His Princess (A Royal Romance) (27 page)

“You shouldn’t let that asshole treat you that way,” he says, a little growl edging into his voice.

“What, exactly, am I supposed to do?”

“Stand up for yourself.”

“I stand up for myself, I get fired.”

“It shouldn’t be that way.”

“Lots of things shouldn’t be that way,” I say, a sad sigh dragging on my voice. “They are anyway.”

He nods. “Yeah. That’s true.”

Suddenly his gaze goes distant, like he’s staring through the world, to the other side. He looks hurt, and not whatever is under those bandages. I can’t help but reach across the bench seat and touch his shoulder. He jerks and the car swerves a little.

“Uh, sorry.”

“You were somewhere else for a while, there.”

“Yeah. Guess I was.”

I cock my head. “Where?”

“Long story,” he says curtly. “Not very interesting.”

I shrug. “If you say so. The turn is up here. Castlebrook College.”

He turns off. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s accredited,” I sigh. “If I could go to Harvard I wouldn’t be here, trust me.”

“You probably could.” He shrugs. “Go to Harvard, I mean. You seem pretty smart.”

I roll my eyes. “Thanks. All I’ve done is yell at you since we’ve met.”

“Yeah. Well, maybe I like a challenge,” he says, a little edge in his voice.

I shrink in the seat as I feel heat on my face. Damn it. He openly gives me an appraising look. I’m not exactly dressed sexy, but I suddenly feel like I’m sitting here in my underwear, in a good way. I haven’t felt that way in a while.

“I’d better go. It’s that building there.”

“Pick you up at nine,” he says as the car slides to a gentle stop.

“Yeah, see you then.”

I rush out of the car without looking back, afraid he’ll see how red my face is. I take a moment to stop and compose myself in the mirror in the hallway before heading into the classroom.

It’s no huge lecture hall, just a room that would hold about fifty people, tops, at cheap tables with cheap chairs. The class is about thirty strong. Business math.

I hurry to my seat, glancing at the clock. It’s one minute after the official start of class.

The professor, Dr. Calvin Hevermeyer, PhD, turns, and looks straight at me as I slink into my seat.

“Mrs. Dawson. So glad you could join us,” he says drolly.

I hate my life.

R
ose strides
into the little brick building, and once again I find myself admiring the view. I’d like to chase her down and rip that skirt off and get my hands on her ass.

Snap out of it, Quentin, what are you even doing here? You’re supposed to be lying low.

I growl at myself, and the Impala growls as I ease out the clutch and swing her around to leave the parking lot. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel and lean forward to look up. The sky is growing ugly. Looks like rain.

Having nowhere else to go, I drive back to the house. The alleged pie sits in my stomach like a stone, and the thought of it twists my guts, but something about those kids made me cagey about hurting their feelings, so I choked it down. I still need real food.

The quest for real food ends up with heating a can of spaghetti in the microwave and eating it standing up in the kitchen. There’s not much of a point to this house. I’ve always been happy with a smaller space, but if I want to blend in, I’m stuck with it.

Doing a great job of blending in so far, aren’t I? I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Ever since I saw Rose soaking wet with hose water, I haven’t been able to get her out of my head.

After stuffing my face with the last of the spaghetti, I head out into the backyard and make sure the kid, Karen, didn’t see anything amiss. All the windows have curtains and blinds, and even when I crouch and press my hand to the glass to see better, I can’t make anything out. Good.

Back inside, I lock up. I could get drunk. No, wait, I have to pick up Rose. No booze. I could crash out in the living room and try to amuse myself with television.

Kids’ cartoons are weird anymore. Why is there a squirrel with a diving helmet?

Or I could find out something about this Burt.

I head into the garage. I moved all the shit out of the way so I could pull the Impala inside this afternoon, and it’s a good thing. The rain has just started.

The room has a musty smell, and all the house junk is exposed, the guts of the heater and air conditioner and the water heater or whatever. In the corner I’ve set up my computer, some workbenches, and a safe.

I’m playing it cool with the gear—nothing illegal in my safe. I’m keeping that elsewhere in case I need it. Not like that’s my greatest worry or anything, I mean, if I get caught I’m going up the river no matter what I do.

At the computer, I get ready to go fishing. First I check the security of the connection—I don’t use Windows or Macintosh but a form of Linux that’s built from the ground up for security. Everything stored on my hard drive is encrypted; I’ll spare you the gory details, but it would take every computer on Earth running day and night using all the electricity in the world a thousand years to crack my files.

More importantly, I access the Internet through a proxy system called onion routing, over a secured private network. It’s not perfect but with a little extra caution I’m virtually undetectable as I do my research.

