“Fuck you,” she gurgles out between numbers three and four.
The insult makes me grin, but my smile fades as I spin around. This place isn’t that big. And if it’s the only place she feels safe, then her life is pretty miserable.
In the soft blue living room are three large framed posters of the covers of a bestselling science fiction series—a series that is being made into a movie. The light bulb turns on over my head. Natalie Beck is M. Kannan. That must be how she affords this Tribeca condo. And it makes sense. She wrote the storyline for one of the most famous games of recent memory, and now she’s writing bestselling science fiction. And it’s a series I fucking love.
“I’ve read you.” I don’t get starstruck. I’ve worked with too many celebrities to be awed by them, but I am standing about twenty feet away from the person the New York Times has called “a revolutionary new eye into the future.” “I thought M. Kannan was a man” is my first thought.
I know who you are.
The threat takes on a different dimension.
She snorts, interrupting her counting. “Male readers don’t read female authors. It’s more lucrative to be gender neutral, especially when you’re writing science fiction.”
The words rush out, as if she’s saying them all in one breath, but at least she’s talking and thinking and not passing out. The panic attack is tapering off.
Mentally I run through my bookcases and realize I have embarrassingly few female authors on my shelf. “Like I said before, men are dumb.”
“Yes, yes they are.” When she half laughs, I exhale and realize I’d been holding my breath, waiting to run into the bedroom. Phobias are a bitch to fight off. Too many of my brothers-in-arms suffer from them and mental illnesses are viewed differently than physical illnesses. If a friend is sick with the flu, or God forbid, something worse like cancer, everyone is sympathetic. But depression? Fear of being in your own head? Folks just want you to get over it and if you can’t, you’re a weak-ass sadsack.
I don’t know why I don’t have PTSD. It’s not because I’m better or stronger than my squad mates—more likely that I’m just a cold bastard. That’s what my youngest sister claims.
“I’m going to need you to sign my books.” She has a big-screen television, one of those curved ones, and three different game consoles underneath. Whatever happened in her past, it hadn’t killed her love for the medium. I finish my inspection of the interior and walk to the kitchen.
“Just bring them over. You know how to get in.” Her sultry voice is about an octave lower than earlier, and scratchy, as if she’s spent a long time screaming. A quick vision of sheets, bedposts, and an arched back flash through my mind.
All right, Jake. Get a hold of yourself. It’s only been a few weeks since I last got laid so I’m not sure why I’m having such a visceral reaction to this woman whose face I haven’t seen.
“I’m almost done here.”
The last room is her bedroom and while I need to see inside of it, I know she’s not ready. Not today. Resolutely I turn away. “I’m leaving now.”
At the kitchen counter, I pull out a small jar of powder and a brush. “A pre-Hollywood invention. Fingerprint dusting powder so you know where I was in your apartment,” I write on a notepad I find on the counter.
I hope my token apology for interfering with her life, causing a slight panic attack, is offset by this. As I climb the stairs to the top floor, so it looks like I was with Graham the whole time, and then travel down the elevator to the lobby, something about the whole sweep of the apartment nags at me. Was it that I didn’t get to see her bedroom and complete my assessment of her security needs? Was it that I didn’t get to take Natalie’s measure by looking her in the eye?
It isn’t until my feet hit the sidewalk that I realize that I want Natalie to like me, not to be afraid of me. I look down at my arm, the one that is missing a hand, and then the leg, the one that is missing the calf and foot. Turning around, I stare up at the window in the far right corner. There’s a movement there, a twitch of the curtain. I hold up my good hand and shove the bad one in my pocket.
No, let’s be honest. I want Natalie to be attracted to me.
CHAPTER SIX
JAKE
Her call comes just seconds after the window curtain twitches.
“You left me a present.”
“It’s a thank-you for letting me in. I figured it would give you some peace of mind to know where I was and what I touched.”
“I didn’t let you in. You picked the lock!”
Her indignation makes me smile. I give her another wave and walk toward Hudson. We’re both on the West Side so I decide to walk back to my office rather than catch a cab. I need to clear my head and the exercise would do my leg good. “You let me in. Or at least you gave me permission by going to the bedroom.”
“So now you know all my secrets.” She sounds nervous, as if I’m going to start blabbing to reporters about what I saw in her apartment.
“They’re still your secrets. I’m hired to protect you, not to bring you more harm by revealing your secrets. That’s why we have a nondisclosure agreement.” As the sun warms my skin, I wonder what it’s like to be locked inside the four walls of an apartment. Does she open her balcony windows? How often does she feel the sun on her face or the wind in her hair? “Is the author thing a big deal?”
“Meaning will it hurt my sales if it is revealed that I’m not male? Who knows? I already don’t do book signings,” she sighs. “I didn’t want to use a male pseudonym because of where it got me before. I had to fight for the ambiguous first initial, but I knew if I used my real name it would be tainted by everything that had gone on in the past. I wanted the books to succeed or fail on their own. Not because people felt sorry for me or because they hated me for something other than my writing.”
“That makes sense. How many people know you’re M. Kannan?” That could narrow my suspect list considerably.
“Oliver. His parents. My therapist. My editor.” She ticks them off one by one. “There might be a few other people in the publishing house, but we also have a nondisclosure agreement and they’d pay hefty damages if they broke it.”
“But the resulting publicity could be good for them,” I suggest.
A foul stench hits me as I reach Hudson. Being indoors isn’t all that bad. Natalie’s apartment smelled like cinnamon and lemons.
“I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but we’re doing pretty well on the publicity part.”
A metro bus speeds by wrapped in an advertisement for the upcoming movie. “Good point. Do you think the note is from someone in your past or your current life?”
“Past,” she replies firmly. “It has to be. My life . . . it’s so small now and everyone in it is a friend. I can’t imagine someone I know and love doing this to me.”
Just because you don’t want something to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t. But I suspect she knows this. “If it’s someone from three or four years ago, then he has a real hard-on for you to be coming back after all this time. Can you make a list of the most determined guys who threatened you?”