the situation. We hadn’t officially planned out how to secure the townhouses, but security is what we did, so of course we already had ideas. We already had state-of-art alarm systems in all three townhouses as well as a parameter alarm that covered all three houses, so we were ahead of the game. The front faced a sidewalk and a busy street, so we should be good there as it was, but we needed to add some motion sensors in the back and make sure all the entry points were secure.
We also planned to have one of our guys available to stay with Trey anytime I had to leave. I wasn’t sure what effect his coming out was going to have on the stalker, but I was positive it wasn’t going to go the way Rebecca thought. No longer having that knowledge to hang over Trey’s head was more likely to cause him to drop into an ugly spiral versus causing him to back off.
I hated that we weren’t any closer to finding the guy who was leaving the notes than we were, but that’s the way these things went sometimes. This wasn’t television, and forensics couldn’t work miracles. This guy had been smart. He’d used untraceable materials, and stayed off the security feed. The best lead we had was the boat, but so far, none of the neighbors had picked up anything on their security cameras. We were waiting for a couple of people who were out of town. But the odds were their footage was on a loop and had probably been recorded over. It was frustrating but pretty much par for the course.
Ryan and Rand were waiting for me at the house when I pulled in. My garage door was up, and they were both in there working. Ash’s car was parked in the only other spot, so I parked in front of Rand’s garage and walked over.
“Hey, guys.”
“Hey,” Rand called from the top of a ladder.
“What are you guys doing?”
“We’re swapping out the controller on the garage doors. Instead of only having to have the remote, you also have to enter a code to get the door to open.”
“That’s a great idea. What else have you been up to?”
“We added a lock mechanism to the back gate as well. It only engages when the system is on, so you can still take out the trash without having to have your keys, but when it is on, you have to press a release on the key fob to open the gate. That isn’t going to stop anyone, but it will slow them down.”
“Also, if anyone jumps the gate, it should set off the parameter alarms, so it should warn you as well.”
“You guys did all of that since I called?” I asked. “Thanks.”
“We didn’t do it for you. We did it for Trey. We like him,” Rand said with a wink.
I rolled my eyes at Rand and turned to Ryan. “What else do we need to do?”
“You don’t need to do a thing except maybe go to the grocery store so you know for sure you guys have food to eat. Other than that, we got it.”
“Seriously, guys, thanks. I’m gonna stick my head inside and check on Ash to make sure he doesn’t need anything, and then I’ll go get Trey.”
Trey
As soon as Roman left, I started preparing myself to deal with my father. He was going to be furious because I didn’t show up at the rally, but that was nothing compared to how he was going to react to me telling him I was gay, and his reaction was probably going to pale in comparison to my mother’s.
My father had always been a spare the rod, spoil the child kind of parent, but mother had other more effective weapons, like guilt. She was an expert at wielding guilt like a sword. I really had no idea what she would do, but I knew no matter what she said, she would consider this an attack on her, her parenting methods, and her status as a godly authority on parenting.
Deep breath. In, Out, and then I started to laugh. Yes, this was going to be horrible. But at least I would be able to do yoga again. Too bad Rand was the one with the rooftop terrace because that would be an ideal yoga spot. Maybe we could do something similar on the garage roof. It was flat. Okay, I knew it was just nerves causing