RYDER: A Standalone Military Romance (Blake Security Book 1) (6 page)

I felt sick for my friend. I’d had similar experiences that sometimes still had me waking up shaking and sweating in the middle of the night and looking for my weapon. Blake had been in charge of his unit, and that made it all that much worse. It was like a father sending his child into a burning building. “I’m sorry, man. Have you talked to anyone…?”

“I’m talking to you.”

He knew what I was asking, I could see it in his eyes. He wasn’t going to discuss therapy with me. I realized I should be thankful he was at least talking to me. I let it go and said, “So the trip to California has something to do with Dawson?”

“I have been looking for his sister all of this time. I finally have a good lead on her in California. I need to talk to her face to face. It’s the only way I think I’ll ever get any peace. While I’m out there, I can talk to Celia’s mother as well and let you know if it looks like she has anything to do with this. When I get back, I’ll give you a week off, but for now I need you to take over this kidnapping investigation. The only other things we have going on are protecting that actress while she’s in town and the senator at that convention next week. This isn’t coming at a good time, I know. The actress…what the hell is her name?”

“Starr Lee.” He rolled his eyes.

“I’ll just bet her parents named her that.” I didn’t say it out loud, but if he was going to be the one protecting her, I’m glad he was going out of town. “Anyways, I’ll put Leif on her. She gets into town tomorrow, and she’ll be here for two weeks. I’ll have Abrahem take the office and put him on the senator next week. If anything comes up while he’s busy with that, Lucy might call you, but she’s pretty good at figuring things out on her own. I’m sorry, but I’ll need to ask you to take the Bransons twenty-four seven, can you do that?”

“Yeah, I mean, I might need a place to sleep at night, but of course I can handle it.”

He nodded. “I’ve already spoken to Matt Branson. He’s still being an ass about the baby’s mother, but he agreed to put you in a room across the hall from the nursery.” That meant across the hall from Alicia. For a second, I considered telling Blake about the feelings I was having for the nanny. I decided quickly that he had enough on his plate. I could be a professional. It wouldn’t be easy, but I could do it.

RYDER

              Leif stayed with Alicia and Celia that entire day while I got caught up on some sleep. Before I went back to the mansion, I took Blake to the airport. On the way there he said, “I forgot to tell you I got a text from Abrahem while you were home sleeping. As soon as they let the Russian out of custody, he was on a plane back to the Soviet Union.”

              “Immigration?”

              “No, they hadn’t gotten to him yet. He went on his own.”

“Well, that’s going to make following him a little more difficult.”

“It would, if we didn’t have Vlad. He’s already got his men on it. So far the guy got off the plane and has been holed up at his mother’s place in Georgia. I gave Vlad your number, he’s going to stay in touch.”

I nodded. “Good.” I laughed and said, “Between him and Alicia, by the time you get back I might be speaking Russian.”

He smiled. “You going to be okay sleeping across the hall from that girl?”

“Of course,” I said, innocently. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He rolled his eyes. I should have known Blake was too perceptive for me to get anything past him. “I knew you when you had your first crush. You still get that same goofy look on your face when there’s one you really like.”

I didn’t bother trying to deny it. “I’ll be a consummate professional.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure you will. Be safe, too.”

“I will; you too.” I expected him to laugh that off. He was going to California to see the sister of a kid killed in Afghanistan and a struggling nineteen-year-old actress.

Instead, he lost the smile and a serious look crossed his face. “I will,” was all he said, but I got the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling me.

After I dropped him off, I went home and packed a small bag and then called Granny. I was pleasantly surprised when she answered the phone.

“Hello,
cher
. How’s my boy today?”

              She always put a smile on my face. “I’m good, Granny. Thank you for answering the phone.” She grumbled something, and I laughed and said, “How are you?”

              “A little down in my back. Ol’ Sly came around early this mornin’ and I hadda chase him off.”

              I rolled my eyes. “Ol’ Sly” is a seven-and-a-half-foot gator that lives in the swamp right out in front of Granny’s house. He’s lived there for years, chasing away anything else that tried to inhabit that space. He used to stay in the water and sun himself on a rock about twelve feet out from the shore. He never came up in the yard or near the house until recently, but over the past several months, Granny says he’s been doing it a lot.

