Chapter 8

?

Later that night, as Amber tried desperately to fall asleep, her mind swirled endlessly from one danger to another that her foolish actions may have gotten her into. She didn't have any history that she could think of that would lead to this current threat. However, it made more sense that her hit-and-run was connected to Mason's shooting, since she had been at the hospital and had foolishly taken that video. She had reviewed the video multiple times now. Nothing stood out to her. And, if this violence directed at her was connected to that video, how could she possibly let these strangers know that she wasn't a threat, when in their minds she was probably too big of a threat already. Her thoughts kept running wild.

The threatening note didn't bother her so much as the fact that it could just be a prelude to something much worse, and that was a concern and not anything she wanted to consider. She was a sitting duck here, being injured as she was. Since Jasper had opened the door to find the note, if they had been watching and recognized him, did they know what was going on? It just seemed as if so much could be involved in the way of ugly options, and she had no idea how to even begin to free herself from this mess.

One thing she knew was that she was fighting Jasper tooth and nail. God only knows why she was giving Jasper such grief. She appreciated the fact that she wasn't here alone and couldn't imagine being all alone right now, wondering and worrying whether these guys would come back. In her mind, they would definitely come back. She had hoped that maybe seeing Jasper here would have been a deterrent, but it might just as easily have been the opposite. They might have decided that he was a problem and needed to be taken out too.

When a light knock came on her bedroom door, she called out, "Come in."

Jasper walked in and smiled. "I didn't think you would be sleeping."

"I wish I was," she murmured, as she shifted in bed, barely wincing this time.

He noticed that. "So, either the pain pills are good or you're starting to feel a little better."

"I'm tired and I'm sore, but I am feeling a little bit better," she confessed. "It's just a strange scenario right now."

"It is," he agreed, "and I want you to leave this place."

She squeaked out in shock, "My home?"

"Yes, leave your home."

She shook her head. "I don't want to run. I don't want to leave my apartment to these guys," she added in a firm tone. "I get it. It's not all that great, and I could probably find another place to live, but why should I let them force me from my home?"

"It's a lovely little place," he agreed calmly. "Yet again, if this is connected to Mason's deal—and I don't see how it can't be—they know where you live, so let's have you live somewhere else."

"But if I leave, eventually they'll find me again," she stated, struggling to keep the bitterness from her tone. "All they have to do is follow me from work. Apparently these guys are pros. I don't quite understand how I got into this mess, but I'm even more confused as to how to get out of it."

"Getting out of it isn't easy," Jasper shared, with a nod. "We'll have to solve the Mason problem in order to have that happen."

"Good, feel free."

"I would, except that now you've been threatened and quite likely because of me, so I can't go very far."

She glared at him. "I'm not holding you responsible. Taking that video was my fault and my fault only."

"If I hadn't asked you to keep an eye out, I doubt that you would be in this situation."

She didn't know what to say to that because it may be true, except for the fact that she often kept an eye out on people. Therefore, maybe it wouldn't have made any difference at all. She knew it would be hard to convince Jasper of that. "I don't want you feeling guilty," she said, with a groan. "I just want all of this to go away."

"Yeah, well, denial has never worked for me, and I can see that you might want to try it, but I can tell you right now that it'll get worse before it gets better."

She winced. "You could just lie for a change."

He chuckled. "No, that won't help anybody."

"Maybe not, but it would make me feel better," she complained, gritting her teeth.

"It might make you feel better, but it'll be temporary. Let's get you someplace where they don't know where you're staying, and then we have a chance to get them off your tail."

"Where would you like me to go?"

He hesitated, then said, "I was thinking of my place."

Her eyebrows shot up, and she stared at him. "Isn't that taking the caretaking one step too far?"

"Not if it keeps you alive," he replied easily. "I don't know who they are or when they'll come back," he said, pointing to the door, "but I do believe that they will come back."

"But that would imply that I was a threat—well, I guess they see me that way, what with the note."