Unfortunately it’s slow as hell, and while it takes its sweet-ass time to load, I put on a pot of coffee and pace around the room. I should work out. I have all the equipment I need, it’s just a matter of setting it up, but I’m stiff as hell and I have to watch out for these damned stitches.

When the goddamn thing loads, I type in the dentist’s name.

Burt Simonson, DDS.

A frightening array of information becomes available to me almost immediately. Almost, because it takes five minutes to load.

Somewhere Burt should be feeling a goose walk across his grave. A contract killer is gathering a dossier on him.

I’m not going to kill him.

I just want to talk about how he treats his employees, and how he looks at little girls.

I have a…thing about people who hurt little girls.

After a few sips of coffee, the information loads, and it’s amazingly boring. He has a great credit score, married, two kids, lives near Rose but not in her neighborhood, owns a Buick SUV, a BMW sedan, and just bought that Benz I saw him driving this afternoon.

I wonder if his wife knows he’s fucking the barely legal receptionist at his office and trying to put the moves on the milf.

Stop thinking of her as a milf, Quentin.

This isn’t enough.I need more.

So I head to the information market.

What’s available for free on the Internet is scary. What can be dug up by an expert in systems and social engineering is fucking terrifying. I put out the call and start taking bids. Everything is paid for in cryptocurrency—secure and virtually untraceable. It’s going to take a while before I get enough bites, but it should be fairly easy and cheap. I’m not looking for details on a senator or something here. He’s just some guy.

It’s seven o’clock already. I pick Rose up at nine. First I take meticulous care to properly shut everything off, closing my connection and giving the computer enough time to encrypt and dump the 256-bit keys from the RAM. If someone busted into the house right now they’d have about six minutes to get the computer’s memory chips into liquid nitrogen and try to extract the keys the computer uses to solve an insanely complex equation, and access my data.

At ten minutes after seven I slip into the car and pull out in a light drizzle, the rain having subsided a bit. On my passenger’s seat is a sticky pad with some relevant info about my new best friend, Burt.

First off we’re going to check out his house.

It’s a short drive, but I’m not getting into his neighborhood just by rolling up to the gate. All of these places have a guard at the front entrance, it’s so fucking
weird
. What’s so important that they have to pay some guy to sit out front and eye fuck everybody driving in? Besides, it’s not like they’re securing anything. I haven’t been challenged once and even if I was all I’d have to do is park the car and walk right in.

That’s what I do now. I park off the road and walk through the trees. Problem is they just cut off where the neighborhood starts; they must have bulldozed everything when they started building the place. No cover.

Fortunately for me, Burt must have paid extra for a house on a cul-de-sac, backing up to the woods. Perfect. I circle around the whole way, watching for someone to spot me. They all have these huge backyards, but no one in them. There are barbecue grills and hot tubs, all sitting there lonely and empty.

Burt’s house is one of the biggest in the neighborhood, a six-bedroom, three-floor monstrosity with an enormous backyard, complete with in-ground pool and brick barbecue, the works.

There’s no one outside. I slip up to the shed then sprint across the open space to the back of the house. It’s easy to reach up, pull, and hang off the back deck.

Burt is inside with the wife, sitting at his kitchen table. By the looks of things they’re doing their monthly bills. She’s a cute one, the wife. Twenty years younger, at least, and apparently he likes redheads.

I’m not here for that. I drop down and circle around, crouching and checking to see if anyone might spot me. It’s so damned open, but I love a challenge.

In a pouch on my belt I’ve got a device called a packet sniffer. I check the basement through the window to see what kind of Internet connection he has. It’s a fiber line, so I move around to the corner of the house and find where the fiber emerges from the ground and flows back into the house, next to the electrical conduit box. From there it’s a simple job to splice the packet sniffer into the line.

I work my way along the foundation of the house, to the garage. Going in through the garage door itself is a no-go, too loud. Fortunately there’s a back door, and there’s no deadbolt so it’s easily picked, takes me two seconds with a pick gun. I stop and scan the room; Burt might be the type to have a security camera system, but no, he feels too safe for that.

Must be nice, feeling safe. Too bad your employees don’t get a taste of that.

Rolling onto the floor, I slide under his Benz. I figure if this guy is going out for any clandestine trysts he’s going to take the flashy car; his wife’s grocery getter isn’t going to pull the cooze like a brand new SLK.

He bought the AMG package. God, this car is wasted on this asshole.

The GPS tracker is pretty unobtrusive. I attach it to the frame with some zip ties; drilling it into place would be too loud and adhesive would lose integrity too quickly. I flick it on and wait for the green light. It has a lithium battery, should last about a month, plenty of time.

I sigh. What the hell am I doing this for? I should be watching cartoons and crawling into a bottle.

I slip out from the car and lock the door before pulling it shut. Quarter after eight, plenty of time to pick up Rose.

