Out of Nowhere (Balls and Brawn Bodyguard #4)

1. Chapter One Dex

Chapter One: Dex

“ G ary, turn down the air conditioner to 68 degrees,” Dex said, setting a file on his desk and opening another.

Suddenly, the lights went out, plunging Dex into complete darkness. The chorus of expletives coming from various parts of the mansion that housed Falcon Security let him know it wasn’t just Dex’s office that had lost power.

“Gary, turn on the lights!” Dex ordered the virtual voice assistant.

No lights, but Dex heard the air click on. “Clearly, there are still some bugs in this thing,” he muttered.

His cell phone rang on his desk just as Jase yelled up the stairs, “Dammit, Dex, turn the damn lights back on!”

“Working on it, boss!” he called, then said loudly, clearly enunciating every word, “Gary, turn on the lights!” The toilet in a nearby bathroom flushed. “Fuck. Gary, turn off the air!” The lights came back on, and Dex breathed a sigh of relief.

Dex looked at the name on the screen of his still ringing phone. Bea Sommerton . Sighing, he muttered, “What does she want now?” He’d talked to his mother just the day before.

“Hi, Mom.”

“So, you decided to answer. Did you see that I texted you Penelope’s number?”

“Yes. Weird name.”

“How rude. It’s no wonder you don’t have a girlfriend.”

No, it’s not. I’m gay. He’d been out to his friends and coworkers for a while now and was comfortable with it. But telling his family was a hurdle he kept putting off.

“Call her and ask her out. She’s in Nettleton, not too far from you. Just a little over an hour.”

“I’ll think about it,” Dex said. He definitely wouldn’t.

“Do more than think about it, Dex. You can’t bury yourself in work. You need a social life. You’re thirty now and need to think of your future.” She cleared her throat. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about. I have an update on Anna.”

Dex leaned back in his office chair. “Since yesterday?”

Dex and his mother had a strained relationship, but after they found out his half-sister, Anna, had developed a stalker-like obsession with an ex-boyfriend who just happened to be one of Dex’s bosses, they’d become a little closer. At least, they had something to talk about other than Dex’s need to find a wife. Anna was now living with her father—Dex’s step-father—in Colorado Springs, and was undergoing therapy. Although her father, Tom, was a little controlling, Dex privately thought Anna was better off living with him than with their mother, who wasn’t very perceptive to the emotional cues of her children. Dex made sure that he called his sister at least once a week these days to see how she was doing.

Bea sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. I talked to Tom this morning. He had a meeting with Anna and her therapist yesterday. Anna’s OLD has gotten worse.”

“Worse?” OLD stood for Obsessive Love Disorder, something Dex had never heard of until Anna was diagnosed with it. Surely, if Anna had contacted West recently, West would have told Dex about it. “West has a restraining order—“

“Not West,” Bea interrupted. “Dr. Richards said that for a while Anna had shown signs of another fixation, but no matter how much he questioned her, she wouldn’t give him any useful information. Finally, he got Anna to agree to a joint session with her father, and that’s when she announced that she didn’t need therapy anymore. That she was fine now and moving on with her life. In fact, she’d been seeing someone for the past few months. And…” Bea’s voice faltered before she pressed on, “She’s pregnant.”

“What?” Dex said so loudly that Sean and Saint, two of the guys on the security team, stuck their heads in the office to make sure everything was all right. Dex waved them off.

“Mom, are you serious? She hasn’t said anything about it to me. We talk every week—I’ve made sure of it. I’ve been doing my best to be there for her.” Because he hadn’t been before, and he still felt terrible about that. He couldn’t shake the thought that if he’d been a better, more attentive brother, putting aside the fact that they had different fathers and different lives, Anna might never have progressed so far with an illness that no one had realized she had.

“Tom took her to a gynecologist who confirmed that she’s four months pregnant.”

“Four months !“ Closing his eyes, Dex digested the information. Anna was going to have a child. Fuck. Although this was a terrible time for Anna to have a baby, he couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement. Dex loved babies, and he was going to be an uncle.

“Who’s the father?” Dex asked. Could it possibly be someone who would step up and take care of the child? Would he fight to take the baby from Anna?

“Evidently the man she’s now fixated on, a nineteen-year-old meth addict. Tom went to confront him last night, and his apartment was empty. He must have packed up and left the minute Anna called him with the news.”

“A meth addict?” Dex sighed. “How is she taking the fact that she’s pregnant?”

His mother sighed. “She’s ignoring it at the moment, too preoccupied by the news that the object of her current obsession has left her. Tom had to take her to the guy’s apartment so she could see for herself that he’s gone. Now she’s hysterical.”

Dex fell silent for a moment as he attempted to sift through all the information. But, try as he might, he couldn’t process it all. Finally, he murmured, “I thought she was doing so well. She was going to school—“

“Oh, that’s another thing! She hasn’t gone in months. When he thought she was attending classes, she’d been spending time with the meth head.”