He nodded. "Or it implies that they're just tying up loose threads," he suggested, keeping his tone casual. "You've got to understand that, with a sniper shooting like that—an assassination attempt in my mind—it'll be the end of them. They will never see daylight again for what they did to Mason on base, and that's if they physically survive. So these guys won't hesitate to wipe out any evidence of their crime, whether eyewitnesses or hard data."

She winced. "Even with the base investigation ongoing, is it bad to hope that, with Mason having as many supporters as he has, an awful lot of gun-happy people are out there to get justice?"

"It's not like that, but a lot of good, law-abiding men who have worked with Mason for a very long time will be seriously looking for these guys and won't be all that fussy about taking them in alive, should they choose to go that route."

She nodded. "Right, so these shooters are under pressure. They must know everyone is looking for them."

"That's my point," he agreed. "They are backed in a corner, and you are on their radar."

She looked around at her bedroom, realizing that one of the reasons she was so grateful he was here because her place had been… violated. No, that was the wrong word, but her apartment no longer gave her that contented feeling of coming home to her own space. "I hate the fact that this place no longer feels like it's mine. It doesn't feel like home anymore."

"That's because for you it's been a sanctuary," he explained. "A sanctuary you needed, coming home after your ER shifts. Now that your sanctuary has been disturbed, it's much harder to see this place as the same haven."

"When would you want to move?" she asked.

"How quickly can you pack?" he asked, with a note of humor.

Startled, she frowned. "Tonight?"

He gave her a quick nod. "Yeah, that's what my instincts are telling me right now." He walked over to the closet, opened it up, and pulled out a couple big carry bags, then asked her, "How about we just fill this and go? It's not as if you're sleeping anyway."

She checked his facial expression to see if he was serious, realizing he probably would never joke about something like this. She nodded and pushed back the covers and sat up. "Not exactly how I expected to spend the night, but I wasn't sleeping anyway."

"Exactly," he said encouragingly. "That's the attitude."

She rolled her eyes. "None of that cheerleader stuff now," she mumbled, as she hobbled slowly over to the dresser. She had him open one of the bags and quickly emptied the contents of her dresser, then grabbed a change of clothes to get into. Afterward she went over to the closet, where she emptied out what she thought she would need for a few days. Yet, realizing that this change of location could be longer than that, she added several more things.

As she looked back at the closet, she muttered, "I didn't realize I owned so little clothing."

"I suspect you mostly wear your uniforms, don't you?"

She nodded. "Which reminds me, I should get the clothes in the laundry hamper." And, with that thought, and a plastic bag, she gathered the clothes from the hamper and finished packing up several pairs of shoes in another plastic bag. She sighed, then stepped into the bathroom to get dressed. Afterward she looked around and frowned, followed by a laugh. "Honest to God, pretty well everything that I need is packed."

"Good," Jasper noted. "That means, if anything does happen, you won't need to hit a store very quickly."

"No, I don't think so," she muttered, still quite startled at just how quickly she'd packed up her personal life. As she moved carefully into the living room, she grabbed her electronics—her phone, the phone charger, laptop, and her e-reader that she used all the time.

Within minutes, Jasper had packed up any of the food that would spoil over the next few days in another bag and began loading everything into his truck. It was dark out, past midnight, and he gave a subtle look around. He came back for her. "Grab a coat and let's go."

She cast one long last look around the living room, then did as he said and followed him outside. "You think this is the best way?"

"Yes, I think it's the only way at this point."

She winced but kept on moving. As she got into the truck, the pain kicked in again, and it took her a few minutes to catch her breath.

"If you were to stay here, and they were to return…" Jasper repeated.

She waved him off. "I got that, Mr. Reality Check…"

That struck home, and he nodded, about to say something.

"Don't even go there," she stated. "Even though I've been giving you a hard time, I do realize just how much I would not want to be alone in that apartment right now."

"Exactly, and this way you won't be." Jasper smiled. "I promise that you'll be safe at my place."

"Yeah, do you live in Fort Knox or what?"

He chuckled. "Not quite, but not far off."

She frowned at him with interest, as he drove through the city and off the base. "Just even getting off base is a nice thing, isn't it?"

"Personally I prefer to live off base myself," he shared. "It helps me to detach from work. And not having a partner isn't a requirement for living on base."

