“I’m so happy to have all of us together again,” she enthused.
I found myself getting cautiously excited about it. “It will be good for us to be all in one place again.”
“Definitely.” I heard someone’s voice in the background. “I have to go. I promised my roommate I’d help her study for her last final. I’ll see you in less than two weeks.”
“See you then,” I replied.
After she ended the call, I sat there remembering the last fight I’d had with my brother before he left for school. I blamed myself for pushing him. I’d wanted him to stay closer to home. He’d wanted to get as far away as he possibly could. Now I realized I’d been influenced by my mother’s neediness and her desire to keep us all under her roof. I squeezed my eyes shut as tears stung them. What a mess. I hoped I could reconcile with my siblings and build a stronger relationship between the three of us.
I shot a quick text to Tony asking if it was okay to move our departure to Delaware up a day. I didn’t expect an answer from him right away. I knew he had an interview that morning.
The call from my sister had stopped my spiraling thoughts, so I was able to sit at my computer and get some work done. I had three projects due in the next two weeks, and I was determined to finish before we left for Delaware.
Two of the projects were nearly complete website designs. The third was a request for a character illustration for a gay romance novel. It was something new I was trying. The first one I’d done had been for an author I knew personally. She’d been so happy with the result that she told all her author friends. Now I was getting steady requests for commissions from people who were ecstatic that I refused to use generative AI to make my designs.
I was deep into my drawing when an email from my business account popped up. I opened it to make sure it wasn’t about one of my current projects.
It was not. It was a request for graphic design work for an existing website. They were eager to start the work as soon as possible because the old designs were not getting the traction they wanted.
I emailed them back and told them I wouldn’t be able to start working on it for another three weeks, so they might want to reach out to someone else who would be able to get it done more quickly. Then I went back to my character design and didn’t think about it again.
Two hours later, my stomach let me know it was past lunchtime. I picked up my phone to check whether Tony had answered my text when another email came in.
Mr. Hayden,
It doesn’t surprise me that you’re a busy man. Your artwork is excellent. I am willing to wait three weeks to have you work on my designs. If you are amenable, I’d like to meet in person to chat about ideas. I find I need the face-to-face contact to get mycreative juices flowing. When it gets closer to the date, we can decide on a place and time to meet.
Sincerely,
Paul Jameson
CHAPTER THIRTY
TONY
I raised my gun, aligning the sights with the head of the figure printed on the paper target one hundred yards in front of me. Marco would probably bitch at me for not aiming at center mass, but I was in a head-shot mood. I took a breath and relaxed my body, focusing all my attention on the target. The sounds around me were already muffled by the earplugs I used to guard against the gunshots. With my focus narrowed, I let out a breath and pulled the trigger.
A grin of satisfaction spread across my face: right between the eyes. Just let that motherfucker come anywhere near Greg. He’d be knocking on the gates of hell before he knew what happened.
Someone tapped my shoulder, and I glanced over to find Marco standing there with a disapproving scowl. “You’re supposed to aim for center mass,” came his muffled admonition.
I rolled my eyes. Pulling out one of my earplugs, I pointed at the target. “I did that already. Fourteen times.” I pushed the button to bring the target back.
When it finally stopped, I pulled it off its clip and handed it to my brother. “There.” I picked up a clean target, attached it, and sent it back out a hundred yards. I popped out my empty clipand snapped a new one into place: fifteen new bullets, ready to go. Now I wanted to do only head shots just to piss him off. He wasn’t going to tell me how to deal with Greg’s stalker. It was my job to protect him.
“Tony.”
That one word, so filled with concern, stopped my spiral. I squeezed my eyes shut. Even though Marco was three years younger than me, he had seen things during his time as a Navy SEAL that I never had and hopefully never would. That and losing his first fiancé to suicide gave him a perspective I would never have. My shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry.”
He took my gun from me and set it on the shelf beneath the target partition. Then he pulled me into a fierce hug. I wrapped my arms around him and held him tight, afraid I would fly apart. “I’m so scared, Marco. What if I can’t protect him? I just found him, and now someone is trying to take him away from me.”
“We’re not going to let that happen,” my brother said quietly. “We’re going to find this guy and put him away.”
I stepped back from him. “How? He hasn’t done anything that could get him arrested, except for trying to break into Greg’s apartment. That’ll get him a slap on the wrist at best, if we can even prove it was him.”
“It sounds like you’re pretty sure it’s a man,” Marco said.
I nodded. “It’s more likely to be a man anyway, but I keep thinking about that guy in Central Park. You know he hit Greg with the frisbee on purpose. And he practically disappeared as soon as I showed up.”
