AN: I don't own the characters
Chapter 10 – Safe
BPOV
The uniforms looked official through the peep-hole and so did the truck with the others milling around taking equipment out so I opened the door.
"Hello, I'm looking for a Ms. Isabella Swan."
"You've found her."
"My name is Andy, I'm from Infinity Security Systems. I've arranged with a Mr. Eleazar Denali to have a security system installed today. Is this correct?" I nodded. "He also called back this morning and mentioned that you might be interested in having alarms installed in a couple of cars, is that true?"
"More than true actually. If you can do it, we'd like it done. We understand its short notice though."
"Not a problem Miss Swan, we've got all the equipment in the truck. I've got a fairly large crew today to make sure we get everything done so I apologize for us being underfoot. We'll have everything wrapped up before the day's out though."
"That sounds wonderful. Well I guess just let me know what you need."
"Well, if we could get Carl here started on the cars, I assume they're here?" I nodded. "Then if you'd show me around the house. I understand the house is divided into 3-4 units, with the 1st and 2nd floor capable of being used separately as a single unit, is that correct?"
"Yes, there's also a shared stairwell in the back of the house as well as parking in the alley. We're definitely concern about the alleyway and area leading to the house from there. That's where we had an attack in broad daylight." He nodded stiffly. "Hey Rose?" Rose walked in drying her hands on a dishtowel. Who knew she could be so domestic. "Would you mind showing Carl where the cars are so he can get started on the car alarms? I'm going to show Andy around the house."
"Sure thing. Need any help schlepping your toolbox or the alarm units Carl, my dear?" She was off and running talking car-talk. Carl seemed reluctant at first and by the time they got to the back door, he'd handed over the two boxes I'm assuming had the alarm units in them. Andy shook his head and chuckled.
"Well that's something." I cocked my head. "Carl doesn't let anybody touch his stuff. That leggy thing you've got there musta done a number on him." I couldn't help but laugh.
"Ahh, Rose has a head for cars. My guess is that she'll be out there helping him install them if he'll let her. She's a certified mechanic. If she didn't have a heart that was too big to fit in her chest she'd probably do that all day but instead she does it as a hobby and keep her friends well maintained while keeping her day-job." The Ah-Ha light bulb went off over Andy's head and we started on our tour. The rest of the crew followed behind us and Andy dished out instructions for each. By the time we got done with the tour there were 5 guys, besides Carl, installing devices on doors and windows for movement and breakage, cameras near entrances and in the alleyway to be linked to the new closed circuit TV system, panic buttons near each entranceway to call the alarm company in case someone knocked or rang the bell, and a state of the art phone unit that would be installed on every floor. It would act as both an intercom system and an emergency phone to call the alarm company, fire, police or ambulance. It would even work without electricity, though it was cordless, so long as it was charged.
Just as they were getting started Peter came out of the bathroom and headed out. He said goodbye to me.
"Hey Bells, is it alright with you if I bring some stuff over after I sign the lease and grab the keys this morning? My shift starts this afternoon and I wanted to get some stuff in for the next couple days before my shift is over just so I'm not too tired."
"Yeah yeah, no problem at all. Just come on in. If the alarm truck is gone, gimme a call first so I can give you the run-down on the alarm before you accidentally set it off."
"Haha, yeah, no problem." And he was off to get his shit done. Rose sauntered in with greasy hands and a HUGE grin.
"So I'm guessing you got Carl to let you help with some of the install?" I asked.
"Actually no. If someone other than one of their employees does it, it voids the warranty, not a bad policy, but I noticed Charlotte oil was due for a change so I did a quick change."
"Have I ever told you that you absolutely blow me away? Wanna help me put the second coat on the bedroom and master bath if we get there?"
"Sure. Lemme clean up so I don't mess up your walls. Why don't you let the guys know where we are in case they need anything. I guess this means the tunes can't be quite so loud today huh?"
"Probably not. Alice left the colors for those rooms in the bedroom, I'll meet you in there."
Rose went off to find her orange goopy stuff for cleaning up various car fluids and I went to find Andy. I didn't like just hanging out spying on them really so I was glad to have something to do that wouldn't put me in the way. I figured we'd leave the wall with the windows for last but as soon as I told Andy what we were doing, he sent one of the guys in to finish installing the window alarms in those rooms so they wouldn't be in our way when we got to that wall. I thanked him and headed in to prep the paint and get started.
Hours later Rose and I were done with the Bedroom and working on the bathroom, Carl popped his head in to ask us if we could take a break so he could show us how the car alarms worked. We cleaned out the brushes we were using and headed out back. Turns out we've not only got an alarm, but a remote starter on Charlotte's, mine was a manual transmission so I was out of luck there, and the keyfobs would actually tell us what park of the car was being broken into with a digital download for the police via USB. Really it was quite cool. Carl excused himself to go help hook up the CCTV and the control panels and Rose decided to kick me out.
"Alright missy, I think it's time for you to head over to the gym. I can order Pizza for the guys here and then finish up the bathroom on my own. Since the cars are done, you can take yours down to the gym or really, it'd be easier to just take the train and go see Derek. Em called Derek already and he's got everything ready for you so you've just gotta sign things and get the grand tour. I think they've changed some things since you were here. He's working for the next few hours so it'll be easier to go talk to him than have him explain everything to someone else. I'll take care of everything here."