Dex chilled at his next thought. “Was she taking meth?”

“We don’t know yet. She says she hasn’t, but can we believe her?” Bea sounded bitter, and Dex couldn’t blame her.

“What happens now?”

“Garfield has pulled some strings and gotten her into a marvelous program at a place in Fresno for mothers-to-be who are going through psychological issues. It’s incredibly expensive, and he had to contact an old friend and practically beg to get her in. She’s going to have to stay there until the baby is born, but they have therapists and physicians in-house, and she’ll have her choice of creative classes and recreation there. Tom’s flying to California with her and getting her settled this weekend.”

“That’s incredibly considerate of Garfield,” Dex said. Garfield was Bea’s current, and hopefully final, husband, a much older man who had once been her employer. Garfield Sommerton III was a wealthy and influential banker and an okay guy, Dex supposed. Just terribly pretentious. He and Dex’s mother lived on a large property just outside of Boulder.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Dex asked.

“No. There’s nothing any of us can do but hope this place can do something for her before the baby is born. It’s called Horizon. I’ll text you the information. There are only certain times Anna can talk on the phone, as they have strict rules.” A click sounded on the line. “Oh, Janet from the garden club is calling. I have to go. Don’t forget to call Penelope. Ciao!”

The line disconnected.

Dex set his cell phone on the desk and slumped back in his office chair.

A tap on the door had him swiveling the chair in that direction.

Sean Murphy, an ex-police officer turned security guard, stood in the doorway. At five-foot-seven-inches, he was a cute ginger twink with expert shooting and judo skills. Parking his ass on the corner of Dex’s desk, he said, “Everything okay? You looked freaked out a minute ago. Saint bet me twenty that you have an STD.”

Loudly, because Dex could hear Saint laughing in the next room, he said, “If I did, I’d make sure it landed on his toothbrush!”

Since the night he went with his coworkers to a gay club—essentially coming out of the closet to them—they’d been ribbing him about the hot guy he’d been dancing with and how much sex he must be getting these days. It was all in fun, as they were aware that Dex was a baby gay , as Colt liked to put it. And, if he were honest, Dex would admit that he enjoyed the ribbing. It almost made him feel like someone outgoing enough to indiscriminately sleep around. But in reality, he hadn’t seen that guy since that night, or any guy, for that matter. Except for the guy he wanted. He saw him all the time, but there wasn’t much hope there.

Sean laughed and changed the subject. “Still can’t make that virtual assistant work right, can you?”

“Gary’s just got a few kinks,” Dex muttered.

“I’ll say, and not the good kind, either.” Sean grinned. “Why the hell do you call it Gary , anyway?”

Dex toyed with a pencil, mind still on his sister’s troubles. “I named him after a guy I had a crush on in high school. He was a baseball player and wouldn’t have given me the time of day even if he were gay, which I’m pretty sure he wasn’t, judging from the number of girls he dated.”

“And now, as your virtual assistant, it’s kind of like he’s your slave—ha! That’s funny,” Sean said, chuckling. He stood and stretched. “Well, tell him if he doesn’t start doing things right, we’ll toss him out the window and give Alexa a try.”

“Jase won’t let you do that. He doesn’t trust something made by a big corporation. Why do you think he asked me to make one?”

“Ah, who knows? I don’t get why anyone would want a stupid virtual assistant in the first place. Pretty soon, technology’s gonna be wiping our asses for us.”

Dex shrugged, frustrated that he couldn’t get Gary to work correctly and not wanting to think about it.

“What, you’re not gonna argue with me? Tell me all the great things technology’s doing for mankind, blah blah blah?” When Dex didn’t answer, Sean sighed. “Your mother giving you shit again?”

Dex shook his head. “No. It’s my sister. She’s stopped going to school and is obsessing over a drug addict who got her pregnant.”

Everyone at Falcon Security knew about what happened with Anna. They couldn’t not know. Anna had had a wall full of photos of West he hadn’t known she’d taken taped to her wall at her apartment and what amounted to his name tattooed on her right breast. She was lucky West hadn’t pressed charges against her.

“Sorry to hear about that, man,” Sean said. He patted Dex on the shoulder. “Let me know if I can do anything for you.”

“Hey, Sean,” Dex called to him as he started for the door. “Tell Jase I went to the climbing gym, okay? I’ll see you guys at dinner.” He was done trying to work for the day. He needed to sweat off some stress.

“Sure, man. Will do.”

When Dex had lived in New York City, he’d frequently driven the hour and a half to New Bearn Park with friends to climb boulders or do some top-roping. Now that he lived on the North Carolina coast, he was looking at a six-hour drive one way to the nearest state park. Fortunately, there was a climbing gym in Redding. Bouldering in a gym wasn’t the same as doing it outdoors, but it was still fun and it kept his skills honed. An added bonus was it required significantly less gear. And it was better than indulging in his other hobby—gaming—which didn’t give him any exercise at all.

