Page 15 of Daddy's Babies: Johnnie's Story

“She is, all mine, and I’m keeping her. Going to keep her safe as well.”

“Good, it’s about time you or Jude finally got serious about someone,” Julie says, squeezing my arm again, calming the racing thoughts rushing through my head right now.

Kent and the others cover retracing my girl’s movements while Doug and Sam work with me on the security side, getting their agreement that three men teams are good to protect Carly in my building. One in the garage at the elevator entrance, another in the lobby, and a third in the stairwell outside the penthouse, which is also the only way to the roof, which would be the only way into the penthouse from the outside as there are no outdoor balconies, just the indoor patio. The outside windows can be slid open, but only the top half of them in one area, the bottom half make up the outer wall, but even with the windows slid open, there’s still a screen on the inside for added protection from bugs.

“You’ll want to see this,” Kent said drawing everyone’s attention back to him and his laptop. A grainy video starts playing and I have to fight to keep my dick from hardening seeing my girl move across the frame. She’s inside a smoothie shop and a yellow folder is tucked under her arm. As she hands over payment, a man moves behind her, and when Carly’s alone on the screen once more, the folder’s gone.

“You were right, she didn’t just drop it somewhere,” Doug said, and I nodded, hearing the apology in his tone.

“It gets better,” Kent says, pulling up the same shop’s feed from Tuesday, and I can see Carly moving to the counter and talking to someone. The dejected look on her face makes me want to pull her into my arms and hold her tight, but it’s the image that Kent pauses that makes anger rise inside me. “Same man, and he follows her out of the store this time. I caught them on the city’s feed just down the sidewalk and when she goes into the store, he waits just out of passing view of people on the street, but the cameras still have him. Then when she comes out…”

Julie lets out a little laugh seeing the mishap that had my hands on my girl’s sexy lingerie, but the sight of the man moving towards us on the edge of the screen keeps one off my lips. Before he can get near us, Carly’s hurrying away, hoping on the bus as it pulls in, as I watch her go. My chest aches the same way it did that day, and I need Carly in my arms to reassure myself she’s safe.

“I ran a facial comparison on this guy, haven’t hit anything on the police department’s public database of mugshots yet, but it did pull up some of Carly’s photos. She’s caught him lurking around, she just didn’t realize she did, and well, he was there Thursday when…” Kent stopped meeting my gaze and a low curse slips from my mouth. “I can erase that um…slip so no one sees it.”

“Do it,” I grunt, drawing my brothers’ and sister’s attention fully to me at the gruffness of my tone.

“She hurried up the steps, cleaned off her shoe, then got onto the bus before the guy could get close to her,” Kent goes on with, showing it on the street cams, calming me even though seeing her gag makes me want to wrap her up tight again. It also makes me take note to not let any of the little kids have gum at family parties if that’s her reaction to stepping in it.

“And the next night she’s supposed to go to the club to apologize to Ellis’ business associate,” Doug says, his eyes narrowing as he shakes his head. “They wanted her cornered so she couldn’t slip away again.”

“Yeah, but I think it’s more than that,” Kent warns making my jaw tightened again at his tone.

“What did you find?” Doug asks him when my locked jaw keeps me silent.

“This was from the week before Carly was supposed to take the contract to her father,” Kent says, pulling up video of the man that’d been following my girl, and my hands tighten when I see him staring at her sexy backside as she moves through the lobby of Ellis’ building. The asshole blatantly adjusts his dick and my blood boils.

“This was from inside Club One Friday night,” he adds, playing a new video and the same man is slamming his hand down onto a table, face furious, and across from him is Brent Ellis.

“Carly’s been the target this whole time,” Jesse fumes and they nod.

“They weren’t prepared for her to naturally be so evasive, or for something to pop up any time they got close to her. Why they did it this way I don’t know, but to keep her safe, she needs to stay far away from her home, her father, and anywhere not surrounded by protection,” Doug tells us.

“Ahhh shit, you’re not going to like this,” Kent states bringing silence to the room. “I got a hit on the guy’s id,” he adds, turning his computer back to us, and the FBI Most Wanted poster is not what I was expecting.

“He’s wanted for drug trafficking, human trafficking and child exploitation,” Jude reads, as my vision blurs blood red.

“I’m calling it in now,” Sam says, moving into the hallway, and I try to drag in deep breaths, but nothing’s working to calm the rage pounding through my veins.

“Why would he risk being seen?” Julie asks, her hand coming down over mine as I grip the table tight. “Even if he wanted Carly, why would he risk it?”

“People like that don’t fear the law nearly as much as regular citizens do,” Doug tells her. “This honestly was him being cautious. He could have grabbed her up at any time and wouldn’t have cared if the cops had been called. I can guarantee if he realized Carly caught him in photos, he’d have done it, but honestly, I think he wanted to toy with her first. He’s done it before from the look of his file.”

“Friday was to be his payoff and now he doesn’t even know where Carly is because she hasn’t been home, and he’s pissed. Threatening Ellis to find a way to get her out to him,” Jesse suggested, and no one denied it as a possibility. Fuck, my need to have her in my place, to ensure she didn’t run out on me is a huge relief right now.

“Can they track her through her phone?” Julie asks, making my breathing tighten at the thought of it happening. My girl is home alone. She doesn’t know how much danger she’s really in right now, and there’s no one there to protect her from it.

“She has the location tracking and sharing turned off,” Kent says shaking his head no at us. “The background GPS was still tracking her movements but without her physical phone, they can’t pull that up. There’s nothing they could get off her cloud to trace her locations, the only call she made today was to Brent and they shouldn’t have been able to narrow down her location to even a building if they started tracing the call. It could have pinged off any of the three towers because she uses a secondary provider, not one of the normal giants with their own individual towers.”

“I turned it off Saturday morning and didn’t turn it back on until this morning to put my info in so she could call me if needed,” I added, calming myself and my sister’s worry.

“You put your info in there like that?” Kent asks and I chuckle a hint, pulling a grin from Jesse and Julie, while Jude just shakes his head at me.

“You’re seriously not going to make me listen to another one of you all doing the whole daddy shit, are you, man?” Jude groans giving me and Jesse hard looks.

“Your time’s coming, I mean, Dad did promise Mom after all,” Jesse says making him groan again.

“I promised your mom what?” Dad asks, pulling our attention to the door and a hint of relief fills me finding not only him there, but also our Chief of Police, Aaron Davidson. He’s only been in his position for six months, but he’s already made headway into getting rid of some bad blood in the department, including one of the officers that tried to force himself onto our sister at one point in time.

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