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Zach’s gaze was placid and blank, lacking all judgment. She didn’t have a clue why that pissed her off, but it did. So she drank deeply, waiting for that warm tingle to spread. Hopefully slow down the whirring in her brain a little bit. “I don’t want to have a debate about feminism or gender equality. I want to be safe home in my own bed. And I want Tom to be alive.”
“I’m working on one of those. I’m sorry I can’t fix the rest.”
He said it so blankly. No emotion behind it at all, and yet this time it soothed her. Because she believed those words so much more without someone trying to act sincere.
“What did you dream about?” he asked as casual and devoid of emotion as he’d been this whole time.
Except when he’d been uncomfortable about her wandering breast. She held on to the fact that Mr. Ex-FBI man could be a little thrown off.
“Hiking. You. Tom. It’s a jumble of nonsense, and not all that uncommon for me. I’ve always had vivid dreams, bad ones when I’m...well, bad. They’ve just never been so connected or relentless.”
“I imagine your life has never been so relentless and threatening.”
“Fair.”
“The dreams aren’t fun, but they’ll be there. Meditation works for some. Alcohol for others, though I wouldn’t make that one a habit. Exercise and wearing yourself out works, too.”
“Let me guess, that’s your trick?”
He shrugged. “I’ve done all three.”
“Your job gave you dreams?”
“Yeah. Dreams are your subconscious, the things you often can’t or don’t deal with awake. It’s your brain trying to work through it all when you can’t outthink it.”
“You’ve given brains a lot more thought than I ever have.”
“There’s a psychology to undercover work. Your work deals with the heart more than the brain.”
Because he cut to the quick of her entire life’s vocation a little too easily, and it smoothed over jagged edges in a way she didn’t understand, she chose to focus on the other part of the sentence.
“You went undercover? Yeah, I can see that. Bring down any big guns?”
He shrugged. “Here and there.”
“What’s the point if you’re not going to brag about it?”
He pondered that, then gave his answer with utter conviction. “Justice. Satisfaction.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’d prefer a little limelight.”
“I suppose that’s why I’m in security, and you’re in entertainment.”
“I suppose.” She finished the drink. She wasn’t really sure what had mellowed her mood more—the buzz or Zach’s conversation. She had a sinking suspicion it was both, and that he was aware of that. “I guess I’ll try to sleep now. I appreciate the...” She didn’t know what to call it—from responding to her distress to a simple drink and conversation—it was more than she’d been given in...a long time.
Well, if she was fair, more than she’d allowed herself. And that had started a heck of a lot longer ago than the stalking.
She stood, never finishing her sentence. Zach stood, as well, cleaning up her mess. For some reason that didn’t sit right, but she didn’t do anything to remedy it. She opened the door to her bedroom, took one last glance back at him.
He was heading for his own door. A strange mystery of a man with a very good heart under all that blankness.
He paused at his door. He didn’t look at her, but she had no doubt he knew she was looking at him.
“Daisy.” It might have been the first time he’d said her name, or maybe it was just the first time he’d said her name where it sounded human to human. So she waited, breath held for who knew what reason.
“You’ve been through a lot. It isn’t just losing someone you feel responsible for losing. You’ve uprooted your life, changed everything around you. You might be used to life on the road, but this is different. You don’t have your singing outlet. So give yourself a break.”
With that, he stepped into his room, the door closing and locking behind him.
* * *
ZACH DIDN’T NEED much sleep on a normal day, but even with the usual four hours under his belt, he felt a little rough around the edges the next morning. He supposed it had to do with them being interrupted by Daisy’s screaming.
It had damn near scared a year off his life.
Any questions or doubts he’d had were gone, though. Someone or something was terrorizing her. Didn’t mean he wouldn’t look at cold, hard facts. Hadn’t he learned what getting too emotionally involved in a case got you?
Yeah, he was susceptible to vulnerability. He could admit that now. Being plagued by dreams, by guilt over the man who’d died only for taking a job protecting her, it all added up to vulnerable.
And he was not thinking about the slip of her top because that had nothing to do with anything.
