Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Hornet

We were a week into our thirty-day trial period, and, so far, everything was going well. My house was perpetually clean, and Ariel seemed happy and content. I saw to it that Brook was well paid, and she hadn’t brought up any complaints. So far, so good. I’d felt guilty about letting her believe that Ariel’s mom had been my wife. She’d seemed hesitant about taking the job, and shameful as it might have been, I thought having her feel sorry for me might do the trick. I’d come clean the following day and told her about my army buddy, and our promise.

I had to admit, at least to myself, that I was attracted to her—which was another reason I didn’t want her thinking I was some grieving new father. Her innate honesty, natural beauty, and down to earth personality really appealed to me.

Brook Arnold did her fucking job, made my baby happy, and gave me my kid back at the end of the workday. What more could a single dad want or need than that? After dinner, she cleared up and disappeared into her suite to do whatever she did. Damnit, I didn’t have one single complaint about her performance. It looked like I may just have to keep this hot young nanny and let my always hard cock be damned. Because there was no way in hell, I was going to be some middle-aged horndog creeping on the innocent young nanny taking care of his baby. She was my employee. Trying to get with her would make me a prick of biblical proportions.

The Slayers security firm made arrangements for me to work from home three days a week monitoring the security cams, and two days a week working in the field, doing whatever needed to be done. Yesterday, I was responsible for providing in-person security at the mayor’s annual awards banquet with two of my club brothers. It felt good to get out and stretch my legs after sitting behind those screens all day. But it was really nice to go home to my daughter at the end of the night.

I found that I was gravitating towards my daughter more and more every day. I liked being the one to take care of her when I could. I picked out cool little outfits for her to wear each morning and fed her before Brook started work. While she was employed as a live-in nanny and housekeeper, I had made it clear that I’d take care of anything at night, so once I was at home she was off duty. I often rested after a long hard day with my baby lying on my chest. This small ritual was already starting to bond us. I honestly didn’t understand those men who dumped off all the responsibility for their children onto their wives. They were clearly missing out.

Since today was a day of monitoring security feeds, I let my phone roll to voicemail when it rang. I needed to avoid distractions at all costs.

When I turned the security feeds over to Hacker to take a lunch break, I grabbed my phone and listened to the voicemail.

“Hello, Mr. Davis. I wanted to let you know that Brook Arnold asked for a reference letter from me a couple of weeks back. I had to decline because of her poor performance as a childcare provider for my three-year-old son. She fed my child peanuts although I had repeatedly told her he was allergic to them. I ended up having to take him to the emergency room and firing her. I thought you should know how untrustworthy she is.”

Although this did not sound like something she would do, I immediately went in search of Brook. No parent could overlook something this grievous. I found her walking around with Ariel on her shoulder in the living room.

“Hey, Brook, do you have a minute to talk to me?”

“Sure. What’s this about?”

“I got a call from someone you provided childcare services for. They said you fed their three-year-old peanuts and he had such a bad reaction they had to take him to the hospital.”

She frowned. “Aside from the allergy thing, you shouldn’t give whole nuts to children under five as they are a choking hazard. I don’t remember anything like that happening. Can I hear the voicemail.”

I played it on speakerphone for her to hear. She looked really confused, like she didn’t recognize the voice. “I have no idea who that is, or what they’re talking about. I’ve never given a child something they were allergic to—nor have any of the kids I’ve watched ended up in the ER because of something that happened when they were under my care.”

“Well, it’s pretty fucking strange that I got this voicemail out of the blue. Do you remember asking someone for a letter of recommendation and them refusing?”

“No. I only asked three people, and all three of them were agreeable. You read the letters yourself.”

“Do you have any idea why someone would call me up until a bunch of lies?”

“Don’t you think it’s the least bit strange that the caller didn’t leave their name? Maybe just call them back and let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this.”

When I pulled the number up, I was surprised by what I found. “It says unknown caller instead of a number. That usually happens when someone has enhanced privacy settings.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. Nothing like that has ever happened with any of the kids I’ve watched. I understand if you want to reconsider hiring me. We’re still in the trial period, which means either of us can call it quits at any time with no hard feelings.”

“No, I don’t want this call to affect your employment unless it can be verified.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I had more information for you.”

“And I’m sorry to have bothered you about this. Let’s just continue as we have been for now.”

I resisted the urge to take my daughter out of her arms. In my heart of hearts, I didn’t think Brook would do something like that, but worry niggled at the back of my mind anyways. Being new to fatherhood, it was difficult to distinguish between prudence and overprotectiveness.

***

Two days later, I got a text message.

Hey, this is Sharon from Shreveport. Someone alerted me that you have Brook Arnold taking care of your newborn baby. Just wanted to let you know that three years ago I had to let her go for putting my baby to sleep on his tummy instead of his back. As you already know, putting your baby down to sleep on their back reduces the chances of them suffering from sudden infant death syndrome. Just thought you should know that.

It was Sunday, Ariel was with my parents and Brook was out. When she got back from her shopping trip, I asked to speak with her again.

She responded eagerly, “Sure, is everything alright with Ariel?”

“Yeah, of course my parents are probably spoiling her rotten right now. Look, I need to talk to you about a text message I got from someone else claiming to be one of your former employers.”

Her expression shut down almost immediately. “I hope this information makes more sense than the last message did.”

I handed her my phone and let her read the text message.

“This makes it twice that you received messages from people I’ve never heard of reporting things that never happened.”

“Have you ever lived or worked in Shreveport?”

“I’ve haven’t even heard of Shreveport, much less been there. I was born and raised in Griffinsford. You know, if you don’t want me around your baby, you can just let me go either now or at the end of the trial period. There’s no need for a bunch of cloak and dagger stuff.”

