Page 2 of Quiet Protector
A silent gasp leaves my mouth when Henry cups my jaw in his palms. Because his hands are so big, his fingers weave through the hair I wore in tight curls with the hope it would hide the internal transmitters of the implants behind my ears. The difference in my pitch to people not born deaf already discloses I have cochlear implants, so they don’t need additional proof. I’m not ashamed I was born deaf, I just hate when people assume it’s a disability. It isn’t, it’s a uniqueness.
I can tell the exact moment Henry unearths the cause of my newfound hearing. His gasp is as silent as my earlier one, but I didn’t need to hear it to know of its existence. It fanned my face with a pricy alcoholic scent.
“I can’t believe you decided to get them done.” Henry’s words are only for my ears as are his eyes. “It’s been years. Over two decades. Do you remember me?”
The hope in his eyes almost has me nodding, but the sweat from Julian’s hand seeping into mine stops me. Since he’s clutching my hand as possessively as Henry is holding my face, he’s being roasted by the microscope of scrutiny right alongside me.
I won’t have him subjected to a rumor-monger because my parents had a weird kinship with Henry many moons ago. For all we know, their meetings could have been business-related. But since this town loves gossip, and I can’t shut them up by telling them to keep their eyes on their own paper, I lie as I was trained to do on cue.
“No, I don’t, sorry.” After stepping back, freeing myself from the fingers weaved through my hair and the hands warming my cheeks, I dip my chin in farewell. “But it was a pleasure meeting you. I hope you enjoy the festivities.”
I hightail it to the exit as fast as my quivering legs will take me. Since Julian’s hand is enclosed over mine, he falls into step rather quickly.
“What the hell was that?” Julian mutters when we break through the double doors of the ballroom guarded by secret service agents like the President is in attendance. “Do you know who that man is?” Although he’s asking a question, he doesn’t give me time to conjure a reply, much less articulate it. “He’s Henry Gottle.Henry. Gottle.” He repeats his name slowly like I’m still deaf. “How do you know him, Mel? You’ve never mentioned him previously.”
I move to the edge of the sidewalk to flag a cab. “I don’t know him. He must have mistaken me for someone else.”
“He said your name.”
I roll my eyes like he’s being ridiculous. He isn’t, but when the chips aren’t in my favor, I have a proven track record for acting immature. Brandon learned that the hard way seven years ago.
“There are plenty of people called Melody.”
My eyes snap to Julian when he snickers. “And how many of them were born deaf?”
With my back up, I get snappy. “I don’t know, Julian. How many? You’re the one whose profession feeds off the ‘disabled,’ so your statistics would be better than mine.”
All it takes is for our eyes to collide for the quickest second, and Julian’s campaign to unravel the connection between Henry and me is set aside for comforting. He does the same thing any time we fight, and I’m ashamed to admit, I use his dislike of arguing anytime I’m overwhelmed with either fear or frustration, or sometimes both, such as tonight.
While joining me on the curb, Julian tugs off his swanky black tuxedo jacket. My heart warms as well as my body when he drapes the quality material over my shoulders, wrongly believing I’m shivering because of the late fall evening. I’m not scared. I am just disappointed about the idiot I’ve been portraying the past twenty minutes.
“Thank you,” I whisper, pulling his coat in closer.
It smells like him, which is both comforting and exciting. He has a different scent than Brandon. His spicy aroma often reminds me of pumpkin spice lattes and freshly baked bread. Brandon’s scent was woodsy and natural like it was plucked straight from nature. It was a smell I often craved before… you know.
I’m still lost as to why Joey smelled like Brandon the night of his summer party. We hung out only minutes earlier. The drinks he’d been downing before I arrived were clear on his breath, yet, I didn’t detect an ounce of alcohol in the air when he slid into Brandon’s bed. All I could smell was Brandon’s aftershave. That’s why I wrongly believed I was safe.
I guess Joey could have put it on to deceive me. In all honesty, that makes his switch in personality even more confronting. If he went to the effort to make himself appear to be Brandon, that means his assault was premeditated. That’s so much worse than believing he had read my friendliness in the wrong manner. It breaks my heart believing he purposely set out to hurt me. We were close. He was my friend. I loved him even before he was given my daddy’s heart, so why did he do what he did?
When tears prick in my eyes, I shift my head high and to the right to ensure Julian doesn’t see the sheen threatening to spill down my cheeks. My sudden shift in visual has me stumbling onto Katarina being ushered into the backseat of a pimped-out SUV. Her protective detail isn’t surprising. Not even Henry’s suffocating presence stopped men eyeballing her with desire, however, the man guiding her into the four-wheel drive most certainly raises suspicion. I can’t see his face, but not even his tall height, bald head, and massive biceps are behind the massive spike in my heart rate. It’s his unique neck tattoo. I’ve seen it twice in my life. Both times it was on dead men.
2
Brandon
My heart thuds against my chest as I stare down at a tiny slip of paper sitting solemnly on my dining room table. Half of me wants to snatch it up in an instant, whereas the other half wants to throw it into the fireplace with the hope the still-warm ash will ignite it as well as it set ablaze my panic. My fireplace usually gives my home a welcoming vibe, but all it’s doing today is making the conditions extra muggy. I’m so hot, I am five seconds from ripping off my shirt, and we’re tiptoeing toward December.
My eyes dart to Phillipa when she asks, “Shall I, or would you like the honor?”
I snatch up the paper, answering her question without words. Melody isn’t technically mine anymore, but her safety is most certainly my responsibility, and I don’t give a fuck if her fiancé believes otherwise.
My hands shake like I’m in the middle of a snowfield without gloves when I unfold the thin slip of paper. Even only being partially opened can’t hide the single string of text scrawled across the middle. The handwritten black ink is similar to the script on the note Tobias handed me over a year ago, but it’s a fourteen-digit number instead of the filing code I didn’t want to discover.
I flop back my head and lock my eyes to the ceiling, relieved it’s nothing close to the coding system Tobias used for his private files. Although I could swear on Joey’s grave, I’ve seen a set of similar numbers before.
Mere days ago.
When recollection dawns on its familiarity, I head to my soft leather briefcase I dumped on the entryway table when I arrived home twenty minutes ago like I had a rocket strapped to my back. Phillipa watches me with wide, curious eyes when I tug out a similar-size scrap of paper from my briefcase. The handwriting is different, and this sequence of numbers was written with a blue pen, but the similarities between the numbers reveal a pattern, and it has my stomach twisted up in knots.
