I bite back a million questions that I don’t think I should ask. The more I know, the more I’m complicit in whatever it is he does, and that’s something I don’t need or want.
Koen tucks me into bed like I’m a precious gem, hovering over me with a strange look in his eyes.
“What?” I ask, running a hand up one of his arms. He’s in his bike jacket, and it’s damp. It must be raining outside.
Sometimes, I hate that he’s such a fucking mystery. Others, I think that’s why I’m attracted to him.
“Nothing.” He shakes away from some thought that grows distant in his eyes as he straightens.
Shutting off the bedroom light, he leaves the room. “Goodnight, poison.”
Tucked into a bed that smells like him and reminded of the way he fucked me here, I close my eyes and drift off, unworried about the way his eyes were haunted or how rigid his body was.
Koen Grady made it this far in life with his demons; he’ll make it another night with them without me prying.
When I wake, the house is silent. Koen’s spot next to me hasn’t been slept in, and the living room has been cleaned when I walk through.
The door to my library, which he built for me, is wide open, but the other doors are shut.
I have a gym key, but that’s not really my thing.
When I get to the surveillance room door, I pause. He liked me in here well enough yesterday, but I don’t know if the door being shut today means something.
Maybe he’s busy?
I knock a few times. “Koen?”
Nothing.
Testing the doorknob, I’m all but sure he can hear my heart beating in overtime in my chest.
It opens, and I tentatively peek inside to find him slumped over in his computer chair, snoring.
I allow myself to linger for a few moments, grinning as I watch him struggle to breathe because of how his head is lolled to the side.
His computer screens have something running, almost like software or code scrolling across two of them. The rest are mainly surveillance of my house, Allison’s house, and somewhere I don’t recognize.
It looks like an office of some kind. People are milling about, and, given that it’s Monday morning, that makes sense.
Movement on one of the screens to the left catches my eye, and I turn my head in time to see men in tactical gear slinkthrough my yard, leaping from a dark, nondescript van as the driver stays in place.
I gasp, which startles Koen.
He jerks awake, knocking me backward. “What are you doing in here?” he growls.
I point toward the feed, where he turns his attention.
“What the fuck now?” he mutters, leaning in. Sitting, his hands work magic over the keys; it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Quickly, he’s moving from camera to camera, finding angles I didn’t know he had in my house as he watches men filter through, presumably looking for me.
“Helms?” I ask him.
“After what I discovered last night, yes. This is Helms.”
Panic sets into my stomach, and I start pacing behind where Koen still seems zeroed in on his many screens.
The ringing of a phone is what brings me back to reality, and I turn the second someone speaks through Koen’s phone.
