Resist (Sphere of Irony 3)

“Alright. I guess I’m going on tour.”

“I’ll have my secretary send you the details, hotel arrangements and all that,” Ross adds. “Call me if you find anything, otherwise I’ll see you on the fifteenth.”

The line goes dead.

***

Sweat pours off of me as I climb the basement stairs of my townhouse. Once in the kitchen, I grab a Gatorade from the fridge and make quick work of it. The brand new solid walnut table in the corner calls to me just like it has every day in the six days since Gavin disappeared.

After running my head under the cold tap and toweling off, I walk over to stand at the side of the table. I’ve turned it into a makeshift desk. Most of the surface is covered with documents. Now that I have upgraded doors and windows, plus a new security system, I’m almost okay with leaving the documents in the kitchen instead of locking them up in the office. The office is just too tiny to spread everything out. I’m a visual person. I need to see everything at once.

I glance over the papers, already having most of them memorized by now, searching for the connection that eludes me. Once again, I’m frustrated by the fact that I can’t find a single thing.

Stomping upstairs, my mind keeps going back to Gavin. To the way his body felt against mine, hard and hot and so unbelievably sexy. Now that I’ve had a taste of him, and of the real me, the thought of letting him go is near crippling. That’s if he even wanted me anywhere near him after he took of with Hawke last week. Plus, there’s the pesky fact that he’s a client that keeps getting in the way.

I take a quick shower and jerk off for the millionth time to images of Gavin as he comes, full lips parted, bright blue eyes glazed over, skin flushed.

Dressed and once again disgusted with myself for being unable to control my own body, I grab my keys and head down to the garage. There are a couple of people from Gavin’s past I want to speak to—a club owner where the band played when they first started out, and a neighbor from one of Gavin’s old apartments. Both of them have police records for stalking or aggravated harassment.

The garage door lifts and I back out of the drive, careful to watch out for the pack of kids that ride their bikes up and down the street at all hours. As I put the car in drive, my gaze drifts to my front step.

What the—?

I slam the car into park and leap out, not caring that I leave it running in the middle of the road in my not-so-safe neighborhood. I stop at the bottom of the stairs, trying to get a good look without touching anything. Slowly, I pull out my phone and call Detective Vallejo.

“Vallejo.” His deep voice is serious when he answers.

“Detective, it’s Mitch Hale. You’d better come to my house. I just received a present from our stalker.”

Chapter 9

Gavin

“Jesus, you are boring as fuck, Walker.”

“Shut up,” I mutter to Hawke as he paces the room for the hundredth time. “Can you sit down? You’re making me a nervous wreck!” I drag a hand through my hair and continue to play a game on my phone in a useless bid to occupy my mind.

“I’m making you a wreck?” Hawke’s eyebrow piercing shoots up under his hair. “You didn’t tell me we were going to have to stay inside the whole time, Gavin! You know I can’t do this! I have to do something, anything!”

My best friend starts clawing at his shirt, his complexion pale.

“Hawke, I told you to go out,” I reiterate for the hundredth time since we arrived at his sprawling vacation home in Boulder, Colorado.

He stops his freak-out long enough to glare at me from behind those black-framed glasses. “Hell no. Not with a stalker after you.”

I scoff. “He can’t possibly know where we are. No one would ever think to check here.”

Hawke fidgets some more, moving to look out the window at the huge mountains that lay in the distance. “It’s not a secret that I own a house here, Gav. It pops up in the news every now and then.”

He’s right. Whenever he gets papped doing something—usually unbelievably reckless—in this town, the media always reiterates how he bought a secluded estate in the mountains.

I shrug. “It’s fine. Please, Hawke, I’m begging you to go. Take your bike or go rock climbing or whatever it is you do. I promise to lock the doors and stay at the house.”

Hawke flicks his gaze over to me. “You promise?”

“Yes.”

Anything to calm him down before we’re both climbing the walls. I’ve known him a long time and there’s one thing about Hawke that’s never changed… his unquenchable need for thrills. That’s why he bought a house in Boulder. It’s packed with adrenaline-filled activities—rock climbing, mountain biking, base-jumping, skydiving, you name it, Hawke’s done it.