He grunted his way through push-ups, sit-ups, lunges and squats. He’d need to bring a few more things from home. Maybe just move it all. He wasn’t planning on spending much time back in Cheyenne with his business here.
His room still needed a lot of work, and he’d get to it once this case was shored up—as long as he didn’t immediately have another one. Still, he had a floor, a rudimentary bathroom and a bed. What more did a guy need?
He knew his mother worried about him throwing too much into his job, whether because she feared he’d suffer the same fate as his father—murdered in revenge for the work he’d done as an ATF agent—or because she just worried about him having more of a life than work, it didn’t matter.
He liked his work. It fulfilled him. Besides, he had friends. Cousins, actually. Finding his long-lost sister meant finding his mother’s family, and he might get along more with the people they’d married, but it was still camaraderie.
He had a full life.
But he sat there on the floor of a ramshackle room, sweating from the brief workout, and wondered at the odd pang of longing for something he couldn’t name. Something he’d never had until he’d met his sister—of course that had coincided with being officially fired from the FBI, so maybe it was more that than the other.
It didn’t matter. Because not only was he fine, he also had a job to do.
He could hear Daisy stirring out in the common room. Coffee or breakfast or both, if he had to guess.
He’d hoped she’d sleep longer because there were some areas he wanted to press on today, and he’d likely back off if she looked tired.
Or he could suck it up and be a hard-ass, which was what this job called for, wasn’t it? He knew what being soft got him, so he needed to steel his determination to be hard.
He ran through a cold shower, got dressed, grabbed his computer and stepped out to find Daisy in the kitchen.
She was dressed in tight jeans and a neon-pink T-shirt that read Straight Shooter in sparkly sequins on the back. On the sleeve of each arm was a revolver outline in more sequins. When she turned from the oven where she was scrambling some eggs, she flashed a smile.
Her hair was pulled back to reveal bright green cactus earrings, and she’d put on makeup. Dark eyes, bright lips.
The fact she’d made herself up, looked like she could step on stage in the snap of her fingers, he assumed she was hiding a rough night under all that polish.
But the polish helped him pretend, too.
“Want some?” she asked, tipping the pan toward him.
“Sure, if you’ve got enough.” He dropped the laptop off on the table and then moved toward her to get plates, but she waved him away.
“You waited on me yesterday. My turn. Besides, I familiarized myself this morning. Thanks for making coffee, by the way. Good stuff.”
“Programmable machine,” he returned, not sure what to do with himself while she took care of breakfast. He opted for getting himself a cup of coffee.
He didn’t want to loom behind her, so he took a seat at the table and opened his laptop. He booted up his email to see if there were any more reports from Ranger Cooper, but nothing.
She slid a plate in front of him, then took the seat opposite him with her own plate.
“So, what’s the deal? Play house in here until they figure out who did it?” she asked with just a tad too much cheer in her voice—clearly trying to compensate for the edge she felt.
“Partially. We’re working on a protected outdoor area, but staying inside for now is best.” He tapped his computer. “It gives us time to work through who might be after you.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Believe it or not, sifting through who might hate me enough to hurt me isn’t high on my want-to-do list.”
“But I assume going home, getting back to your family and your career is. Lesser of two evils.”
She ate, frowning. But she didn’t try to argue, and he was going to do his job today. Nightmares and vulnerability couldn’t stop the job.
“I want to talk about your ex.”
“So does everyone,” she muttered.
“Your divorce was news?” he asked, even though he’d known it was. Much as he didn’t keep up with pop culture, he’d seen enough magazines at the checkout counter with her face and her ex’s.
“Yeah. I mean, maybe not if you don’t pay attention to country music, but Jordan had really started to make a name for himself with crossovers. So the story got big. And I got crucified.”
“Why didn’t he?” Zach asked casually, taking a bite of the eggs, which were perfectly cooked.
“Because he’s perfect?”
“You wanted to divorce him,” he pointed out. “He can’t be perfect. No one is.”
“Or that’s exactly why I wanted to divorce him.”
