Privilege (Special Tactical Units Division 2)

She shook her head. “No.”

“Somebody you inadvertently hurt.”

Another shake of her head. “No.”

“Someone who wanted something you had. A grade. A class. Anything, anything at all, because crazies don’t operate the way the rest of us do.”

She put her hand on his arm. “I know about mentally ill people, Chay.”

“Yeah.” He laughed, folded his hands, placed them on top of his head. “I forgot that.”

“I know they see things differently, but I honestly can’t think of anyone I’ve had a personal relationship with who would wish me harm. Harm like this, I mean. And it would have to be a personal relationship to trigger such behavior.”

“Couldn’t it be a relationship the stalker sees as personal even though it really wasn’t? What I mean is—”

“I know what you mean. And you are correct. Still, there would have been signs. Indications of interest beyond the norm.”

“And you can’t think of any situations you’ve been in that were like that?”

Bianca shook her head. “No.”

“All the more reason I have to get you out of here.” He bent to her and kissed her again. “I can’t predict what this guy is going to do next. And I need you in a safe place while I work it out, a place this—this individual would never think of.”

“California,” she said slowly.

“Yes.”

She paced away, then swung towards him.

“The man you thought you saw last night... Do you really think—”

“What I think,” he said, “is that it’s possible someone is keeping tabs on us. And if you think something is possible, the only way to operate is to assume that what you think possible is actually happening.”

“But California…”

“I need a base, sweetheart, where I can coordinate and plan, where I don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder, where we’re not going to stand out. My cottage in Santa Barbara is perfect. I can come and go without anybody so much as noticing.”

“Yes, but what about me? Surely people will notice that I’m with you…”

She paused and did that little biting-her-lip thing again. Any other time, he’d have caught her face in his hands and soothed the tiny bite with his tongue.

“…Or,” she said quietly, “are you counting on the fact that they’ll see me as just another woman spending a couple of days with—”

He kissed her. Deep. Hard. With enough passion to make her moan.

“They’ll see me,” he said, when he lifted his head, “as a man who’s so crazy about a woman, he wants her all to himself for a while.” Gently, he brushed his thumb over her lips. “And just for the record, I’ve never had a woman staying with me before.”

“No?” she said, and told herself it was ridiculous that

the admission should make her heart lift, because, after all, this was simply a matter of expediency, because what he’d said about what people would see and believe wasn’t, couldn’t be true…

“No,” he said, and kissed her again. Then he smiled. “Is it really so difficult to think of trading hot, crowded city streets for a long stretch of blue water and white sand?”

She put her hands on his chest. “Sort of like that beach near the hotel,” she said softly.

“Better.”

“How could anything be better than that?”