"I wanted to ask about that," Amber added, "but I figured that you must have a very understanding partner, if she was okay with my moving in."

He chuckled. "No. No partner to run this by."

She felt a quiet sense of satisfaction at the thought, even though she also felt stupid. Absolutely nothing was personal about what he was doing. This was all about guilt, pure and simple. At that, she frowned. "You don't need to do this out of guilt, you know?"

"I'm not doing it out of guilt, but I could never live with myself if I found out you had gotten hurt any worse than you already are," he replied.

She winced but nodded.

A few minutes later, he pulled up in front of a small house and said, "Welcome home."

She looked at it with interest. "Can't say it looks like Fort Knox," she teased cheerfully.

"Ah, wait until you get inside."

Surprised, she watched as he parked inside a garage, then he came around, opened the passenger side, and helped her out. He released an alarm and opened the door and got her inside to the couch. He quickly unloaded all the bags at once. She watched in amazement as he carried everything inside.

"I had a dog, but my old guy finally passed away," he stated, "so, at the moment, I don't have any pets."

"I'm sorry," she said. "Our furry friends are hard to let go of."

"He was seventeen, with a long life well lived, but it became time to let him go," he shared. "Yeah, hard to do."

She liked him even more in that moment. Anybody who could grieve over a pet couldn't be all bad. Although, from a personal safety perspective, if it weren't for Tesla confirming that this guy was okay, Amber would never have been in this situation. If any other woman had told her that she would be doing this, staying at a stranger's house, Amber would have called her out as being stupid because… Amber didn't know this guy. Yet in many ways she did know Jasper, and, in circumstances like this, she couldn't be choosy about her guardian angel.

And she had been damn lucky to have one, to have this one.

*

Jasper hoped that,with the mental fugue Amber was in, she didn't realize somebody had been sitting outside her apartment or that they had been followed. He'd done several maneuvers to ditch their tail, and, as far as he was concerned, it had worked. Now in his house, he wanted her upstairs under the covers, where she could get some rest. Not that it would be all that easy to fall asleep, but, so far, she hadn't seemed to recognize the legitimate danger she was in.

As he took her on a quick tour of the first floor, he asked her if she could handle taking the stairs. She nodded absentmindedly, as she looked around, and he saw the interest clearly in her gaze. He had gotten that response from women before, when he had brought them here. He had spent a lot of time working on this house and had invested a lot of himself in its renovations. He had inherited the old family home from his parents. He had finished a lot of the work that his father had started, continuing it himself, keeping it at the same level and quality that he knew his father would appreciate. Working on it with memories in mind had proven to be cathartic and something he always enjoyed.

Not that everything had been easy to do because time changed everything, but he was working on making it a beautiful home. He figured that Amber would be too tired to notice, but she was seemingly not so tired that several of the architectural aspects made her stop in place and stare.

He grabbed her possessions and nudged her toward the curved open staircase, made with solid oak. "Come on. Let's get you to bed."

"This is truly a beautiful home," she whispered.

"My family home," he shared, "and I've put a lot of time and effort into making it work for us."

"Us?"

He nodded. "Honoring my parents' memories and doing all the renovations."

She nodded. "How absolutely blessed you are to have this."

He hadn't considered that, but he truly was blessed in many ways. He nodded at the open doorway they now stood before. "Come on. You're exhausted. Let's get you to bed." He followed her inside, setting her bags on the floor nearby.

"I am tired," she admitted, "but I'm also waiting for you to tell me the truth."

He stilled, then turned to look at her. "What do you mean?"

"No way something more major isn't wrong here," she declared, noting his hesitation. "I'll do much better with the truth, so let's have it, please."

He nodded. "Okay, but no freaking out then."

She winced. "Now that's guaranteed to keep me calm."

He chuckled. "I saw somebody staring at your apartment, while we were there," he said, "and I didn't like knowing someone was keeping an eye on it."

She stopped. "Somebody was sitting outside, watching my apartment?"

He nodded.

"And it wouldn't have been like, I don't know, security or something?" she asked, with an eyebrow raised.

