“I’m glad someone has faith in me. But it still doesn’t deal with how you’re going to stay by my side while you’re working. And before you even suggest it, I’m not going to go into the office with you and bother everyone else.” She enjoyed spending the day with Cass and the others, but it couldn’t be an everyday occurrence.
“True, but you could wear these, and then I’ll know where you are.” He pulled a box out of his pocket, and Steff didn’t have to look inside to know what the contents were.
The earrings with the trackers.
With everything that had gone on the previous evening, she hadn’t let herself think about wearing them.
“I know they’re the last thing you want to wear, but I think you should.” Dalton closed his fingers around the small cube.
“What about you? Would you wear a tracker if I asked you to?” She fired back, still not sure what her hangup was when it came to wearing the earrings.
“Yes.” He responded without hesitation. “I don’t wear one all the time, but if you wanted me to, I would.”
“You would?” She found it incredulous that a man she’d only known for a short time, would do that for her.
“I would. When the guys and I go on a mission, we wear them. Cass won’t let us leave without them.”
There it was. The answer she’d been seeking and a reason for her to push back on wearing them. “So, you’re forced to wear them. You don’t do it of your own free will.”
He shook his head and touched her arm. “You’ve got it wrong. I wear them because I like knowing that Cass has our back. That if anything hit the fan, we could disappear into the depths of the jungle to be safe, and we would be found because of the trackers.”
“Don’t tell me someone like Irish or Ox wear trackers?” Those men were alpha all the way through. There’s no way they’d be comfortable with anything like being monitored. She doubted they were tracked that way while in the military.
“Ox doesn’t go on many missions now, but if he did, he would. And yes, Irish does when he joins us.”
“I bet he only does that because of Cass.”
Dalton shrugged. “Nope, both those guys are happy to do it, and were happy to do it before Cass and Irish got together. The bigger question is, why are you so against it?”
Steff pressed her lips together. Why was she being so difficult about it? That was a question she didn’t know the answer to. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I really don’t. It’s like I have this mental block about it, which makes no sense.”
She pulled away from him and walked over to her table and sat down, as if that would help get her jumbled thoughts into some sort of order.
“Steff?” Dalton didn’t move from where he stood, as though he understood she needed some space to think.
“You’d think I’d be okay with it because it will keep me safe. I should be grabbing them and putting them in.”
“It’s okay to be a little concerned. Until a couple of weeks ago, we were complete strangers to you. Then all this shit happens, and we ask you to trust us so we can keep track of you.”
Everything he was saying made perfect sense; the only thing wrong with his assumption was she did know him. She trusted Dalton and everyone at Alliez Security. Teresa was married to one of the men who worked there.Sheworked there on a part-time basis now.
Teresa wore trackers, happily it seemed. If there was anything untoward about them, Steff believed her former colleague wouldn’t even consider wearing them.
“Is it because you’re taking back control, and by wearing them you feel like you’re handing that control over to us?” Dalton suggested.
“I’m not sure, but maybe.” Was that really why? If so, then it was a reasonable assumption, one that was a bit flimsy at the same time.
Stop making this out to be a mountain when it isn’t.
Her inner voice was right. There were benefits to wearing the earrings. It would be as though she had an invisible bodyguard always by her side.
She could do this. She could wear them and, as Dalton said, still take her life back. Decision made, she held out her hand. “I’ll wear them.”
Steff expected Dalton to give them to her, but he hesitated. Was he now changing his mind about giving them to her because she’d taken so long to make her decision?
“Are you sure you want them? You’re not saying yes to make me happy?”
Nowhewas arguing withher.