I tried to get her to let me get a permit to get rid of him. She wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m livin’ on Ol’ Sly’s turf,” she’d said. “I couldn’t live with myself if I got him kilt off so that I could take over.”

Instead, she gets her broom out when he gets too close to the house. One of these days that old gator is going to have himself a Granny sandwich. Very delicate, knowing she was going to argue with me I said, “Don’t you think it would be better to just stay inside until he’s gone, Granny?”

              “Nope. If I stayed inside Ol’ Sly would make himself at home on my porch and never leave. I don’t wanna kill him, but I ain’t havin’ him chasing off all my company.”

              “What are you going to do when he decides to turn on you, Granny? You ought to at least use a more lethal weapon than a broom.”

              She cackled out her Granny laugh and said, “That old broom has chased off more than one critter in its time. It’ll do. Did you need something,
cher
?”

              I had forgotten why I called. “Yeah, I’m not going to be able to come out for a couple of weeks. I have to work fulltime on this kidnapping thing while Blake is out of town. I was thinking about asking Mrs. Olsen to check on you.”

              “What do I need to be checked on for?”

              I smiled. “I just want to make sure you’re okay, Granny.”

              “And who’s gonna make sure you’re okay,
cher
?”

              “I’m a big boy.”

              “And I raised you up. You forget that I been lookin’ after myself since before you were a swimmer in your daddy’s…”

              “Okay, Granny, I get it. You’ll call me though if you need anything, right?”

              “I will, and you do the same.”

              “I love you, Granny.”

              “
Je t'aime, chéri
.”

********

I spent the next week at the mansion getting to know both Alicia and Celia’s schedule. Most of the time, it was kind of fun. Celia and I were beginning to understand each other a little better, and I was finding out every day that there was a lot more to Alicia than a pretty face and model body. She continuously amazed me with the baby, and she treated everyone she met with respect. When Celia took a nap, Alicia and I would share a meal or just sit and talk. She told me a lot about growing up in Russia. I found out through those conversations that she was born in Georgia and lived there most of her life but moved to Moscow as a teenager. Her father split when she was only two years old and her mother was rarely home. Her older brothers took on the role of her parents. She said they were tough on her, but she seemed grateful to have had them, considering her alternatives were a single, middle-aged prostitute and an absent father.

Alicia’s days off were Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I didn’t like it when she was gone, not only because I missed her, but because Celia was not happy with Ezra, the girl that worked as her replacement. The baby did a lot of crying, and I took to picking her up and walking with her or playing with her just to get her to stop. Ezra took care of her basic needs, but her maternal instincts were nowhere near matching Alicia’s.

I was relieved when Alicia was back on Thursday. I only got to see her for a few minutes before Leif came to relieve me for a few hours. Granny wasn’t answering her phone again, and I hadn’t been able to get ahold of anyone else to check on her.

I had visions of Ol’ Sly eating her dancing in my head.

As soon as I got to Granny’s, she fixed me a plate of shrimp étouffe and served it with a slab of cornbread the size of a brick. “Eat,
cher.
”

I picked up my fork and took a bite of the delicious stew. After I’d chewed it and washed it down with some of Granny’s sweet tea, I asked her, “Granny, will you please turn on your phone and answer it when I call?” She only gave me a non-committal shrug. Sometimes I wondered if my grandfather had been a saint. I’ll just bet she was hell on wheels when she was younger. Resigned to not getting a straight answer about that, I said, “Has Ol’ Sly been leaving you alone?”

She laughed and said, “I spect that depends on your idea of bein’ left alone.”

Laughing cautiously I said, “What does that mean, Granny?”

“He come round from time ta time.”

“And when he comes around, you come inside, right?”

“That depend on what I got ta do round here.”

“Granny, that gator is gonna turn on you one of these days.”

She waved an old palm at me and said, “Eat,
cher
.” I rolled my eyes and took another bite. “Ain’t no gator gonna wanna eat all dis ol’ white meat. I spoke ta Blake.”

She was a master at changing the subject too, but this one I was interested in.

“When was this?”

“Before he left ta Cali, he come by. We had some gumbo and talked a while.”

“How did that go?”

“He’s fighting some demons,
cher
. He has to do that in his own way, and all we can do is be here for him when he wants us.”

It was unlike my Granny to take such a passive stance. Knowing there was more to it, I said, “What kind of good gris-gris did you send him away with?”

