12. June 15th

JUNE 15TH

Sylvan

Sylvan unlockedthe door and opened it to slide her hand into the mailbox to collect the envelopes inside. Walking away from the door, she sorted through the mail. In the middle of the bills and junk mail was a plain lavender padded envelope that was the size to hold a 5×7 photograph. Her name was front and center in calligraphy. No address. No stamp. No return address. She frowned. Squeezing it, it was clear that there was something solid, something squarish inside. Stopping in her confusion, she put the other mail under her arm and opened the envelope.

Her stomach dropped as she took stock of the contents, and she broke into an instant cold sweat, stumbling into the wall next to the stairs and sliding down onto the floor.

No, please, no! How? Why?

Perhaps she'd known it was just a matter of time before he'd find her at her home. Wasn't that how it happened on all of those crime shows?

Sylvan fumbled for her pocket and pulled out her phone. Her hands shook as she tried to pull up her best friend's number.

"Hello?"

"Kai?" Sylvan whispered.

"Syl? What's wrong?"

Sylvan was so petrified she couldn't get words out. Eyes wide, all the blood drained from her face, a death grip on the mail in her hand. Even if the lavender envelope had been on fire, she couldn't have let go of it. She just sat there and shook.

"Syl?! Syl! Answer me!"

"Kai," Sylvan wailed. "He found me."

"Are you in the house?"

"Y-y-y-yes." Her teeth began to chatter.

Sylvan could hear talking in the background, but her fear blocked out any understanding of what was being said. Then Kai's voice came through loud and clear like a lifeline to a drowning victim. "Lock the door. Stay right where you are. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Don't hang up!" Sylvan pleaded.

"I won't, sweetheart. I'm staying on the line." There was a murmur in the background again, but now it was Sylvan's sobs that were counteracting her ability to hear. They sounded loud and chaotic to her, almost echoing off the walls surrounding her. "We're on our way, Syl."

The quality of the call changed with Kai's last words. Tin-like. As if she were speaking from a long, man-made tunnel. She was on speaker so that whoever Kai was with could hear the conversation. Sylvan curled tighter into herself and lay on the floor in a fetal position, still clutching the mail and the phone.

Even with Kai's continual crooning in her ear, ten minutes felt like ten hours. When Kai physically arrived at Sylvan's door, she pounded on it. "It's Kai, Syl! I'm using my key!"

From her place on the floor in the corner, Sylvan stared at nothing, heard the key turn the lock, and shrank further into herself. Maybe if she didn't move, didn't breathe, no one would know she was there.

"Oh my God, Syl!" Suddenly she heard a terrible clatter as something was dropped on the hardwood floor at the door. She felt herself being raised from the floor to an upright sitting position, then hugged tightly to another body. A strange keening sound could be heard in the distance, along with muted voices as if they were background actors on a TV show. "Jesus Christ on a crutch!"

"Kai, your creative swear words and phrases do not induce calm reactions," a low rumble replied.

"She looks like a fucking vampire drained her of all of her blood. How do you expect someone to react?"

"She's clearly in shock. I'll call 911."

"No!" Kai shouted to her companion. "We can't take her to the hospital. She'll get worse when she comes out of it if we do."

"Fuck… Kai, she needs help. We have to call someone." Sylvan, still locked away in her head, could hear the companion Kai had brought with her, and she retreated a step further into her brain to avoid the stranger. "Double fuck. God's going to fucking kill me if he finds out."

"Then don't let him find out."

Sylvan heard muttering that moved further away from her out onto her front porch. "Demon. Ping me. We need emergency medical attention for someone, and we can't call 911. Whatever you do, don't tell anyone else."

She felt herself being rocked gently, a soothing voice cooing nonsense in her ear, a cool hand stroking her hair. And yet, she felt herself drifting further and further away, the sounds and touches fainter with each moment.

Then she felt herself gently fall back toward the floor, her head leading the way. Her chest began to feel less restricted, cool hands touching her neck and chest, followed by a warm weight that seemed to cover her from neck to toes. And then blessed nothingness.

Sylvan heard a groan.Opening her dry and heavy eyes was a near Herculean task, and her mouth tasted like it was full of cardboard. She realized the groan had come from her and that, for some reason, she had passed out.

"That's it. Come on. Wake up a little more." Sylvan tried to clear the blurriness from her eyes, but her vision just wouldn't clear out. The deep Irish-lilted voice was nice to listen to. It must belong to the shadowy figure leaning over her, touching a hand to her forehead, then pressing against her wrist at the pulse point. "Do you think you can sit up?" A pair of strong arms wrapped around her shoulders from underneath and helped her rise to a sitting position on the couch.

"Syl?" It was Kai's voice. "Syl, oh, thank God."

"Kai?" she asked weakly.

A wrecking ball plowed into her side on the couch, and a cat-o'-nine-tails smacked her in the face. Slowly, Sylvan's vision started to clear. Now, she could identify the wrecking ball as her best friend, Kai Serrano, and the cat-o'-nine-tails as her long blonde ponytail. The woman appeared to be both gasping in relief and shaking with anger. "Dammit, Syl, don't you ever, ever, ever scare me like that again!"

