The Walls Of Troy Part 17

"It'll heal."

"You want some ice?"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'd better put some more on it before it starts hurting again."

"Okay. I'll be right back."

He left, and I sank onto one of the two armchairs in the room and closed my eyes. I was exhausted, but at the same time too wired to even try to sleep yet. And sleep wasn't going to happen anyway until Troy and I had discussed a few things.

Dull footsteps caught my attention. I opened my eyes, expecting Johnson or the admiral in the open doorway.

Not Talos.

He stood for a moment, just staring at me. Then he lumbered into the room. I sat up, drawing back against the chair, and he stopped, c.o.c.king his ma.s.sive head.

Don't look him in the eye. Don't let him know you're scared. Dogs can sense that.

Right. Don't let him know he scared me. Because that s.h.i.+p hadn't already sailed a long f.u.c.king time ago. And it was sailing again as he came closer, because my heart was going a million miles an hour as his heavy paws thudded dully on the carpet.

I didn't know what I expected to happen, but it definitely wasn't for him to rest his head on my leg, his tags crunching quietly beneath his neck.

Swallowing hard, I slowly lifted my hand. He watched it but didn't move. I held my breath as I lowered my hand onto the back of his neck. When that didn't send him into a violent fit of snapping and barking, I cautiously stroked his short, coa.r.s.e fur.

As I did, an image flashed through my mind of him standing over me after I'd been dropped. My head had been spinning and throbbing, my heart pounding, and suddenly there'd been this huge animal beside me.

And now here he was again, standing here quietly with his ma.s.sive, heavy head on my leg.

My heart started beating faster. Anything could have happened out there tonight. What if the f.u.c.ker had been armed with something more than a Taser? What if he'd said to h.e.l.l with sending a message and just dropped me with a bullet in the back of my skull? What if the dogs hadn't chased him off when they had?

I ran my thumb along Talos's soft ear. What if the guy had killed him? Or one of the other dogs? But especially Talos. f.u.c.k, Troy would've been devastated.

And scared. The dog was his protector as much as I was. If whoever the f.u.c.k this was managed to hurt us both...

I petted Talos's head and neck, even partway down his back, just to make sure I wasn't imagining him. That nothing had happened to him out there, and he was okay. Just like I was.

Slowly, the truth dawned on me. As much as he scared the life out of me, he was one of the reasons I was okay tonight. If anything, he and the others had probably kept me from coming out with more than an aching head and a super-glued cut.

The dog's head suddenly snapped up and turned toward the doorway, and I almost jumped out of my G.o.dd.a.m.ned skin.

A second later, Troy appeared, and he stopped abruptly.

"Wow." He grinned. "You guys making friends or something?"

"Uh." I glanced down at Talos and swallowed. "Kind of?"

Troy laughed, rolling his eyes. Then he snapped his fingers and pointed at the floor beside one of the other armchairs. "Talos."

Talos loped over to the spot and dropped onto the floor.

"Good boy." Troy petted him, then continued toward me with the icepack. "Here."

"Thanks." I gingerly pressed it against the side of my head. The pressure hurt, but the cold started working its magic in short order.

"How's your head now?"

"Eh. At least the Taser wears off fast." I adjusted the icepack against the side of my head and winced. "Hitting the pavement like that? Not so much."

Troy grimaced. "Ouch."

"Yeah." I studied him. "You said you'd tell me more once we were away from the ER."

Troy watched himself petting Talos. "Yeah. I did." Then he got up, crossed the floor, and pulled the door shut. Moving slowly, he returned to his chair, dragged it close enough to mine that our knees almost touched, and started petting the dog again. Eyes closed, he drew in a deep breath, and I steeled myself for whatever was coming.

Troy opened his eyes. "It's my ex-boyfriend."

"I beg your pardon?"

"My ex. He's... Let's just say he isn't the type who handles rejection well."

I moistened my lips. "He's been threatening you, then? Stalking you?"

Shuddering, Troy nodded. "I hadn't seen much of him recently. I'd even started thinking I was getting overly paranoid. But after tonight..."

"You're sure it was him?"

"Ooh, yeah. There's no doubt in my mind."

I adjusted the icepack again, this time because I couldn't sit still. "Tell me."

Troy leaned forward and ran a hand through his hair. "Ben was everything you'd never want in a boyfriend. I was scared to be around him, and even more scared to be away from him." Troy laughed bitterly. "He flipped his s.h.i.+t at me one time because I was 'flirting' with a checker at the grocery store. I still don't even know how the h.e.l.l he saw that." Meeting my eyes, he swallowed. "I've been a paranoid wreck ever since."

"I think anyone would be."

"Yeah, well. It was my own d.a.m.n fault for getting tangled up with someone like him. And I knew I needed to get rid of him because he was just getting worse and worse. So we got in a fight one day. A bad one. And I finally said I didn't know if I could handle this anymore. So of course, he turned on the charm right then and promised everything would be okay. And being an idiot..." Shaking his head, he sighed as color rushed into his cheeks. "Anyway, we calmed down, and everything seemed fine. Then that night, we were fooling around. We liked to use, you know, blindfolds and stuff like that, and he asked if he could blindfold me. I didn't think anything of it, so I let him."

Ice slithered through my veins. "What happened?"

Troy closed his eyes and pushed out a long breath. Then he stood. With unsteady hands, he untucked his T-s.h.i.+rt from his low-slung jeans and lifted it a few inches.

And my heart stopped.

The little red scar just above his left hipbone didn't look like much to the untrained eye. Neither did the identical one an inch or so below his right nipple. At first glance, they weren't much more than irritated insect bites or ingrown hairs, though slightly bigger.

