phone company, of course, since you could have erased record of the call.” He threw up his hands when Mark opened his mouth to argue. “I have to cover all of the bases. Look, this started out as a text and has already escalated to a mutilated animal on your porch and someone with enough technology to scramble phone calls.”
“Unless the alarm company is lying,” I interrupted. “Maybe someone fell asleep and doesn’t want to admit it.”