Back to the car by eight thirty. I pull into the parking lot at the college at nine on the dot, and wait.

Wait.

Wait some more.

It’s 9:20 when students finally start piling out of the doors, heading for their cars. Rose trudges out wearily, her messenger bag over her shoulder, and scrubs her hand through her hair. Even in the harsh street lamps, she’s pretty. The sharp contrasts give her a hazy, femme-fatale look.

I wheel the car around to the sidewalk and wince when I realize I’m drawing a lot of attention. Rose looks around with some trepidation on her face and slips into the car, sighing.

“Sorry. This one likes to give us our money’s worth.”

She glances at the dash clock.

“I’m glad you’re here. I’d have missed the bus. The other profs usually let out a little early but Hevermeyer insists we take a dinner break, blathers on up until nine on the dot and makes us meet with our groups for… I’m boring you,” she sighs.

“No, no, go on.”

She leans back in the seat. “I don’t know how I’m going to do all this, between work and the kids and school. I’m losing my mind. I have to be up before five tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to take the bus again. I can drive you.”

Her voice is tight, like she’s choking up. “Thank you. You’ve been really kind to me today.”

“I did spray you with a hose.”

She glances over at me with a hint of a smile pulling at her lips. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“I’m an asshole,” I sigh, “but I’m not that big of an asshole. If you’re going to get wet for me I’d rather it be voluntary.”

She flinches and turns red.

“Did you go to Catholic school?”

“No, why?” she says, blinking.

“Nothing.” I smirk. “Straight home, or do you want to grab something to eat?”

“I am hungry, but I should get something at home. I can’t really—”

“On me,” I add quickly.

“Oh. I… If you want.”

“There a McDonalds around here?”

“Of course.”

“I need directions.”

She nods. I drive, turning where she says, until I spot the Golden Arches and pull into the drive-through.

“What do you want, like a cheeseburger or something?”

“Um,” she says, “two Double Quarter Pounders with cheese. Ask for them plain.”

I blink at her a few times.

“I’m hungry,” she says sheepishly.

“Gotcha.”

I roll up to the speaker. “Gimme two twenty piece Chicken McNuggetses, two Double Quarter Pounders plain, two large Cokes, and a large chocolate shake.”

“Fries,” Rose chirps.

“Large fries.”

After we pull into a parking spot I pass her the bag and the milkshake.

“For me?”

“Yeah, we can split it if you want.”

She eyes me warily. “Oh. Okay. I don’t want to pig up your car here…”

“Don’t worry about that, Rose. The gods forged the 1968 Impala for eating fast food with a pretty girl.”

She flinches, color appearing on her pale cheeks, and turns to nibble at her first burger.

“Just eat it before it gets cold,” I sigh between stuffing nuggets in my mouth hole.

She gives me a guilty look then chows down.

It’s like when they feed the cow to the velociraptors in that movie. I’m impressed. After she finishes the first one she burps into her hand, shoots me an apologetic look, and eats the second one more slowly.

Leaning back in the seat, she says, “God, it’s been forever since I felt full.”

“I love to fill you up. Pass the shake.”

She giggles but stifles it as she passes it over and more slowly savors her burger.

“I can’t believe you don’t take the kids to McDonalds,” I say.

She swallows a bite and sighs. “I do, for a treat. I try to give them everything I can. I’ll eat ramen noodles if it means they get real food. Sometimes I can’t bring them here because they’ll insist Mommy eats too, I can’t just watch them. I can’t always spare the extra few bucks.”

“Let’s get them Happy Meals. Before I take you home.”

“Karen doesn’t get Happy Meals anymore.”

“She’ll get one if I tell her to get one,” I growl.

Rose laughs. Really laughs, coughs a little on a bite of burger, and keeps laughing.

“You’re a trip,” she says.

“Thanks, I guess.”

As she finishes the second Quarter Pounder and scrunches up the wrapper, she sighs. “I’m all bloated now.”

“Good, better bloated than starving.”

She tucks the trash into the bag and rolls it up.

“You know,” I say, “this is a bench seat.”

She blinks.

Then I sigh, lean over, hook my arm around her waist, and pull her across the seat.

She gaps in shock and her hands fall on my chest and stomach. Pressed up against me, she breathes hard. I can almost see her pulse trembling in her throat like a scared bird. I release my arm, resting it on the seat. She can pull away if she wants.

She looks a little scared.

“It’s not like that,” I murmur. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I haven’t forgiven you for the hose thing.”

“I haven’t forgiven you for unleashing your inner bitch on me five minutes after I got home.”

“I was trying to help you, you
jerk
,” she says, and plants her lips on mine.

Her kiss is almost clumsy, too eager. She tastes like cheeseburger and milkshake, and I pull her onto my lap as she kisses me hungrily, surprisingly so.