"In this case, no. It wasn't security, at least not security that anybody told me about," he noted, taking a moment, "and they would have."

"So, you're saying that the bad guys were keeping track of me?"

"That is my assumption,… yes," he murmured, "but I don't know for sure."

She didn't know what to say to that and wore a half-stunned look on her face. She nodded. "Well, I appreciate your telling me the truth."

"One more thing," he added, then took a deep breath. "We were also tailed."

She stilled in the act of pulling back the bedcovers, then straightened and turned to look at him. "To here?" she asked, fear rising in her tone.

"Not the whole way but, yes, that would have been their plan. However, I got rid of them."

She blinked at that and nodded. "Of course you did." Looking around, she took a slow, hesitant breath. "So, you're sure we're safe?"

"We're safe here. I have lots of security outside, and it's not exactly an easy place to get to."

"I don't remember a whole lot about the trip to tell you the truth. A gate, that's about all I remember from outside."

"We'll talk about it more when you get up," he said, "but right now you need sleep."

"You're right. I definitely do," she mumbled, "and I need answers, but apparently I won't get them all, and certainly not yet."

He chuckled. "No, but we'll talk in the morning." He grabbed her toiletry bag and went into the ensuite bathroom and set it on the counter for her. "I've got towels here, if you want them."

"I'll try for a shower in the morning, but right now I'm just too tired to do anything."

"As long as you get some sleep."

"I was planning on sleeping," she stated, "until you told me about the man."

He winced and nodded. "That's why I didn't want to tell you, but you didn't want me to hold anything back."

"No, I didn't," she agreed, "and sometimes it would be nice if I could ignore this issue, but I'm still better off knowing. Anyway, let me grab some sleep, and we'll talk in a bit."

And, with that, she headed into the bathroom. He turned and walked out of the bedroom, then headed to his bedroom. There he brought up the security cameras on the streets and around the property, then set up the alarms.

Maybe it was the work he did, or maybe his father being in the security business, but Jasper never could let go of the idea that the world was a dangerous place and that you're much better off if you're protected. However, he could never assume that security would give you everything you thought you needed because it never would and never could.

It just wasn't geared for that, but, on the other hand, it should give her a whole lot more confidence than she'd experienced so far. At least that would be his assumption, and he would see, come morning, if there had been any disturbances. Yet, right now, he needed to grab some sleep himself.

As he headed into his bathroom, he quickly had a shower, and checking the security feed once more and seeing nothing, he went to crash. Four hours later, he rose and checked on the system again. With no breaches noted, he headed back to bed and got another good four hours before he woke up. He lay in bed for a long moment, checking out his senses to see if anything caused a panic or even a low-grade anxiety, but internally everything felt fine. He got up and once again checked all the security feeds but found nothing amiss.

With relief, he quickly dressed and headed downstairs to put on coffee. Once the pot was made, he grabbed a cup. With the security app now up on his phone, so he could check it on a regular basis, he walked back upstairs and knocked on her door.

"I'm awake," she murmured.

He opened the door, stepped inside, and her face lit up when she saw the coffee. "Wow, delivery too?"

"The problem is, with you upstairs, coming downstairs will be that much harder on you."

She nodded. "Yeah, hard to get up the stairs last night."

"If I hadn't been carrying the luggage, I could have picked you up and brought you upstairs myself," he noted. "Sorry, I should have thought of that."

She waved her hand. "I don't do the whole invalid thing very well."

He chuckled. "That's good to know, and I guess that means you don't want coffee then, huh?"

"Take it away and you die," she teased, then laughed.

Smiling, he brought it over and set it down on the bedside table next to her. When his phone rang, he looked down to the Caller ID. "Markus, what's up?"

"Are you all right?" he asked, a stressed-out tone to his voice. "Have you heard from Amber?"

"I took her to my house last night, when I realized somebody was watching her place."

"Yeah? Well, somebody threw Molotov cocktails through two windows of her apartment," he snapped. "Everything inside has been destroyed. The fire department got it contained before it affected any of the other apartments, probably because she was in the corner."