Summit Climbing Gym was small enough for Dex to know the owner and workers there by name, but large enough to have a variety of climbing walls as well as a large exercise room.

Waving to a couple of girls he’d talked to before, Dex sat on a bench and put on his climbing shoes. Today, since he’d be climbing on his own, he didn’t need anything but his shoes and chalk bag, which he clipped handily at his waist.

As Dex began his warm up, swinging his arms and stretching before making a few short, random climbs, he looked around the gym. It being a weekday afternoon, the place wasn’t crowded at all and he had his pick of walls. After stretching and doing a few short boulder problems, he tackled a low-grade project. He hadn’t been to the gym in nearly two weeks, so he wasn’t surprised when he dropped to the floor several times before finally making it to the top.

Sufficiently warmed up, Dex chalked his hands again and chose a more challenging route. After mapping out in his head how he would proceed, he began his ascent, climbing carefully until he made it nearly midway up the wall. That’s when his foot slipped and he dropped, landing on his ass on the mat.

Brand Nichols, the owner of the gym, approached. “Need me to spot you, Dex?”

“That was an awkward hook with my left foot,” Dex said, accepting the man’s hand up. “I think I’m fine. A fall from that height won’t hurt me.”

“Normally, I’d argue, but I know you have a lot of experience,” Brand said. “Still, if you reached the top and fell, you could land wrong and sprain something. I’ll spot you.”

From their conversations in the past, Dex had learned that Brand was in his late twenties, a mountain climbing enthusiast, and that he lived alone in an apartment complex near the gym.

Looking at the wall, Brand said, “I assume you were going for the blue jug with your right hand?”

“Yep.”

“It might be better to reach for that red edge. It’s a little bit of a stretch, but it’ll give your right foot access to the purple cobble.”

Dex was considering this advice when the bell on the door rang, announcing someone entering the gym. Beside him, Brand startled slightly.

“You okay?” Dex asked.

“Sure. I’m good,” Brand said, turning from the trio who’d entered and were walking toward the locker room. “Go on. Try again.” He gestured to the wall.

Dex began to climb, and this time, with Brand’s coaching and encouragement, he made it to the top without falling. When he jumped down, his legs and arms felt pleasantly rubbery.

“Do you still work for a security firm?” Brand asked as Dex wiped the chalk from his hands.

“Yeah. Falcon Security.”

“Could you stop by my office before you leave? I have a question for you.”

“Sure,” Dex said, watching Brand walk away before turning to consider another problem on the wall.

An hour later, muscles tired and fingers sore, Dex changed out of his shoes, cleaned the chalk off his hands in the restroom, and headed to the back. The office door was open, and Brand was working at his desk.

Tapping on the door with one knuckle, Dex was surprised when, again, Brand jerked nervously at the sound.

Standing, Brand motioned for Dex to come in. “Hey. Could you shut the door behind you?”

“Sure,” Dex said.

Walking around his desk, Brand leaned against it and fidgeted with his pen. “What I wanted to ask you…The security firm that you work for. Does it include personal protection services? Like, if someone needed a bodyguard?”

“Yeah. You know somebody in need of one?”

Brand nodded. “Yeah, me.”

The way Brand was acting, Dex shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. Brand didn’t strike him as the type who would need protection. He was definitely fit, and he seemed like a laid-back guy who enjoyed doing his own thing, not someone who made people want to hurt him.

“You in some kind of danger?”

Tossing the pen on his desk, Brand crossed his arms over his chest, his expression decidedly uncomfortable.

“I think so, yeah. I’m pretty sure I’m being followed.”

“Got any idea who it might be?”

Brand nodded. “My ex. It’s a long story. Do you happen to have a card on you with a number I can call?”

Dex pulled his wallet out of his bag, took out a card with the name and number of the firm on it, and passed it to Brand.

“Thanks, man,” Brand said.

“Hope everything works out,” Dex said.

Brand smiled. “I’m sure it will.”

Before leaving the gym, Dex stopped at the juice bar and ordered his favorite blueberry and spinach smoothie. As the barista made the drink, Dex looked around the gym, imagining what it would be like to casually start up a conversation with one of the guys there—maybe start off talking about climbing technique, and then perhaps leading into something else. Could he get up the courage to ask a guy for a date? It had been one thing to go to a club and socialize. The booze and dim lighting had helped with that. But it was a completely different thing to face someone who was hot while completely sober in the bright light of day.

As Dex paid for his smoothie, he chastised himself for being such a wuss. It had been months since that night at the club with his coworkers, and he hadn’t done a thing about his sad social life. He was going to have to grow a pair soon and put himself out there or one day he’d die sad and alone. Well, there was one thing he was not going to do, and that was to call Penelope. Taking his phone out of his pocket, he deleted his mother’s text with the girl’s number.