He studied her. The lifted chin, the challenge in her eyes. “Yeah, I don’t buy that.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah, our families didn’t, either. Neither did he, for that matter. I don’t know how to explain... Do we really have to discuss my very public divorce?”
“Yeah. We really do. The more I understand, the better I can find the pattern.”
“And if it’s not him?”
“Then the pattern won’t say it is.”
“People aren’t patterns, Zach. They’re not always rational, or sane.”
“Yeah, I’m well aware, but routine stalkers are methodical. It’s not a moment of rage. It’s not knee-jerk or impulse. It’s planned terrorizing. Murder of your bodyguard? There was no struggle. It was planned. This person is methodical, which means if I can figure out their methodology, I can figure this out.”
She heaved out a sigh. “You believe that.”
“I know that.”
“Fine. Fine. Why did I file for divorce against Jordan? I don’t know. It’s complicated. It’s all emotions and... Did your parents love each other?”
Unconcerned with the abrupt change, because every thread led him somewhere, he nodded. “Very much.”
“Mine didn’t. Or maybe they did, but it was warped. It hurt.”
He thought about his brother, alone in a psych ward, still lost to whatever had taken a hold of his mind. “Love often does.”
“You got someone?”
“Not romantically.”
“Family, then?”
He nodded.
“I used to think loving my brother didn’t hurt, not even a little—not the way loving my father did, or even my mom. Vaughn was perfect, and always did the right thing. He protected me and loved me unconditionally. But this hurts, thinking he could be in danger because of me.”
“He’s a Texas Ranger.”
“That doesn’t make him invincible. He also has a wife and two little girls and...” She swallowed, looking away from him. “I can’t...”
“The best thing for ‘I can’t’ is figuring this out. Looking at the patterns, and finding who’s at the center.”
“You really think you can do that?”
“I do. With your help.”
She nodded. “Okay. Okay. Well, sit back and relax, cowboy. The story of Daisy Delaney and Jordan Jones is a long one.”
He lifted the coffee mug to his lips to try and hide his smile. “We’ve got nothing but time, Daisy.”
Chapter Four
“We met at a party.” It was still so clear in Daisy’s head. She’d stepped outside for air, and he’d followed. He’d complimented her on her music—never once mentioning her daddy.
She’d been a little too desperate for that kind of compliment at the time. She’d made a name for herself, but only when that name directly followed her father’s.
“And this was before any of Jordan’s success?”
Zach sat there, poised over his computer like he’d type it all out. Jot down her entire marriage in a few pithy lines and then find some magical pattern that either found Jordan culpable or...not.
“My brother looked into Jordan, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I have all the information he gathered in regards to the...let’s call it external stuff. But there’s a lot of internal stuff I doubt you shared with your brother.”
She laughed. “But you think I’ll share it with a complete stranger?”
Zach blew out a breath, and though he had to be irritated with her, it didn’t really show in the ways she was used to people being irritated with her.
“I know this is personal,” Zach said, all calm and even and perfectly civil. “It hurts to mine through all these old things you thought were normal parts of a normal life. I’m not trivializing what you might feel, Daisy. I’m trying to understand someone’s motivation for stalking and terrorizing you, and murdering your bodyguard.”
“So you can find your precious pattern?” she asked, her throat too tight to sound as callous as she wanted to sound.
“Yeah, the precious pattern that might save your life.”
She wanted to lean her head against the table and weep. Somehow, she had no doubt Zach would be kind and discreet about it, and it made her perversely more determined to keep it together. “He was sweet, and attentive. We had a lot in common, though he’d grown up on some hoity-toity, well-to-do Georgia farm and I’d grown up on the road. Still, the way he talked about music and his career made sense to me. He made sense to me. He asked me to marry him assuring me that it didn’t have to change my career—because he knew where my priorities were.”
“So you married for love?”
“Isn’t that why people get married?”
“People get married for all sorts of reasons, I think. In your case, you’ve got fame and money on your side.”
“Are you suggesting Jordan married me for my fame and money?”
“No, I’m asking if he did.”