But I had two scars just like it. After tonight, I'd have two more.

"Are you..." I coughed to push some air through my tightening throat. "Are you telling me he Tased you?"

Without meeting my gaze, Troy straightened his clothing and sank back into his chair. He pulled his feet up underneath him as he finally spoke. "It's not the worst thing he ever did."

I blinked. "You're kidding."

"No." Troy slowly drew his tongue across his lips, and his eyes flicked up to meet mine. "The Taser is what gave him away tonight. Because when he did that to me, after the shock was over, he got on top of me and said, 'Remember what this feels like, because it's what leaving me will feel like.'"

"Oh my G.o.d," I breathed. "Troy..."

"Tonight, you didn't just startle someone who was randomly breaking into a car." He held my gaze with what must have taken a h.e.l.l of an effort. "He was sending a message. To me."

My mouth went dry. "s.h.i.+t."

"That's my thought too." He pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. "G.o.d, I don't know what to do now."

"Why not report him?"

"Because no one knows where he is." Troy dropped his hand and met my eyes. "He went UA a few months ago. Transferred to Annapolis a couple of weeks before I broke up with him, and then...he was just gone."

"And that was when this s.h.i.+t started?"

Troy nodded. "I won't see heads or tails of him for a while, and then he'll come out of nowhere. If we could find him and nail him down, great. But...the thing is, I can't stop him. Not when he's that good at disappearing and reappearing whenever he wants to. But I can't just hole up in the house and be scared either. That's why I wanted the security detail. So I could at least...leave once in a while. I didn't want him running my life, but to a point, he does." Troy's shoulders slumped, as if that admission cut deeper than showing me the scars on his torso. "There's nothing I can do about it." He groaned. "And my father will kill me if he knows we dated."

"What? Why?"

He kept his eyes down. "Because he was a member of Dad's staff. And he..." Troy blew out a breath. "He's got dirt on my dad. s.h.i.+t that could end his career."

"Is he...blackmailing you?"

Troy nodded.

"The notes on your car. Did he leave those?"

Troy winced. "No. No, uh." He ran a hand through his hair. "I did."

"But why?"

"I... Okay, it sounds stupid, but I couldn't tell anyone the truth. The notes were..." He moistened his lips. "I didn't know how else to convince anyone that I needed help without explaining why." He fidgeted uncomfortably and reached down to scratch Talos's neck. "There was one note. A photo, actually."

"Of...?"

"My dad. With a senator's wife." Troy sighed. "Dad had an affair with her a year or so ago, and Ben found out about it. He told me while we were dating. Then, after we split, I came out of my advisor's office and found the picture on my winds.h.i.+eld. I knew he'd left it there-who else would have?-but I couldn't report it without diming out my dad."

I cringed inwardly. Someone as high up in the ranks as Admiral Dalton had to play political games that lowly enlisted guys like me couldn't even imagine. Getting busted with the wife of a senator? That would cost him some friends in very, very high places. Not to mention potentially get him court-martialed for adultery.

"How much does your father know? About your ex?"

Troy fidgeted. "Nothing. And he doesn't know that I know about the affair."

"s.h.i.+t," I whispered.

"Yeah."

"But even if there's ramifications to your dad's career, he knew that was a possibility when he got involved with a senator's wife." I touched Troy's arm. "That's no reason for you to put yourself in harm's way."

"I'm in harm's way whether I like it or not." He met my eyes. "I'm just trying to keep the collateral damage to a minimum."

"Troy, this guy could hurt you." I squeezed his arm. "f.u.c.k the collateral damage."

"My dad's career is-"

"Not anywhere near as important as your safety."

He held my gaze, then looked down at my hand on his arm. I started to draw it back, but he put his hand over it, and suddenly we were back to where we'd been earlier, when he'd touched my arm and put the wheels in motion that had led to us kissing just before all h.e.l.l broke loose.

I swallowed. "I'm not just saying this as your bodyguard. I don't want anything happening to you. And if that means your dad has to face the music for f.u.c.king up..."

"It's not that simple," he whispered. "I'm afraid of what Ben will do to my father's career, but if I set him off? Report him? Send the cops after him?" He shook his head. "He's going to lose his s.h.i.+t. I mean this"-he gestured at my face-"isn't the only thing he's capable of."

I raised an eyebrow. "How closely acquainted are you with what he's capable of?"

Something as simple as broken eye contact had never been so telling. He looked away, and his fingers twitched on top of my hand, but he didn't let go.

"Troy..."

"I don't want to talk about that tonight," he whispered. "I really don't."

Ben, I swear to G.o.d, I will break you in half...

"Okay. We won't." I took a breath and still didn't take my hand back even though I should have. "I guess we need to figure out what happens next."

He looked at me again. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, now that your ex is targeting me. We might need to approach your personal security a little differently."

He cringed but didn't argue. "Yeah, probably. He, um...probably thinks there's something going on between us."

My eyes darted toward our hands. I started to chew the inside of my cheek but stopped myself a split second before I would've pinched the raw spot where I'd bitten earlier. "Is there something going on between us?"

G.o.ddammit, don't look at me like that, Troy. Do you have any idea what you do to me?

"I don't know." He ran his hand up my forearm and back down again. "I hadn't really gotten that far before we were interrupted."

And we'd already gone way too far when we were interrupted...

I exhaled hard. "We both knew it was a bad idea even before your ex showed up. It's an even worse idea now."

"I know."

He didn't let go. Neither did I.

When we were this close together, it was hard as f.u.c.k to convince myself there was anything wrong or dangerous about getting any closer, and I almost-almost-gave in and moved in to kiss him.