A gris-gris is a spell, and Granny has hundreds of them. She believes in the old Creole magic her ancestors claimed to possess, and even though Blake doesn’t, I’d be willing to bet he took whatever she gave him and didn’t argue. Nobody argued with Granny.

She grinned and said, “Jus a lil’ dime to wear around his neck and ward off the evil spirits.”

I laughed simply at the thought of my giant, grumpy friend wearing a dime with a hole drilled through it on a string around his neck. I was surprised that Granny hadn’t just given him a mirror to put outside his front door. She has one outside of hers, and I have one outside of mine to appease her.

According to Creole legend, M’su Diable (the devil) is very vain and so enchanted with his own appearance that a mirror outside the door will distract him so much he’ll forget to go inside.

Granny and I spent the rest of my visit talking about some work I was planning on doing to her house as soon as I got a break from work and her telling me all of the community gossip. I got back to the mansion just in time to send Leif home and find Alicia getting the baby ready for bed. Celia was dressed in a pair of fuzzy pink pajamas, and Alicia was holding her to her chest and rocking her to sleep. She had her eyes closed, too, and a pretty smile on her face.

I stood at the door for a few minutes watching them. There was no denying the love Alicia had for that baby. If she had any connection to these kidnappers, I was sure that she didn’t know it. I couldn’t imagine her ever doing anything to hurt Celia or anyone else for that matter. She was one of those people who seemed to be made for motherhood. I wasn’t sure why that affected me so deeply. I’d not only never had a mother I’d never even considered having kids.

              I tore myself away and slipped across the hall quietly to my own room. The Bransons had both been out when I came in, and for that I was grateful. I wasn’t necessarily eager to see either one of them. Matt was still angry about Blake being in L.A. to speak with Belinda, the baby mama, and Julia just rubbed me wrong all the way around. The less contact I had with either of them, the better, I thought.

I left word at the front gate when I came through that I was back if they needed me, and when I got to my room, I tuned my radio into the station they were using for private communication. I lay down on the bed and stretched out. This was one of the least physically challenging cases I’d ever had, but mentally, I was exhausted.

It was worse not having any leads than it was when you had a dozen. My mind just couldn’t shut off. I was constantly going over different theories and scenarios. Then there were the feelings I had for Alicia. Each day that passed they got stronger. I was constantly warring with myself over that as well.

I’d just closed my eyes when I heard something outside my door. I opened them and saw Alicia. I guess it was her turn to watch me. I liked it, but I wasn’t sure I liked what the idea of that did to my body.

              “Hey.” I pushed myself up so my back was against the headboard.

              “Hi. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

              “I wasn’t sleeping, just resting my eyes. Is the little imp down for the night?”

              She smiled and held up the baby monitor. “For now at least,” she said with a smile.

              “Would you like to come in and sit for a while?”

              “Okay, for just a minute.” She came into the room, and I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up. She sat a couple of feet away from me, and folding her hands in her lap, she asked, “Did you have a good visit with your grandmother?”

              I smiled. “Yes, there’s really no such thing as a bad visit with Granny.”

              Laughing, she said, “From what you’ve told me about her so far, I can see how that would be true. She sounds really interesting. Is she still fighting alligators?” I had told her about the episode with Granny’s broom and Ol’ Sly during one of our talks. Once, she’d gotten over the shock of it, she’d laughed until she had tears in her eyes, as I imitated Granny’s accent and repeated the last conversation we had about it.

              “Just the one,” I said with a grin. “Did you know your grandparents?”

              I instantly regretted the question. Her eyes clouded over, and she said, “No, unfortunately I never met them.” I’d found that when it came to her past where her brothers were concerned, she was pretty forthcoming. But with all other aspects of her life, she was hesitant to share. Changing the subject back to me, she said, “Have you lived in New Orleans your whole life?”

              “Not in New Orleans but close. I’m from Houma out in the Terrebonne Parish where Granny still lives. Have you ever been there?”

She shook her head.

I said, “There’s not much to see where I come from. I grew up right along the swamp in the house Granny still lives in.”

              “And you weren’t scared of the alligators either?”

              “Not for the most part. I mean, if I came up on one face to face, he might scare me, unless I had Granny’s broom.” She giggled, and I said, “Granny has lived out there for so long that it’s made her believe she’s invincible, I think.”