Guardian by Kaitlyn O'Connor (ebook e reader txt) 📗

Her belly knotted as she scanned theroom, remembering that she’d thought it was almost like a movieset.

Not real.

It was as she was scanning the room,unfortunately, that she spotted the glowing light of a hiddencamera.

Her hair felt like it literally stoodon end.

Gasping in terror, she raced to thedoor and wrestled with the knob for several moments before sherealized it was locked. She was almost sobbing by the time she madeit out of the apartment and raced down the hallway to herown.

She didn’t feel safe even after she’draced inside her apartment and collapsed weakly. Shoving to herfeet, she checked every inch of her apartment, checking her lockeddoor each time she passed it and finally decided she was as safe asshe could be.

For the moment.

She couldn’t sit still, though, andshe damned sure couldn’t go to bed. She glanced at her clock andsaw it was three o’clock.

Where would he be at that time of thenight that could be ‘innocent’?

Nowhere, that was where! There wasn’ta single, solitary thing that came to mind as an answer that wasn’tillegal.

He’d said he was an inventor. Hehadn’t gone off to work if he worked in his apartment.

He hadn’t gone off to buy groceries orget parts he needed—not in the middle of the night.

And he had a recording, now, of hersearching his apartment!

Was she in real danger?

As in dead?

She chewed the nails off of all tenfingers while she contemplated the chances of him just ignoring thetape.

Why would he have a camera forsurveillance, though, if he didn’t bother to check it?

It was the thought of the recordingthat she finally zeroed in on, though.

She’d run away like a coward and anidiot instead of getting the damn proof she’d left that she’dsearched his apartment.

She’d left proof that she’d intrudedinstead of getting proof that he was up to something!

Stupid!

The urge to retrieve it instantlywarred with her fear of running into Jarrod in the middle of such atask, but the fear of ending up in jail finally outweighed the fearof being caught.

There were two impediments to that onepossibility of saving her ass from the wrath of Jarrod and/or thecops.

She was pretty sure the door hadlocked behind her. Hers was the type of door lock that did. She hadto manually unlock it if she didn’t want it to lock behindher.

And she ran the risk of being spottedby somebody if she tried to break in to his apartment.

Contrarily, she’d no sooneracknowledged the impossibility of recovering the damned video thanshe began to fret to make an attempt.

Moving to the window, she stared atthe ledge that she knew ran all the way around thebuilding.

It was wide—unless one consideredwalking around the second floor on it.

It was just two floors! She couldsurvive that even if she fell.

Don’t be such a pussy,Marilyn!

She pushed the window up and lookedout. There was a flower bed directly below—not concrete and shechecked the ledge width more closely.

Her belly knotted, but she had to tryto get that recording!

She had to succeed or end up in amorgue or jail cell instead of a hospital bed.

Pulling back in, she surveyed what shecould see from the window.

The area looked dead—not a mousestirring.

She left the window and raced into herroom, jerking clothes out until she found a pair of black pants anda dark hoodie.

Without allowing herself to considerthe situation any longer, until she had time to talk herself out ofit, she stripped and jerked the dark clothing on and then moved tothe window again.

She managed to get all the way out thewindow on her hands and knees before a gust of wind hit her hardenough she felt like it was going to carry her off. She stayedperfectly still, leaning against the wall for all she was worth,until the gust died.

She was panting with fear by thattime.

After staring at the ledge in front ofher for some time, she finally managed to convince herself to backup—very slowly—toward her window.

She was so shaky by the time she gotback in she couldn’t even stand up. She just sort of melted towardthe floor.

The urge to burst into tears assailedher.

She was in so much trouble!

Sniffing, she managed to push herselfup and headed into the kitchen to find a thin knife to pick hislock and then headed to her apartment door, stuck her head out tocheck the hallway, and then made sure she unlocked her door andheaded down the hall to Jarrod’s apartment.

She was just going to shove the knifein and try to depress the latch until it occurred to her that shehad been gone long enough Jarrod might have come back.

She tapped on the door and stuck herear to it to listen.

She thought she heard distantfootsteps, but she couldn’t tell if they were inside his apartmentor somewhere else.

Deciding it wasn’t him she’d heard,she slipped the knife between the door and jam.

She’d been working on it all of fiveseconds when she heard someone behind her, felt a presence andlooked up to discover it was Jarrod.

She gaped at him, struggling to thinkof something she could say to explain something that really had noinnocent explanation.

She forced a smile as if she wasrelieved to see him. “There you are! I … uh … misplaced mypanties,” she said on inspiration, her face reddening as soon as itoccurred to, “and then I discovered the door had locked behindme.”

His expression was patentlydisbelieving and the smile was more than a little scary. “Really?Sorry about that. Let me unlock it for you.”

“I woke up and you weregone,” she said as he fished his key out and opened the door,making a grand gesture of bowing her inside.

“I decided to go out andget breakfast for us …. The fixings.”

Marilyn looked at his empty hands andback at his face.

He grinned easily, moving closer. “Iwas sure I remembered seeing an all night grocery just a few blocksdown the road,” he murmured, swooping low to cover her mouth withhis as he yanked her into an embrace that plastered her fullyagainst his length.

Marilyn was mentally braced becauseshe was anxious about how he might react about the search when hesaw the video. She was emotionally braced because of the