14 Weeks (Investigators Book 2), page 1
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- EPILOGUE
- DON'T FORGET
- ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- STALK HER!
14
Weeks
--
Jessica Gadziala
Copyright © 2017 Jessica Gadziala
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.
"This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."
Cover image credit: Shutterstock .com/ sanneberg
DEDICATION
To Krystyn Mace. Because she's been with me for a while now and she's awesome and she deserves a book dedicated to her :)
PROLOGUE
Kenzi- 5 years ago
"Kenz, you know this is not how you should be handling this." Reese was sitting on top of my bed watching me as I tried on my fifteenth outfit that was still not quite right. I might have been up to my throat in heartbreak and betrayal, but in my personal opinion, that was no reason I couldn't look hot as hell. In fact, it was even more reason to put the utmost effort into my outfit.
Body armor.
Maybe that was what I liked best about fashion- I could turn into a new person with a change of outfit. Did I want to be left alone at the bar, but still look good? I could take on a sexy school teacher vibe with a pencil skirt and tucked-in button-up with non-prescription glasses and tied back hair. Did I want to chill with the boys, but still be womanly? I could put on tight, ripped skinny jeans and a plain tee, but put extra glam into my makeup and hair.
That night, my heart a shattered thing, my trust something that had taken on sharp edges, hurt but also prideful, yeah, that called for something special.
I just couldn't figure out what that was yet.
Reese, having dealt with my stupidly long prep time since we were both kids, had long since gotten over trying to convince me that one outfit was superior to another. She knew that it wouldn't change anything if it didn't feel right to me.
So she kept her mouth shut as I went back into my closet. Well, that wasn't accurate. She kept her mouth shut about my clothes, but not my plans for the night.
"When you and Cassie go out, you always get crazy," she tried as I came out with another handful of dresses and skirts. No one wore jeans out on the town.
She wasn't exactly wrong. Cassie, a girl we had known since middle school, who Reese had never gotten on with, being the polar opposite in every way. That being said, Reese and I were polar opposites as well. Maybe because I was closer in age to Paine and Enzo, I had always felt the need from a young age to be tough, to be able to run with the big boys; I had become much more hardass and extroverted. Reese, being the youngest, most protected by not only my mom, aunts, and me, but also Paine and Enzo who always treated her with kid gloves, became bookish, standoffish, way too sweet for her own good.
I was maybe a bit impulsive and let my mouth run away with itself, though I tried my best not to get too crazy anymore, and Cassie was just like me in that regard. She had never grown out of her teenage rebellion. Maybe we both still felt like we had something to prove. We had been tight since we were twelve. I didn't see the friendship going anywhere and was hoping that it would eventually evolve, that we would both grow up, but do it in the same direction.
But that night, I was glad she was still the same old Cassie.
I needed a night of reckless abandon.
She was the only one who would be in on that with me, happily, no questions asked.
"You always get in trouble with her."
"Exactly." I shrugged out of a typical little black dress that just didn't have enough oomph for me and into a bright pink, short, tight, wrap skirt, knowing before it was even settled at my hip that it was the one.
"I get it," she agreed, trying to be reasonable. She would never give up. It was something unbelievably endearing, but also annoying, about Reese. "Evan was a jerk."
"Dick," I corrected, smiling in the mirror at her sitting on top of my bed with a pile of my clothes in a pair of yellow polka-dotted pajama pants at seven PM on a Friday night, her hair pulled into a side braid, her pretty face completely makeup-free as it almost always was. I had the mouth of a sailor. So did our mother and aunts and our brothers. Reese rarely ever found a bad word. And when she did, it often tripped off her tongue.
"A dick," she said, wrinkling her face up slightly at that. "But what does it prove to go out and get drunk and raise hell?"
"It proves that I am not going to let it break me."
And it wouldn't.
I wouldn't let it.
He cheated. Often. Shamelessly. He didn't even bother to look apologetic or sheepish when I finally had proof to back up my hunch and confronted him about it.
That, well, that was unacceptable.
It was a sad fact of life that many guys would be unfaithful. I had learned not to let it send me into hysterics sometime in tenth grade. Most of that was thanks to my mom and Enzo's mom, Annie. Seeing as both of them found out they had been in 'relationships' with my shithead father at the same time, literally both getting pregnant with Paine and Enzo the same year, they had developed what I always saw as a healthy distrust and suspicion with the opposite sex. They also taught me that no man was worth falling apart over. It was advice I took to heart.
No man would break me.
At least, no man would ever know he broke me.
