* * *
The sun was just lighteningthe room when Wes opened his eyes. He didn’t know what time it was when he finally quit, but it hadn’t been light yet. He forced himself to stop when he made three careless mistakes in a row. No amount of coffee could power through that level of mental fatigue.
He swung his legs around to place his feet flat on the ground, knocking a furry white blanket to the floor. Wes didn’t even remember going to the sofa to lie down. He scrubbed at his eyes. It had been years since he’d pulled an all-nighter, not since they battled with the hacker in Poland who was trying to attack a major power grid on the west coast—and Wes had been a lot younger.
Wes groaned as he stretched his stiff muscles. The house was quiet, and Cara’s door stood open. Had she already left?
“Last day of shooting.” Cara emerged from his bedroom, with a coffee cup in her hand and a fake smile on her face, but the dark smudges under her eyes gave away that she had had little sleep. “I hope you don’t mind. I got dressed in your room…” Her eyes glanced quickly at the door of her bedroom and then away again.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I’m going to enjoy my coffee, play make believe, and get through this day.”
“I ordered a security system with lights and cameras last night. They should be here today, and I’ll get Jin to help me install them while you’re at work.”
“Did you tell him… about?” Cara’s cheeks flushed pink, and under any other circumstance, he would have thought she looked adorable.Shit.He still thought she looked adorable, but he hated the cause behind it.
“I only told him you have a stalker, and that they had used your computer’s camera to take some pictures.” He paused, waiting for her to look up. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You haven’t done anything wrong. This parasite is...” The muscles in his neck tensed. “If he releases the pictures, I’m going to need Jin and Nina’s help to get them down as quickly as possible.”
Cara nodded.
“I made good progress last night. There’s one thing we haven’t discussed.”
Cara raised both of her eyebrows.
“If it turns out to be someone you know, do you want me to hold him while you get a couple of good punches in?”
Her lips lifted at the corners as he’d intended. “I’d like to taze him right in the balls.”
“Oooh, vicious. I like it.”
She smiled for real then. “Oh, I can be quite vindictive when given the right motivation.”
Wes pretended to shiver with fear. “Remind me not to give you a reason then.”
Cara poured what was left of her coffee into her travel mug. “Skye is picking me up. She’s giving me a ride. Luke said stalkers sometimes like to tamper with cars so they can rescue the person.” She picked at her sweater, and then added, “I told Skye the flowers were creeping me out, but not about the calls or the pictures. I’m not ready for anyone else to know.”
“I won’t say anything, but I want you to do something?”
“What?”
“I want you to tell your family what’s going on.” Wes held her gaze.
“No.”
“Cara, I know you don’t want to worry them, but they’re your family! That’s what families are for.”
“You don’t know my brothers. If I tell them what’s happening, they will lock me up in Fort Knox. I won’t see daylight for years.”
“They love you.”
“I know they do, and I love them. But they’ll fight over how to handle it and which one of them is to blame, which will then drive everyone further apart. Besides, you said we could handle it.”
“We can.” His voice was steely with his determination. “I promise I will keep you safe but… if anything were to happen, how would they feel?”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN
Wes’s wordsstayed with her long after Skye picked her up. If something happened to her, it would destroy her brothers that she had hidden it from them.
