Man of the House(21)

I didn’t need to use the bathroom, but I did need an excuse to get myself away from him. I knew that if he got me onto that couch, I’d give him exactly what we both wanted. But I also knew that if I did that, I’d never want to stop, and that was so much more dangerous.

The only way to make sure that didn’t happen was to physically remove myself from the situation. Otherwise, I wasn’t going to be able to resist him.

I hurried down the hall toward the bathroom, not really thinking about anything but Carter. His lips, his arms, his body against mine . . .

My foot knocked into something that felt like a soccer ball and I stumbled. Frowning, I looked down at the ground.

Thick, red moisture all over the carpet. I took a step back, my heart racing fast in my chest. I followed the trail of blood toward the thing I had kicked.

Staring back at me was the head of a dog, blood dripping from its severed neck.

I screamed, and kept screaming, until someone came to pull me away.





12





Carter





“How the fuck could you let this happen?”

I glared at Cox, anger swelling through me. I couldn’t believe security had been so goddamn lax, and that Emily was the one to stumble across that fucking head.

“Sir, I checked the logs. The tapes have been destroyed. I don’t know how this happened.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” I knew I was lashing out at Cox because I had nobody else to blame, but fuck, it was his job to keep the mansion safe.

As soon as I heard Emily scream, I was out into the hall running as fast as I could. I found her standing over the dog head, her eyes wide in horror, and I quickly pulled her away from it. I signaled to security with my phone while I took her back to her room.

She was visibly shaken up, but I thought she was going to be okay. I left her there alone and sent a message to Evelyn to make sure she was fine. She got back to me immediately and said she’d check in on Emily once she understood the situation.

Back in the hallway, Cox and his team had secured the area and were carting off the dog head. I ordered them to stop before they could get too far.

I walked over to the head and turned it over in my hands. It felt heavy, surprisingly heavy. I dug my thumbs into the skin and fur on the back of the skull, making one of the security guys gag. I found what I was looking for and slowly peeled the skin away.

Revealing a robotic cage and circuitry.

“It’s fake?” Cox asked, surprised.

“Fake,” I confirmed. “I recognized it right away. We’ve been working on animal robot prototypes, and this was meant to be our mascot’s robot. I guess we’ll have to rebuild it.”

Cox shook his head, clearly surprised.

Valor Tech’s logo included a little dog and always had, even back when I first started the company. Whoever did this was sending me a message, and it was clear: Valor was going to be destroyed.

After chewing out Cox, I took the head back into the lab. I couldn’t find any signs of someone having broken in, but I did find the prototype robot’s body sitting in its case, headless as I suspected. The “blood” was actually ketchup, water, and some more food dye to darken it a bit. Pretty ingenious, actually, and the exact same formula we used in the lab.

There were some very dark implications around the severed robot head as I left the lab, locking it down. I changed the passcode to something only I knew, and although there were going to be some annoyed scientists in the morning, they could wait. We were going to have to screen and vet each and every one of them all over again, anyway, until we found the culprit.

I went down the hall and over toward Emily’s section of the house. I stopped outside of her door and knocked. A minute later, Evelyn answered.

“How’s she doing?” I asked her.

“She’s okay,” she said. “A little shaken up.”

“I think I can help with that.”

She frowned at me. “Black roses, Carter?”

I grinned and shrugged. “Friendly gesture.”

She sighed, shook her head, and let me inside. “I’ll be back later,” she said pointedly as she left.

I waved at her as I walked into Emily’s apartment. I found her sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and watching The Office. She paused it when I came in.

“You okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “That really freaked me out.”

“Well. Would it make you feel any better if what you saw wasn’t a real dog?”

She blinked. “What was it then?”

“A robot prototype, stolen from my lab.” I took out my phone and showed her some pictures I took. “Whoever did this stole it, cut it up, and used fake blood to set the scene.”