Stiff fucking upper lip.
That was pretty much my motto for heartbreak.
And because Evan was likely out on the town yucking it up, joking with his buddies about screwing me over, about making a fool of me, well, I needed to go out and prove the exact opposite was true.
Healthy? Maybe not.
Necessary? Abso-fucking-lutely.
I wasn't going to try to explain it to Reese. When it came to dating, well, Reese was about one step up from a nun. We had moved out together when I turned twenty-one and she was about a year and a half younger. Since then, I was pretty sure I had never even heard her talking about a man. That just wasn't a focus in her life. She focused on getting her masters in library science. Her free time back then was spent studying. After she had graduated, she got a job at the local library which only further cemented her hermitage. The library was her church, the books her Bibles.
"What kind of men do you like?" a man had asked her at a bar once when I forced her to go out for her birthday.
"Fictional, mostly," she had answered quickly, truthfully.
So unless I wanted dating advice she had gotten from Jane Austen, I was on my own.
"Stop worrying so much, Reese," I said instead, dragging on a black top and going toward my jewelry box which was so big that it was a free standing structure.
"Someone needs to worry about you."
We both knew that she was silently adding- since I can't tattle to Mom anymore.
My mom had the best intentions with us, tried her best despite a terrible area and a terrible building and terrible influences everywhere. She had aced it with Reese. She had created a great man in Paine, though he definitely gave into the influences all around when he joined and then eventually ran the Third Street Gang. As for me, well, I liked to think that she succeeded and failed equally.
Her own steadfast determination to make sure we didn't end up like her- destitute and with no hope or help and three kids to raise in shitty circumstances- had made me strong and independent and take-no-shit. Maybe to a fault. But because she had seen herself losing Paine in high school, she had cracked down on Reese and me. Reese was her own warden and didn't even notice. Me? I noticed. And I rebelled. Truly, I was sure every last gray hair she colored over was from the shit I put her through. Reese, because she was a good girl and because she did not handle stress well, used to hold off as long as possible when she knew I was up to no good before she would go tell Mom on me.
Admittedly, that had saved me more than a time or two.
But we were adults.
She couldn't go to Mom.
And she was not happy to spend the night stressing out about me.
"You could come," I suggested with a smile as I slipped into my heels.
The look on her face suggested I asked her to join in a descaling fish session instead of a night on the town, making a slow smile spread on my face- a genuine one that took away the pang for a moment.
Opposites? Sure.
Sisters? Absolutely.
There was no deeper love.
"I have my cell. I have money and condoms. I'm safe as safe could be."
I was pretty sure I heard her say something about how chastity belts needed a resurgence before she covered up with, "What about that keychain thing Enzo gave you?"
"It's illegal in Jersey, Ree," I reminded her. "But I have the mace Paine gave us as Christmas presents," I added, reaching inside to pull it out and shake it. "Plus, I have five-inch spikes on my feet that could deflate a ball with the smallest bit of force."
"Gross." Her face scrunched up, and I laughed. "Promise me you won't get dragged you into anything stupid tonight."
"I won't get dragged into anything that I don't want to be dragged into," I allowed, snapping my purse closed and spritzing on my signature scent, something I made myself at a local perfume store. Part was because I wanted it to be my unique scent. The other part was also that I tended to get rashes from normal perfume. It was floral and vanilla and completely delicious.
"I don't like the sound of that." Her voice carried as I stepped into the hall toward the front door.
"Everything will be fine," I called back.
It was both right and wrong.
It would eventually end up okay.
But not before it got bad.
Not before I was too wasted even to think twice when Cassie and I walked up to some guys who I knew to be Third Street dealers because, well, my brother used to run them. And my step-brother currently did. I just wanted oblivion. I didn't care about consequences.
We crushed and snorted.
When it wore off, we got another hit and got high again.
For one day, there was no heartbreak and betrayal.
But Cassie took off with a guy, dropping me out front of Paine's in the process, something I thought nothing of until he came out, lifted me up, and realized I was high.
I was in rehab the next morning.
I didn't need it. Or, at least, I didn't think I did.
But I was there for three weeks before I got home.
Reese gave me a look of disappointment that made any heartbreak Evan had caused pale in comparison.
It was that day that I turned my life around. I stopped fucking up. I stopped letting down the people closest to me. I started designing my clothes and I sold them to stores in the area.
It was a year before I saw Cassie again.
And she had done what I always hoped she would, what I had done - she grew up.