My mouth fell open in shock. “You think I’m somehow responsible for these messages?”

“I’m not sure what I think. I just want to be sure you understand I’d be willing take a termination, if that’s what you need to feel that Ariel is safe.”

“No. I’m not forcing you out. I trust what you’re saying, that you don’t know anything about this. I am gonna take some time to think about it and trying to figure out what’s going on, though.”

“I hope you find out whoever’s doing this. I genuinely have no idea who it could be.”

I nodded. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.”

***

Since Ariel was spending the day with my parents, I got on my bike and headed to the Dark Slayers clubhouse. I needed to figure out what the fuck was going on with all these random messages about references. It felt like forever since I’d been there, even before Ariel arrived, my jobs usually took me away from base.

If this was a prank, it wasn’t a very funny one. What kind of sick, twisted, individual would do something like this? But when I looked into Brook’s innocent face, I couldn’t imagine how she could possibly be seen as anything other than kind and caring.

I strolled into the clubhouse and went directly to Hacker’s office. I knocked on the door and waited for him to yell for me to enter. Brothers in the past had literally been caught with their pants down, so we had a strict ‘no barging in when the door is shut unless it’s a damn life-threatening emergency’ rule. When I heard him give approval, I cracked the door open and stuck my head in. “Do you have time to help a brother out today?”

He looked up from his laptop and nodded. “Always. Come in and grab a seat. Tell me what’s going on. If I can help, you know I will.”

I slid into the chair across from his desk and tried to explain my situation as best I could. “As you probably heard, I’m a new father. Hired a nanny to take care of my daughter while I work. I’ve gotten a phone call and a text message from random individuals telling me that she might end up being a danger to my child.”

“I’m guessing you don’t think they are genuine, or else you wouldn’t be here.”

“She denies it, one call talked about a peanut allergy in a three-year-old, and before I even gave her the details, she said that you shouldn’t give whole nuts to young kids. In the time she’s worked for me I’ve been paying pretty close attention to what’s going on with her and have never noticed anything suspicious or alarming.”

“Did you follow up with those parents to get a better understanding of what went wrong? Sometimes things sound worse than they are.”

“I tried, but neither left their full names and the numbers were withheld.”

Hacker asked, “Did you save the messages?”

“Yeah, of course.” I played the voicemail first and then forwarded it to him along with the text message. I sat there, nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof, as Hacker took a few minutes to search through the metadata. I didn’t speak because I didn’t want to interrupt this process.

Finally, he looked up and said, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but it’s suspicious as hell.”

“What do you mean?”

“The messages look like they’re coming from a major internet provider. Those numbers are often used by people who want to remain anonymous and hide stuff like IP addresses etc. So what you need to ask is why someone reporting poor childcare would want no one to know what they’re doing.”

“Brook might be the least intimidating person I’ve ever met my entire life. Plus, if she really did engage in life-threatening behaviors while watching people’s children, why wouldn’t they have reported that to the authorities?”

“Most parents would have reported it because they wouldn’t want her out there endangering other children,” Hacker said, stating the obvious. “I did her background check myself and we both know it came back squeaky clean.”

“Well, Hacker, you used to be military intelligence. Analyze the situation and tell me what your gut is telling you.”

Our club’s IT specialist thought it over for a long, pensive moment before speaking. “My gut is telling me that either someone’s messing with you, or someone wants your new nanny to lose her job.”

“So, you think somebody could be just pranking me?”

“Nothing about this smells like a prank. Did you consider that it’s not about Brook and that it could be personal? It feels like someone might be jealous that you got chosen to be Ariel’s father. Are you aware of any loose cannons in Marcus’ or Tabatha’s families who might have wanted custody?”

“The attorney who came to see me was pretty upfront and honest about the fact that no one in their extended family really had their life together enough to be trusted with the care of a newborn. Plus, me and Marcus made one of those crazy late-night promises back in Afghanistan, I’d all but forgotten about it, but I guess he hadn’t. He also said that there was a lot of addiction, mental illness, criminal behavior, and even an offender in their ranks. The others were struggling to provide for their own families and would have probably been hard pressed to provide for another child.”

“Did they have a life insurance policy to help provide for their newborn daughter?”

“Yes. It totaled almost a million dollars. I’m thinking about putting it in a trust for when she’s grown and needs money for college, a house, a car.”

“See, Hornet, that right there is called motivation. This baby comes with almost a million dollars in insurance money, and it never once occurred to you that someone in that dysfunctional family might be looking to get their hand on it?”

“But how would getting me to sack my nanny land them a windfall?

Hacker shrugged, “That is the million-dollar question,”

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“I wasn’t making light brother, the words just slipped out. I really don’t know how it could be linked, but it’s something to bear in mind.”

I blanched, embarrassed that I didn’t think of that before now. “I guess it’s because I don’t see dollar signs when I look at her. She’s so small and vulnerable that all I want to do is protect her.”

“Of course you do,” Hacker said.

“What can we do to track these bastards down before they begin upping the ante?”

“I can put a tracker on your phone that traces all incoming calls. I can also begin looking into those family members and try to identify which of them might be motivated enough to cause mischief to get their hands on that money. I’ll also do another sweep of Brook, in case there’s anyone shady in her past or present that we missed.”

“If it came down to it, I’d give them the money and keep Ariel. I’ve grown so fond of her already in the few weeks she’s been in my care. I’m planning on filing for adoption once she’s six months old.”

“Any parent would choose their child over money. It makes no difference whether you’re a biological father or not. Trust me on that one, brother.”