"For fuck's sake, Kubrick, let her breathe, or she'll pass out again," a deep voice rumbled from across the room.

"Fuck you, Waters."

"Seriously?" the Irishman griped. "You two say ‘feck' more than I do."

"That's because you don't say ‘fuck,' you say ‘feck.'"

A grunt, one that Sylvan supposed might pass for a laugh, came from the slicked-back, shoulder-length, dark-haired stranger kneeling in front of her who was wearing a tank top, board shorts, and flip-flops.

She had a terrible headache. "What's going on?" Sylvan asked weakly, a hand raising to her forehead as she glanced around the room.

"You called me in a panic. All I could get out of you was, ‘He found me.' I raced over here and found you near catatonic in a corner." Kai stroked the side of Sylvan's face, attempting to smooth the damp hair back into her hairline. "What happened, Syl?"

Sylvan's eyes skittered to a blond man with a worried stare standing in the background, then to the dark-haired man still on one knee in front of her. She looked at her friend and whispered, "Who are these people, Kai?"

"I'm sorry, Syl. I know how you feel about strangers in your home, but I didn't know what else to do. I was having breakfast with—" Kai looked over at the blond—"with him when you called. When we got here, you needed medical attention, and I knew you wouldn't want me to call an ambulance, so he called his friend over, who has some medical training."

"Thank you," she whispered, dropping her gaze. "I'm sorry she had to bother you both."

The dark-haired surfer shrugged. "I was close by."

"Going into shock is concerning. What happened?" the blond asked.

"Just something stupid. I must have had a panic attack."

"Syl," Kai admonished, "this was more than a panic attack. You went into shock, and we couldn't wake you. Now what the fuck happened?"

"I don't want to be a burden, Kai."

"Oh, sweetheart." Kai's tone instantly became softer and more big sister-like as she framed Sylvan's face in her palms. "You are never a burden. You're my friend. Does this have to do with that bastard that's been bothering you on your author page?"

Sylvan's eyes filled with tears, and she nodded before dropping her eyes to her clasped fingers in her lap. "He started messaging and emailing while you were filming. I've been ignoring him. Deleting his letters and messages. Today, I went to get the mail. There was an envelope in the mailbox with no address or stamp. Just my name. I didn't think fast enough, and I opened it."

"Where is the envelope?" the blond man asked.

"I don't know. Last I knew, I was still holding onto it."

He reached into his pockets and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. He stepped out into the foyer and returned, holding up the purple padded envelope and matching piece of paper, along with the rest of her regular mail. "Is this it?"

She nodded.

Who in this world carries latex gloves in their pockets like it's an everyday need?

When the blond man came back into the room, he had a frown on his face as he looked at the envelope in his hands. The frown then transferred in his gaze to her. He scrutinized the two women, then turned his attention to the bookshelves along the wall. He had an odd look on his face as if he were solving complex math equations in his head. "Your name is Sylvan Jones. The romance novelist."

"How do you know that?" Kai asked.

He waved the envelope at her. "I'm not just another pretty face. I can read."

"I meant, how do you know she's a romance novelist, Kraken-boy?"

"Babe. One of her books is on your nightstand, and there's like eighty gagillion more of them on your bookshelf."

Sylvan leaned over to her friend and whispered, "How does he know what's on your nightstand?"

Kai grimaced.

He set down the mail on the sofa table behind the couch and went through it, piece by piece. He then sized it into piles of the same types of envelopes and stacked them neatly off to the side.

"Jesus, Waters, you have issues," Kai grumbled.

He grunted. "Says the woman who couldn't find her favorite bra this morning because she doesn't put laundry away, let alone color-code it."

Interesting. He knows what's on her nightstand, she was having breakfast with him, and she couldn't find her bra? We definitely need to talk.

Waters glanced at Kai, muttering, "Why am I just hearing about this now?" He gestured at the envelope.

Kai gave Sylvan's arm a squeeze, then gave a slightly exasperated glare at the blond man. "Why would I have told you? She's not exactly in the market for a…" She gestured at the two men. Lost as to how to finish the sentence, she continued, "For you and your co-workers. Annoying direct messages and emails are a police issue. Besides, if somebody would let me up for air once in a while, I could share personal details in my life that aren't in the huge file you compiled on me."

His glare became a little less irritated and a lot more wicked. "I haven't exactly heard you complaining."

Whoa. I'm not sure if that's hot or scary.

Kai stuck her tongue out at Waters, which earned her a raised eyebrow and a strange comment of "Rule six" from him.

"Okay, okay," she spat back rather than apologizing. "When it first started, I didn't know you, and by the time it had begun escalating, we were in Roatán, and then we weren't together. When I was back in your orbit, I had slightly larger concerns, remember? So when was I supposed to tell you? Last I knew, which was the middle of May"—a sharp glance was thrown at Sylvan—"she hadn't mentioned anything, so I figured maybe the assnozzle had gotten bored and moved on. Apparently not."

