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“I’ll take my leave now,” her cherry voice calls out as she heads toward the door. “Oh, before I forget. No practice tomorrow. You have a meeting in town to get a new wardrobe and a haircut.” Before I can even tell her neither of those things are going to happen, she’s out the door. After it closes I let out a soft sigh of relief and close my eyes.
One thing at a time, Sky.
When I reopen my eyes, Valentina raises a finger over her lips reminding me to be quiet. She quickly pulls out one of our bug detectors and gets to work scanning the whole hotel room. By the time she’s done thirty minutes later, we’ve discovered three different listening devices hidden all around the room. I wanted to just smash them and be done with it but Valentina convinced me to put them in one of our lead-lined cases and have someone from Rockport come pick them up and look them over. Maybe the parts that were used in them could lead us back to who placed them in our room. It was a long shot but I could see the logic in it and was pissed I hadn’t thought about that first.
Chapter Fourteen
“Girl, I swear if you don’t get your ass out of this bed right now I will drag you out of it,” Valentina grumbles, hitting my leg at the bottom of the bed for what was probably the thousandth time.
I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to open my eyes and face the light. I couldn’t tell you what time exactly I had crawled into bed last night but it must have been in the early morning hours. All night I was scouring the security cameras of the hotel trying to find out who snuck into our room. Conveniently the cameras for our floor were out for the past two days. Now, the cameras were working properly, and I may or may not have installed a backdoor into the cameras that would alert me if and when they went out again so I could override them. I wasn’t going to take any chances. An email had also been sent to Knox, Steel, and Trevor to get me a delivery of small security cameras that would be discreet and we could set them up in our room.
I wasn’t taking any chances.
“Skylar, I don’t know your middle name but I’d be using it right now if I did,” Valentina scolds, pulling the covers off of me. “Get up now!”
“Ugh, fine,” I groan, rolling over and stretching. She was determined to get my ass up and moving. I honestly wouldn’t put it past her to drag me out of bed and toss me into a freezing cold shower to wake me up.
That was the last thing I wanted.
Slowly, I got out of bed and headed straight to the shower not even wanting to look in the mirror to see how dark the circles under my eyes would be. I probably looked like death and until I got some coffee in me I was going to feel like death. Throwing my hair up into a bun I quickly showered, taking long enough to wash my body and shave. I almost skipped shaving my legs but when I felt the little hairs I knew it wasn’t being skipped. I hated how itchy my skin would get if I didn’t shave my legs frequently.
Less than ten minutes later I was stepping out of the shower and drying off. Keeping the towel around my body, I brushed my teeth and started putting on my makeup. Not that it would help much with the dark circles, but hopefully someone would think that my makeup had smeared and not that I hadn’t gotten any sleep.
I didn’t even know what sleep was anymore. Nightmares had been plaguing me since we came here. I knew it was going to happen, I had sleeping pills that I should have been taking to help me but I didn’t want to be inhibited in any way while here. I couldn’t afford to let my guard down. Taking the pills would mean that I would be passed out and waking up would be difficult if I hadn’t slept for eight hours straight. That was something I wouldn’t be doing. Four hours of sleep was plenty, my body was trained to handle it.
“Coffee is here!” Rome yelled from the other side of the door.
I hadn’t even heard him knock on the hotel room door.That wasn’t good. With one last look in the mirror knowing this was the best I was going to get today, I pulled the hair tie out of my hair and let the waves fall down my back. Thankfully, there weren’t many knots so with a shrug I just let it lie and opened the door to the bathroom to walk out and get the nectar of the gods that had been delivered.
The second I opened the door, Rome was standing there with a hot coffee waiting for me. It should have bothered me that he was right there but I didn’t care, only focused on the drink he had in his hands. No one spoke while I took several sips, letting the coffee run through my veins and wake me up even more. Five minutes passed before Rome braved breaking the silence.
“Cars waiting downstairs for us,” he states, taking two steps back to reach the room door. I opened my mouth to comment but before I could he continued. “It’s the one I got, I’ll be driving you around all day. Valentina has some other things to handle so you’re stuck with me.”
Shrugging, I gave a small wave to Valentina and grabbed my purse and leather jacket from on top of the dresser where I had tossed them yesterday. Neither of us spoke as we took the elevator down to the garage. When the doors binged with our arrival and opened I groaned seeing the male standing in front of them. It was eight in the morning. Why did he have to make it even worse by being there?
All six feet, covered in tattoos, shaved head and brown eyes wearing black ripped jeans and a black graphic tee with the sleeves ripped off making it a tank top stood before us. I have no idea why he was here like he was waiting for us to come down in the elevator. He had been leaning against a cement pillar until he saw us. Straightening, he walked straight towards us, not stopping until he stood before me. I hadn’t moved, hell I’m pretty sure I hadn’t even breathed, too scared of what he wanted, of what he would do.
I guess that’s not true. I wasn’t scared. Not of him. I was scared of why he was here, and what he wanted from me.
Rome tried to move in front of me and block him from reaching me but it was useless. He just pushed him out of the way until he was able to come to a stop directly in front of me.
“Skylar,” he grumbled towering over me. His brown eyes reminded me of dark chocolate. They were staring at me as if they could see into my soul. I’m not sure what he saw in my eyes but whatever it was caused him to soften his expression just a smidge.
“Gunner, what the hell are you doing here?” Rome questioned, grasping my arm and pulling me away from the male towering over me.
“I suggest you remove your hand from her,” he snarled, turning his eyes to stare at Rome.
I knew if I didn’t do or say something this was going to escalate to a fight. Rome only knew a little of the situation between all of us. If needed he would protect me even from Gunner. Right now, I didn’t think that was an issue. Gunner wasn’t going to hurt me while we were working together. After everything was said and done, well then I wasn’t going to be so sure. Shaking my arm free of Rome’s hold I moved closer to Gunner. Rome probably thought it was a stupid idea but I was trusting my instincts.
“Why are you here Gunner?” I asked softly, tilting my chin up to look him in the eyes.
“I’m coming with you. You don’t go anywhere without me,” he explained or more demanded.
“I’m tasked with her protection, not yours,” Rome began explaining. “Is your security team even aware you are here? We didn’t plan to have to guard two of you together.”
“It’s fine, Rome,” I call out, not taking my eyes off Gunner. His only answer was a smirk before he grabbed my hand and started leading me to the black SUV Rome had gotten for us to use.
“Sky,” Rome began to question.
