Page 16 of Beg Me

“Are you okay, Olive? I will pull up the cameras and see if we can find anything.” She nods at him and he walks to the back room.

“Come back here, more eyes are better.”

We walk to the back room with him. It’s a tiny room, but it doesn’t need to hold anything other than the security system, anyway. All the cameras are pulled up.

“Holy shit, I didn’t realize you had this many cameras in here.”

There are easily thirty camera feeds on the three monitors in front of me.

Inside the bar, outside the bar, the back room, the back alley, Olive’s staircase, her front door, one along the side of the buildings so you can see the windows, but can’t see into them. It’s a lot.

“Yeah, I had more put in last week. It’s better to be safe than sorry in my opinion.” He starts scanning through the motion alerts on the camera angled at Olive’s door.

A weird static happens on it and it blacks out for a second, then comes back on like nothing happened.

“What was that?” I ask.

“Fuck whoever this is, they must have a jammer or something. None of the cameras picked anyone up anywhere. They all have that static at the same time. Fuck!” He hits the table.

“It’s okay, you guys are here now and Jayce is on the way. I’ll be good. Jayce took off a few weeks so he will stay with me and hopefully, the person doesn’t show up again.”

“Not to ask a stupid question, but should we call the police? At least make a report?” Zander asks.

“Jayce will handle all of that when he gets here. I’d rather not have to talk to anyone else honestly,” she says. Zander deflates a bit at hearing Jayce is the knight in shining armor.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I say to stop the awkwardness.

“Okay give me the shotgun.”

Zander reaches his hands out to me. Handing it to him, I walk out of the room. Zander goes out first, checking everything, then comes back into the bar and walks us up after locking up. When we make up to Olive’s apartment, we double-check the lock, and I plop onto the couch.

“I’m so fucking tired,” I say as I lay my head back on the back of the couch and close my eyes. Zander sits down at the kitchen counter, he’s obviously uncomfortable. Olive grabs him a glass of water, and sits down on the couch with me, turning the TV on.

“Nap time,” she says, laying her head on my shoulder and closing her eyes. I have no idea why Zander is being so awkward. She clearly isn’t phased by him walking in and seeing us this morning.

“You can both take a nap. I’ll stay awake and watch the door.” Zander says.

“Okay. Jayce is on his way, please don’t shoot him,” Olive says as she slowly starts passing out.

BANG*

I jerk upright from the couch, Olive doing the same. Zander has the gun pointed at the door.

“Go to the bathroom girls,” he says.

“What if it’s Jayce?” Olive asks.

“It’s not. He just called me and said he would be here in twenty minutes. There was crazy traffic I guess,” Zander says without taking his eyes off the door.

“Janice, get my phone and pull up the cameras.”

I already know his code so I pull up the cameras right away.

“No one is at the door.”

BANG*

“Bull fucking shit no one is at the door!”

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