Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  RIGHTS

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  DON'T FORGET!

  IMPORTANT NOTICE

  ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STALK HER!

  4 Months

  Investigators series #3

  --

  Jessica Gadziala

  Copyright © 2019 Jessica Gadziala

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

  "This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."

  Cover image credit: Shutterstock .com/ popcorner

  DEDICATION

  To everyone who championed for Barrett to get his book.

  ONE

  Barrett

  "Your life is being dictated by a fucking bird."

  When Sawyer was told it was his job to keep an eye on his little brother, he apparently didn't realize that there was an end date to that, that once I was an adult, I could take care of myself. Which explained why he was in my office at three p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon shooting small eyes at me, his disapproval a living, palpable thing.

  "Macaw."

  "What?" he asked, shaking his head a bit.

  "It's a macaw. Blue & Gold one, to be exact."

  "Yeah, 'cause that's important. The problem is you just turned down a fucking job because the bird needs to have a shower."

  "Showers help soften up the casings on their pin feathers so they can preen them more easily."

  "Jesus Christ." Sawyer sighed, rubbing a hand down the back of his neck. "The point is that the shower can be done later, and you could have had the interview now."

  "He can't have the shower later. Later, he needs dinner, and then to go to bed. Parrots need ten-to-twelve hours of sleep a night."

  "There's no fucking talking to you," Sawyer declared, huffing out his breath.

  "And yet, here you are."

  "Riya wanted me to check in on you. She was worried this place had turned into a sty again. She's not wrong," he added, moving a coffee cup off the edge of my desk, eyeing it dubiously before looking inside like he might find mold. As if I ever didn't finish my coffee.

  I liked Riya.

  When Sawyer first nudged her into my life - into my office - I was sure I would chafe every time she tried to clean up my messes, lectured me about taking out my trash so I didn't get bugs or rodents, or ordered something healthy to go along with my dinner. But, in the end, it had been nice to have some semblance of order. And I was sure my body appreciated something other than grease and cheese. But soon she had ballooned up with Sawyer's baby, and had needed to leave the manual labor type work behind.

  It had taken all of three or four days before the office went back to the mess it was before her. A mess now compounded by the Java tree stands and ceiling hung climbing rope toys for Diego, the macaw I shared with Luce and his woman Evan.

  "Well, you can go ahead and tell Riya that you checked in on me, and that I'm fine."

  "Fine?" he asked, stacking used coffee cups in his arms much the way Riya used to do, all the while clucking her tongue, muttering about how she thought when all my cups were dirty, I simply bought new ones.

  She was right about that too.

  "How many fucking mugs do you have?" Sawyer grumbled, making his way through to the bathroom, running the water into the cups.

  Last time I counted, sixteen.

  Which, admittedly, was maybe getting a bit out of control.

  "Now that you've done half my washing for me," I started when he emerged from filling the mugs in the sink, leaving them to soak, "are you satisfied?"

  "The bird thing is weird, Barrett," he told me, walking over toward the macaw in question.

  "I wouldn't..." I started just before Diego lunged, closing his giant beak over Sawyer's forefinger.

  "Fuck," he hissed, yanking his hand back, inspecting his finger, likely expecting blood.

  "It was just a warning bite."

  "Fuck of a warning. Alright, fine. I get it. You don't want my-"

  "Condescension," I supplied.

  "Help," he shot back.

  "Sometimes, with you, it is the same thing."

  To that, his shoulders sagged a bit, his air exhaling hard out his nose. "I get that you're an adult and you have to live your life how you want, but that doesn't mean I can't worry about you when shit seems a little sideways," he told me, then turned, heading outside.

  Alone, my breath hissed out of me.

  It was a knee-jerk reaction to bristle when Sawyer sometimes got bossy, something that likely stemmed from the short stint of time I had worked for him, when he nitpicked and micromanaged, reminded me that my place was in the belly of the operation, not working outside the office on active - and therefore somewhat dangerous - cases. Because unlike him and Brock, I wasn't ex-military. Because, unlike Tig, I hadn't grown up rough.

  To Sawyer, I was the skinny, clueless kid playing video games, someone who would throw his own shoulder out when trying to throw a punch.

  To be fair, I was skinny. I wasn't trained. I had gotten my ass kicked more than a few times.

  But that didn't mean I wanted him telling me what I could or could not do.

  Eventually, I needed to strike out on my own, get my own license, set up my own operation.

  I wasn't Sawyer.

  I would never have the kind of business he had. But I was doing alright. He didn't need to tell me if I could or could not - or should or should not - be turning away clients.

  "I thought you were leaving," I grumbled at the sound of the door opening back up.

  But before the words were even fully out of my mouth, I felt the change in the air. Diego could too, judging by the thumping noise of his flapping wings. Whoever was here was not Sawyer, was not someone he was familiar with.

  Turning, I expected to find a stranger, someone who didn't know how a phone worked, someone who assumed that all investigating agencies had staff to deal with them instead of one-man-operations like mine.

  But it wasn't a stranger just inside the doorway a few feet from me.

  It was a local legend - the (now-retired) detective who seemed to understand the delicate balance of bad guys and genuine dirtbags in our town, choosing to look the other way from the gun running of the Henchmen, but cracking down on the violent drug dealers, the wife beaters, the child abusers.

  Detective Collings was past middle age with a bit of a hangover waistline, somewhat ruddy skin, and a mustache that wouldn't have suited anyone else but an ex-detective.

  "Collings," I said, feeling my brows furrowing, not understanding why he would be in my office ever.

  "Barrett," he said, nodding.

  He couldn't claim to know me per se, but the police station was almost directly across the street from my office. I had seen him in passing hundreds of times. And he likely did know my brother.

  Which was why it was even stranger that he was at my office instead of Sawyer's.

  "What are you doing here?"

  To that, he rocked back on his heels, tucking his hands in his back pockets, pressing his lips into thin lines.

  "I need help."

  And, clearly, he was not the kind of man who felt comfortable admitting that. After all, he had dedicated his life to being the person others came to when they needed help. He fixed things. That was what he did. That was a huge part of his identity. Not being able to fix something himself was likely eating away at him.

  "Alright," I agreed, moving behind my desk, waiting for him to take the seat across from me.

  "Your desk reminds me of mine back when I was working," he informed me. To my recollection, he was the only person to come into my office and not tell me what a sty it was. It was refreshing. "Too many cases, not enough time," he added, filling silences.

  "Speaking of cases. What's yours?"

  To that, he sucked in a deep breath, expanding his chest so far that the buttons on his shirt strained to make room for it.

  "My daughter."

  "I didn't realize you had a daughter."

  "Her mom left me when she was young. Rightfully so. Moved a bit away. The relationship got strained."

  "So you're not close," I gathered, grabbing a legal pad, scribbling down notes.

  "It's complicated," he insisted, his already reddish face getting redder. Anger? Embarrassment? Maybe both. I was never good at telling. "We talk about every other week."

  "In person?"

  "Sometimes, but mostly by phone. Does it matter?"

  "Well, I am assuming that you are here because she hasn't contacted you, cor