Take a Risk

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

Lunch with Suzette was a regular occurrence; lying to her best friend was not.

Since finding each other through a roommate service in college, they’d never kept secrets. Not big ones. Being there for each other was important. Suzette was her maid of honor, her shoulder to cry on as her marriage fell apart. She’d even lived with her between leaving Archie and buying her house.

At a lunch restaurant, not far from Lyssa’s home, the conversation had been dominated by one thing.

“I should’ve stayed,” Suzette said. “If I stayed, he would’ve helped. I’d have worked it out.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Lyssa said, off her salad.

Her friend frowned. “Chavez was so sure he could help. This Trapper guy must be playing hardball. We should go back. Show we’re committed. I could talk to Pete, once he’s off work—”

“You want to ask your boyfriend to take us to a strip club? No. We’re going to figure this out. I’m not ready to give up yet.”

Last night, she’d left the club in a cab and arrived home in the dark. These days, being out at night was unsettling; entering her unilluminated home was worse. Pepper spray was her newest companion. She held it tight while unlocking the door and checked every corner of her home before returning the deterrent to its spot with a sigh of relief.

Every time she told herself not to be paranoid. There was no evidence the stalker had been inside her home, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

“It seems like a waste to go there and come out with nothing,” Suzette said, biting into her sandwich.

“It was a fascinating experience, don’t you think?” Lyssa asked, admitting her curiosity. “I wouldn’t say we got nothing.”

Suzette swallowed. “Oh,” she said, perking up. “You have that look in your eye like before you start one of your crazy experiments.”

“I take exception to that,” Lyssa said, smirking. “None of my experiments are crazy. I wouldn’t have chosen my particular field if human psyche and behavior didn’t fascinate me.”

The giddy smile on her friend’s face was reminiscent of Risqué. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you? Launch yourself back into your book? It’s about time! Will this be like the time you convinced that urologist to let you sit in on appointments? When you wore a Wonderbra and deliberately missed two buttons on your shirt?”

“That was a physiological experiment,” she said, topping off their water glasses.

“And the free wedding night coaching?”

“To measure how pressure affected performance… those statistics were astounding by the way.”

“And standing on street corners at three a.m. with s*x workers interviewing them about clients?”

“You’d be surprised how many men open up to hookers. They’re unlikely to see them again, so can be honest. Often performance issues present differently or disappear when pressure and identity are removed.”

“You take it to a whole new level, you know? You actually enjoy delving into these intricacies, most people get a paycheck and go home to veg out, but you’re always watching people and wondering. You love to get in amongst it, amongst your subjects.”

“It’s fun to be undercover. I’ve always been completely safe.”

“Archie didn’t think so. That hooker thing sent him over the edge.”

“I never finished that study by the way,” she said. The subject of her ex-husband always provoked a sigh. He was brilliant, intelligent, fastidious, he just didn’t understand the buzz of satisfying curiosity. “He didn’t object to that one out of concern for my safety. He thought I was making a spectacle of myself.”

And by extension him.

“You didn’t flaunt what you were doing,” Suzette said. “I read your papers; they were amazing. You worked too hard to throw away incredible work like that. It’s great to see you getting back to it.”

“Being stalked sort of changed my perspective,” Lyssa said, still not particularly hungry. “It’s difficult to go undercover to explore people’s s****l behavior when I may have a mad man on my tail.”

“You love exploring s****l practice…” Suzette leaned in. “It’s a shame you haven’t had much practice yourself recently.”

A quiet, tired laugh left her lips. “One step at a time. Let’s find a way to get rid of the crazy stalker. After that, I can get back to my old ways and start thinking about men again.”

Dealing with her admirer altered her perspective on so many things. She missed the freedom of her fearless days and was reminded of what she’d given up. Every situation bettered her knowledge of human interactions and motivations. Her studies made her better at her job. More than that, she loved being out among people. Her stalker prevented that. Hope held out that Colt was going to change things, and that lying to Suzette would be worth it in the end.