Waters snorted. "You think?"

He examined the purple sheet of paper first, reading the words on the page and frowning. He turned it over, saw nothing there, then held it up to the light, again finding nothing but the shadow of the ink from the front side.

While he was examining the note, Sylvan whispered to Kai, "Who is this guy? How does he know you couldn't find your favorite bra? How does he know which one is your favorite? What haven't you?—"

The ponytail-wielding blonde looked at her with another grimace of chagrin. "I've been a super shitty friend and have been keeping secrets, but… some of it is because I didn't have a choice. Do you remember when I came back from filming, and I was so upset?"

Sylvan nodded, then her eyes widened, and her mouth opened into an "O." "He's why?"

Kai nodded. "His name is Waters. He was the consultant I told you about for the Navy SEAL movie I just filmed. We hooked up while working on it, some things happened, and we ended up separated for a bit. A few weeks ago, we were sort of forced together again. It's a long story, but basically, we're back together."

Both women turned their attention back to the man in question. He was totally focused, looking over the envelope with the same intensity as he had the note.

Sylvan felt a tremor go through her as she watched him. She turned her head to Kai and mouthed, "Wow!"

Kai grinned, mouthed back, "I know," and then gave a dramatic shiver.

"I saw that," he mumbled.

"Of course you did, G.I. Joe," Kai retorted.

When he looked up, there was no smile on his face, but he winked at Kai, and there was definitely something funky going on with his eyes.

Was that what the authors meant when they wrote about heroes whose eyes sparkled with lust? Dayum.

Waters turned his attention back to the envelope and looked inside. "What the ever-loving fuck?" he growled.

He dumped the contents of the envelope out onto the coffee table and started pawing through what appeared to be photos of Sylvan in a variety of local places, including inside her home. There were also pictures of her in the main bar area of The Library.

The Irishman whistled.

A glance at Sylvan showed Waters' concern. "This is a bit more than annoying messages and emails. This is the first time you've gotten something like this?"

"I've gotten direct messages and emails, but not with… extras."

"And this came to your house? Hand-delivered?"

"I saw the letter carrier come up the walk about twenty minutes before I went to get the mail out of the box. Technically, I have a post office box, but… the letter carrier empties my box each day and brings it to the house. I don't like to go out if I don't absolutely need to."

Waters glanced at his watch. "That was just under an hour ago. He'll be long gone by now. How long have you been having problems before today's delivery?"

Kai looked at Sylvan, who nodded encouragingly at her. "Tell him."

Sylvan shifted slightly on the couch, Kai's arm around her shoulders, head leaning comfortably against Sylvan's. She didn't deserve this woman as a friend.

"The freaky stuff started around Christmas time. I remember because I was running a Christmas card exchange with my readers, and he was sad because he missed registering for it."

The Irishman stood up, hands on hips, and he looked at Waters. "What are you thinking?"

The two men's eyes were locked in some sort of psychic connection. Waters shook his head and looked at the floor. "Shit, this is going to be a cluster. Walk with me."

The two men stepped out onto the back porch, closing the door between them and the women. They watched Waters tell the other man something, then he showed the dark-haired man something from the envelope, and then both men turned to look at Sylvan for a moment.

"The other guy, they call him Demon," Kai said. Sylvan's brow furrowed. "It's a nickname."

Looking at the men on her deck, she could tell that Waters was worried about something. Demon didn't look much happier, but he didn't appear to be arguing against whatever Waters was saying to him.

Demon looked over his shoulder at Sylvan and Kai, then turned back to Waters, clearly asking a question, and Waters shrugged his shoulders as he replied.

I hate knowing I'm being talked about.

"What's going on, Kai?" Sylvan asked. "Who are they?"

"I don't know what I can tell you, Syl. It's… complicated. All I can tell you is that I'm involved with Waters, but no one can know."

Sylvan's frown went deeper. "No one can know? Jeepers, Kai, what is he? An assassin or something?"

Kai mumbled, "Or something," and then shut up as the sliding door opened, and the two men returned to the living room.

Demon began packing up medical supplies into a backpack while Waters looked long at Kai, then at her. "Sylvan, I know you don't know us from anyone, but based on just what little I've seen, you have a serious problem. Add to that how you reacted to receiving this, and it's probably even more serious than you think it is. I'm guessing you haven't gone to the police?"

"I tried, but the police can't help me because he hasn't actually done anything toward me except send messages. What am I supposed to do?"

Demon glanced long at Waters, then took his backpack and himself out the front door. Waters then looked back at Sylvan. He sighed. "Why do I feel like I'm in that movie about the high school kids you made me watch?"

Kai frowned. "What movie?"

"With the singing and the dancing."

"Oh! You mean Grease."

"Yeah. My spidey senses are telling me I'm about to live out the bonfire scene." He shook his head. "Fuck my life."