Without releasing him, she leaned across her desk to answer the call. Isabelle could only reach the loud speaker button. She put a finger to her lips, signaling for Warrick to remain quiet, and pushed the button. “Hello, this is Isabelle. How can I help you?”
There was silence at the end of the line, but she could hear someone breathing. “Hello?” she asked again. “Is someone there?”
“Yes. And I’m coming for you. So watch yourself, bitch.”
“What! Who is this?” The only answer she received was a loud click in her ear from the disconnection.
Warrick stiffened the moment the sinister voice said the first word of his short message. Isabelle watched his whole gorgeous body go rigid with anger. “Who the fuck was that?”
“How should I know?”
His brows narrowed. He plucked his phone from a jacket pocket, called a number from memory, and gave the other party her work phone number and the recent time of the call, asking the other party to discover where the message had come from.
“Can you do that?”
“I just did.”
“Legally?” she asked, crossing her arms defiantly.
He made a face, and stated matter-of-factly, “I’m the lead prosecutor for Enclave.” As if that answered her question. It didn’t.
She rocked back in her seat. “Why would you care?” Isabelle was being difficult, shrewish, and completely unfair. No wonder he didn’t want to ever get married. Maybe she was the bitch the sinister caller had accused her of being.
Isabelle fought the overriding concern that had been a part of her life the past week or so. The sinister feeling of being followed had now morphed into threatening phone calls. And this was the second one tonight.
Warrick finished his call, edging closer to her. Isabelle didn’t have the wherewithal to stop him.
“Whether you believe it or not, the fact remains that I care very deeply for you. I will not walk away or sit on the sidelines as if I didn’t just hear your life threatened.” He buried his face against her throat, kissing and nibbling his way to her ear, and all the while he clenched her body to his. “If you believe nothing else, believe this. You are very important to me.”
His arms felt so good. His kisses along her neck felt even better. She swayed into him, but then the idea of losing him stiffened her, keeping her away. Why would she agree to keep seeing them if Warrick could then easily go on giving this same amazing tender concern to some other nameless, faceless female?
“Wait. Stop it.” She shoved him away. No easy task when he was so big and powerful. Not to mention the fact that she didn’t want to let him go. She wanted to cling to him like static electricity, forever at his side like a half-limp dryer sheet stuck inside his shirt. Her already wounded heart and her libido were in the midst of an epic brawl.
The shrill ring of her desk phone broke the tension. She went to answer it, but Warrick stopped her. He then reached over and pushed the loudspeaker button again. He pointed at her to speak.
“This is Isabelle Anderson,” she said in the direction of the phone speaker.
“Hey. This is Gray. You sound tense, Isabelle. Warrick not doing a good job of relaxing you these days?”
“Fuck off, Bishop,” Warrick said. “In fact, Isabelle just got a threatening phone call.”
“What the hell?” Gray asked, immediately going into serious, concerned boss mode. “Who was it?”
Isabelle didn’t know how to feel about Gray’s lack of surprise that Warrick was in her office. Maybe he’d already known. Maybe the front desk clerk had already blabbed.
Warrick said, “I don’t know yet. However, I called Duke to set up a trace.” He sounded like he was in charge of her life now. “It’ll probably turn out to be a burner phone, but we might get lucky if the guy’s stupid.”
“Isabelle, did you recognize the voice?” Gray asked.
“No. And there is something else,” she said, thinking about the other call. The one she’d dismissed as a prank.
“I got another call earlier tonight, too. Not as threatening, but creepy nonetheless.”
Warrick gave her a hurt look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t have a chance to yet.”
She told them what the caller had said. “I don’t know what this person thinks I did. I don’t know who it is. I thought the first call was a prank.”
“Once may be a prank, but escalating calls in the same day isn’t,” Warrick said.
“Warrick’s right. Keep me apprised of what you find out,” Gray said, sounding relieved that Warrick was handling everything.