“I didn’t think so.” Even after she’d asked for a divorce, she hadn’t thought Jordan could be that cold and manipulative, but after everything that had happened since the divorce... “He was so careful about any work we did together. Had to make sure it was the right project. He didn’t insinuate himself into my career. So it didn’t seem that way...”
“But?”
She didn’t like the way he seemed to understand where her thoughts were going. She was clearly telegraphing all her feelings, and Zach was too observant. She needed to pull her masks together.
“He didn’t fight me on the divorce. We’d grown apart. He’d thrown everything into his tour, his album, and I was touring and... We were both sort of bitter with each other but couldn’t talk about it. I said we should end it and he agreed. He agreed. So simple, so smooth. Everything that came after was... calculated. Careful. He wanted us to split award shows.”
“Huh?”
“Like choose which award shows we’d attend. If he was going to be at one, I wouldn’t be. Like they were holidays you split the kids between. I don’t know. I remember when my parents got divorced, it was screaming matches and throwing things and drunkenness. Not...paperwork.”
“So it was amicable?”
Daisy hesitated. She’d dug her own grave, so to speak, with some of her behavior after she’d asked for the divorce. Because when he’d politely accepted her request and immediately obtained the necessary paperwork, she’d been...
Sometimes she tried to convince herself her pride had been injured, but the truth was she’d been devastated. She’d thrown out divorce as an option to get some kind of reaction out of him, to ignite a spark like they’d had before they’d gotten married.
But he’d gone along. Agreed. Wanted custody agreements over award shows.
So she hadn’t handled herself well. At all. She’d never imagined this. She’d only acted out her hurt and anger and betrayal the best way she knew how.
Breaking stuff and getting drunk.
“He was amicable, I guess you could say. I was...less so.”
“But you were the one who asked for the divorce.”
“Yes.” As much as she didn’t want to get into this with Zach, she supposed she’d end up giving him whatever information he thought might help with his precious patterns. What else was there to do? How else did she survive this?
“Yes, because I wanted him to fight for me, or be mad at me or react to me in some way. But he didn’t. I started thinking he’d never loved me, because he was so calm. If there’d been love, it would have gone bitter. Mine did. I think he just used me for as long as I’d let him, then was happy to move on.” As if it had been his plan all along.
Even now, a year later, the stab of pain that went along with that was hard to swallow down or rationalize away.
There were bigger tragedies in the world than a failed marriage, including her dead bodyguard.
“So maybe it could be Jordan, but if it is him, it’s not because I divorced him. Trust me, he got everything he wanted and more out of that situation. I don’t think he’d sully his precious reputation by slapping back at me, when the press did all the work eviscerating me for him.”
“Okay. What about other exes?”
“Because only a jilted lover could be after me?”
“Because we’re going through the rational options first. We’ll move to the irrational crazed fan angle after—” The sound of a phone trilling cut him off.
He pulled his cell out of his pocket, glanced at the display, then answered. “Yeah?” His face changed. She couldn’t have described how. A tensing, maybe? Suddenly, there was more of an edge to him. The blandness sharpened into something that made her stomach tighten with a little bit of fear, and just a touch of very inappropriate lust.
If only she knew how to be appropriate.
He fired off questions like when? and description? jotting down what she assumed were the answers on the back of one of the many pieces of paper in the file.
“Get what you can for me,” he said tersely and hung up.
He jotted a few more things down then got to his feet like he was going to walk off to his room without saying anything.
“What was that?” Daisy demanded, hating the hint of hysteria in her voice.
“Just some updates. Nothing to worry about.”
She fairly leaped out of her chair and grabbed his arm before he could disappear into his room.
He clearly didn’t know her very well because he raised a condescending eyebrow, like that would have her moving her hand. But she’d be damned if she was letting go until she said what she had to say. “You want me safe? I have to know what’s going on.”
“That isn’t necessarily true,” he replied in that bland tone of his. “Knowing doesn’t do much. All you have to do is stay put. I’ll be back.”
