“I don’t think so. I think someone is trying to send you a message.” I pulled out my phone and continued, “I’ve got to call the club and let them know what’s going on.”
“No!” she shrieked and tried to grab my phone.
I yanked my phone away in time and held it above my head. “What the hell, Harper? You know I can’t keep this from them, and you shouldn’t want me to. Your safety is at stake here. We need to make sure you’re protected.”
“If you call the club, they’ll want me to come back to Croftridge. I can’t do that. I just took two weeks off work. I can’t take any more time off right now. Plus, Duke and Reese have been through a lot of shit recently. I don’t want my brother to worry about me. He needs to focus on his family right now. I have a gun, I’m getting a security system installed, and I called the police. I want to handle this like normal people would,” she explained.
“How do you think Duke would feel if something happened to you? How do you think I would feel, Harper?” I pounded my fist on my chest and stared at her.
“Nothing is going to happen to me.”
“You don’t know that! Do you think Reese thought a crazy woman would try to kill her and kidnap her son? Do you think Ember thought a madman would try to sell her into human trafficking and then try to kill her and her father? No! They didn’t!” I roared. I was furious with her. What in the hell was she thinking? There was no way I was letting her stay in her house unprotected.
“Fine. I get it, all right? But I still don’t want you to tell the club. What are my other options?” she asked, her tone much calmer than I expected.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “I honestly don’t know. I can stay tonight and tomorrow night. We’ll have to figure something out after that. Have you already arranged to have a security system installed?”
“Not yet. I was going to call Judge, but then you showed up,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“You realize your cousin is in the same club I am, right?” I asked.
“Seriously, Chase. I was going to tell him that there had been some break-ins in the area and ask if he could come install a security system for me,” she scoffed.
“No time like the present.”
She called Judge and asked him to install an alarm system for her. He told her he would be there the following day to get it done while she was at work. Quite frankly, I was a bit surprised that he hadn’t already installed one for her, but I didn’t comment on it.
After she got off the phone with Judge, I helped her finish cleaning up the mess that had been made of her house. She wasn’t lying; those fucking peas were everywhere. Once we had everything cleaned up, she offered to cook dinner for me, but I knew she was tired. I could see it in her eyes.
“Baby,” I murmured against her skin as I nuzzled her neck. “As much as I’d love that, you’re exhausted. Go take a shower, and I’ll place an order for delivery.”
“Mmm, that sounds wonderful,” she breathed and turned her head to capture my lips.
She squeaked when I lightly swatted her ass and turned her by her shoulders. “Go,” I ordered. “I’ll fuck you after dinner.”
“Promises, promises.”
As I waited for her to finish in the shower and for the food to arrive, I sat in a chair in her living room and stared at the wall. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the damn dots meant. I even took a picture of the wall and did an image search, but I couldn’t find anything like it.
The doorbell rang, interrupting my thoughts about the dots on the wall, but I was glad the food had arrived. I didn’t know about Harper, but I was fucking starving. Swinging the front door open, I fully expected to find a delivery guy standing there with my bag of food. Instead, I came face-to-face with an attractive woman who appeared to be around the same age as Harper.
She took a step back at the sight of me. I was used to that reaction; most women did the same thing when they saw me. I was bigger than most men with a few visible piercings and an abundance of tattoos, all of which translated to scary for most females.
The girl blinked a few times and cleared her throat. “Uh, is Harper here?”
“Who wants to know?” I asked gruffly.
“Hilarie,” she said, her eyes darting around wildly.
“She know you?” I asked.
“Yes. We work together, and we went to school together,” she said nervously.
“Just a minute,” I said and closed the door in her face.
I turned around to get Harper, only to find her coming out of her bedroom. “I thought I heard the door. Is the food here?”
“No, some girl named Hilarie is at the door asking for you.”