There were no more harebrained plans, no wild nights out, no craziness. She bunkered down with me and put her better-at-numbers brain to work, helping me build a business that allowed me to open my own store where we both worked, happily, peacefully, just two all grown up, boring, workaholic adults sharing the boss babe life.
Everything was great.
Perfect.
Until instead of us seeking it out like we used to, trouble found us for a change.
But we were independent, strong, boss bitches.
We thought we could handle it; we thought maybe it would blow over or we were making mountains out of molehills.
Until we walked into the store one morning.
"Okay, those contacts of yours..." Cassie said, being the voice of reason suddenly.
Cassie was opposite to me in every way physically. Where I had mixed-race skin, she was as pale as a ghost. My hair was long and black and curly or straight depending on how much work I felt like putting into it on any given day; hers was short and blonde, cut into a pixie style that only girls with her perfectly doll-like bone structure could pull off. My eyes were hazel. Hers were giant and brown, doe-like. Innocent, really. She was a true testament to the idea of not judging a book by its cover. First glance, you would likely assume that she was sweet and inexperienced and naive.
She was none of those things.
She had a brown to-go paper cup in her hand with a dark red greasy lipstick stain on the white cap in a hand with half a dozen bangles around the wrist. Whereas my style was ever changing, literally different from one day to the next, Cassie had a very definite classy-casual style that almost always involved linen pants of varying light colors- beige, dusty rose, off white, sage green, and then some varying silk or cotton or whatever stylish top, ballet flats, and an array of pricey and unique jewelry.
And where I came from truly humble beginnings, Cassie had been middle class all the way. So she didn't have 'contacts' the way I had contacts. Had she maybe shamelessly flirted with Sawyer and Brock over the years when they were briefly on leave from whatever top secret military operation they were on? Sure. But she didn't know them. She didn't have a connection to them because they knew her brother like I did.
I figured if ever there was a chance they would take on this kind of case, it was because of that connection.
So we backed out of the store and relocked the doors, me telling her I would keep her updated as I got in my crossover that I loved maybe too much because I had been able to put almost half of the ticket price on it as a downpayment and was about six months away from paying it off- something a younger me could never have imagined. Then I turned in the direction of Sawyer Investigations, every plan to just barge in with no appointment.
They knew me well enough to know that was sort of my style.
ONE
Tig
It was a slow week.
And if there was one thing a group of three men who were used to pretty constant work and a fair amount of action weren't comfortable with, it was sitting around on our hands.
But that was exactly what we were doing. We were all in Sawyer's office, the two of them sitting down and drinking coffee, me standing by the window. Marg was out so there was absolutely no warning before the door burst open and a woman was standing there.
To say that she was gorgeous would truly be the understatement of a decade. But then again, she had always been beautiful.
She was tall- all legs and torso with a high, round ass and just enough up top to pique a man's interest. She had fucking flawless mixed race skin, light-skinned black, with long, curly black hair and stunning hazel eyes.
And because she was who she was, she dressed to impress.
She had on a tight hunter green pencil skirt and a second-skin white long-sleeve tee that was short enough for there to be a sliver of skin exposed between the hem of that and the waist of her skirt. Her feet were in some kind of distressed green boots and had a green and white striped clutch in her hand that had five mini silver rings on three different fingers and a silver watch on a white band on one wrist.
She dressed like that because she designed clothes for a living.
"Oh, fuck. Here's trouble," Brock said, shaking his head, amused smile in place.
He wasn't wrong.
If there was one thing Kenzi was, it was trouble.
"Kenz," Sawyer said, already shaking his head at her.
"Sawyer," she said, lifting her chin already, likely reading the fact that he didn't want to have to deal with her. "I need your help."
"Oh, like fuck," he laughed, shaking his head.
"Why can't you ask your brothers?" Brock asked.
"Paine is still in that ridiculous honeymoon phase with Elsie and Enzo is in the city working for Xander Rhodes and talking about that Espen chick. They've both done enough of cleaning up for me."
"Do they know you're in some kind of trouble?"
"Did I say I was in trouble?"
"You said you needed help."
"Since when are those synonyms for the other?"
"Since about the day you were old enough to leave the house alone. You have been nothing but a walking, talking, hot as shit bundle of trouble."
To that, her lips twitched. "I'll let that slide because you called me hot as shit. But to answer your question, no. I haven't talked to my brothers about this and I have no plans to. Neither will any of you."
"Are you in danger?"
"Depends on what your definition is."
"Do you know someone who is going to mark you up or kill you?"
"Listen, it's not..."
"Then we're not taking your case."
"Sawyer..."