“You’ll be back? You don’t honestly expect me to—”
“I expect you to listen to the man currently keeping you safe. Do me a favor? Don’t be cliché or stupid. Which means stay put. I’ll be back.” And then he walked out the front door.
And locked it from the outside.
* * *
ZACH HAD NO doubt he’d made all the wrong moves in there, but he didn’t have time to make the right ones. He pocketed his keys, double-checked the gun holstered to his side and stepped out into daylight.
He took a deep breath of the fresh air, trying not to feel the prick of guilt at Daisy being locked inside for close to twenty-four hours. But it was for her safety, and Cam’s phone call proved to him that he had to keep being excessively vigilant.
Which was why he scowled when Cam pulled up to the shack that disguised a garage behind the big house. Hilly was in the passenger seat so Zach tried to fix his expression into something neutral, but his sister being here complicated things.
Hilly was acting as their assistant. She ran the errands for groceries and the like, and she was helping with some of the paperwork while she went through nursing school.
Cam pulled his truck into the garage, then he and Hilly exited. Zach pushed the button himself to close the door so it went back to looking like a falling-down shack.
Cam’s expression grave and Hilly’s suspicious. “I still can’t believe this place,” she said with a little shudder. “It’s so creepy from the outside.”
Zach smiled thinly. “And, as you well know, perfectly livable from the inside. So what’s the deal?”
“Is she in there?” Hilly asked with a frown.
“Yeah.”
“Well, let’s go inside.”
Zach rocked back on his heels. “Not a great idea right now. Besides, she doesn’t need to know about this.”
Hilly’s frown deepened. Zach wanted to scowl at Cam for bringing her, but that would only make Hilly angrier.
Truth be told, he didn’t understand the way Hilly got angry at all. It was sneaky, and came at you in new and confusing ways. Like guilt. He didn’t care for it.
She glanced back at Cam. “I thought I was here to see what Daisy needed.”
“You are,” Cam agreed. “I just have some things I need to discuss with Zach about the case privately. I thought maybe I could do that while you talk to Daisy about anything she might need.”
She looked back at Zach, her lips pursed, surveying him. An expression he never knew how to fully read. Judgment? Disappointment?
“I still think we can go inside and talk. There are rooms. Or you can let me go inside while you two powwow out here.”
“Aren’t you going to demand to know what’s going on?”
“No. Cam and I agreed that there were certain cases that required his confidentiality. I’m okay with that. So why don’t you let me in?”
Zach nodded. He didn’t particularly want to introduce anyone to Daisy, but she was likely tired of just him and walls for company. Hilly could talk to her about anything she needed, maybe make her feel a little more at home, and Cam could fill him in on the details in the privacy of his room.
They walked to the front of the house and Zach unlocked and relocked doors as they entered, and when he stepped into the common area he frowned at the absence of Daisy.
Then at the fact the door to his room was open. He stepped toward it, hand moving to his gun without fully thinking the move through.
He stopped short in the doorway, shock and irritation clawing through him at equal measure. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Zach demanded from the doorway.
Daisy didn’t even have the decency to jump as she sat there on his bed, rifling through his things.
“I can’t say your room holds any deep, dark surprises, Zach. Bland guy. Bland... Oh, hello.” Daisy leaned her head to the side to look around him.
“Get your hands off my stuff.”
She blinked up at him oh so innocently. “Won’t you be doing the same for me? Or have you already?” She got to her feet in a fluid movement and crossed to Hilly and Cam and held out her hand.
“Daisy Delaney,” she offered with a sassy grin that likely served her well on stage.
“Hi, I’m Hilly,” Hilly said eagerly, shaking Daisy’s hand. “I’m Zach’s sister.”
“Zach’s sister.” Daisy looked at him and raised an eyebrow before her smile sharpened. “Well, Hilly, you might be my new best friend.”
“Sorry, if you’re looking for dirt we only kind of found out about each other last year.”
“Okay, so you can’t give me the Zach dirt. How about you tell me what the hell is going on? I’m presuming you know.” She moved her gaze to Cam. “Or you do.”
“I, uh...” Cam cleared his throat, looking shockingly ruffled and uncomfortable.