"Alright. Just make sure you get some extra pizza for me for later." Rose had her phone out before I was in the bathroom to change.
The train ride wasn't bad. I decided to take one of my favorite books to read just like old times and almost missed the stop, just like old times. But I got there and headed in the entrance I remembered from what seemed to be eons ago. There were a couple people that walked in ahead of me but when I got to the desk I asked a nice enough looking woman if Derek happened to be around. She asked me to wait a minute and made a call. I took a seat and just as my ass hit the chair, the door next to be burst open with an enthusiasm that could rival Emmett any day and a short dark haired man came out and offered a hand to me asking if I was Bella.
"That would be me. I've guessing Emmett called to tell you I'd be coming?"
"That and Rose called to say you were on the way right now. She wanted me to call and tell her if you weren't here in another…" he turned his watch over "5 minutes. Not many get to see the Mama-Hen routine. I'm guessing you know that though?" I nodded. "Alright then. Come in to my cave here and let's get started."
We stepped into his office and he gestured for me to take a seat. "So Em tells me you used to be a member here years ago, mind if I ask why you left us?"
"I went back out West after I graduated. I just moved back this week. Don't worry, I didn't flock to the competition." He grinned but I was right, standard question. I knew from listening to Em when he worked there before the gyms were always trying to find out how to keep members or get new ones, etc.
"I'm a little disappointed I didn't have a spy but we'll get you set up. No worries." He asked for my information and we got everything in the computer. Most of it was already done so everything took a lot less time than I remember it ever taking. He took my picture and handed me a keytag, which I attached to my keys quickly and we headed out for a tour. There were a lot of new staff since my stint here back in the day, and they'd upgraded many of the machines. New paint jobs and even some build-outs made the place look fairly fresh which was nice. I loved the fact that this place was still a family friendly place. I didn't have kids, but I love em. Sure you wanna be fairly serious when you're at the gym, but it's nice to look up from an exhausting 8 mile trek on the treadmill and see a couple of kids having fun, smiling and laughing at each other. It's one of the things in life that you just can't help grin at. We wrapped up the tour and I said my goodbyes to Derek after grabbing all of the schedules.
I took a look at the class descriptions and started highlighting the things that looked interesting. The typical Yoga and Pilates were always good low-impact ways to build strength and flexibility. Never a bad thing. They had a number of kickboxing classes which had always intrigued me, but they also had a boxing class. That sounded interesting. There were separate fliers for a volleyball league that I'd pass along to the rest of the gang as well as one for the Martial Arts classes. Surprisingly enough, there were a couple options to choose from. I figure I'd talk to the girls and see if they were interested. I know Rose said she was, but who knows, maybe Charlotte and Alice would be too. Who knows, maybe we could become super secret ninjas and all of the sudden, one day we could ambush and kidnap the guys for fun. The little hamsters in my head are running a 5k right now. Not good for the penises in my life. Haha.
I walked in the front door and seriously couldn't tell how much progress the crew had made since I'd left. Cognitively, I knew I'd been gone a few hours and they must've finished a lot of the things they'd been doing, but as I walked into the kitchen there was a nest of wires and tools. My kitchen was not being used for dinner tonight, that's for damn sure. These wires were leaving disgusting shit all over the place.
Rose walked out of the bedroom with paint splatters in her hair. She walked over to me as she was drying a paintbrush in her hand with a paper towel and I couldn't hold back the laughter anymore when I saw the splatter through her eyebrow.
"Shut up missy. I had to finish up. I was bored out of my mind while also trying to drown out the horrific sounds of electric drills. I forgot how much I hate those sounds." She shuttered dramatically. "Oh, Peter dropped by earlier with a couple carloads of stuff. Clothes, toiletries, CDs, the usual. He was going to hang out here before heading into work then realized he didn't have any kitchen stuff anymore. Something about an evil witch tainting it all. Anyway, I helped him bring everything in and unpack and then he headed out to shop. Since the alarm wasn't done, he left his number and I gave him yours. Go ahead and put it in your phone before you forget." I pulled mine out and followed directions; Rose is not one to mess with when she's like this. "He's planning on calling you when he gets off work so you can let him in and give him a crash course in the alarm. He said it might be pretty late and he was sorry. If you need to head to bed, you can call or text him directions and he'd figured it out. After Peter left I had nothing better to do so I finished up in the bathroom. It's really hard to get the area behind the toilet. I'm not sure how Pixie did it other than the fact that she might be a closet contortionist."
"Wow. Well, thanks for helping out with all of that, babe. I wish I'd left something for you to do. Do you want to take a shower or head home or something?"
"I'll shower in a bit, I don't want to be covered in paint at volleyball later. Why don't you go take a look at the room?" She pulled me by the hand toward the bedroom with quite a bit of excitement and I almost had a hard time keeping up.
It was amazing. The color was just like I imagined. Cool and relaxing. It's amazing what a little drying time will do to make your dreams come true. The sun was setting and reflected beautifully off the walls. I squeezed Rose's hand and headed to the bathroom. It was bare of a shower curtain, bathmat or anything accessories at all, but the color was definitely even. I'd have to get Alice in here ASAP to help me get everything put together so it'd all make sense to me. I just couldn't put the image together in my head.
"Seriously Rose, you're amazing. Thank you so much. I don't know how I can repay you for this."
"Don't worry about it. I needed something to keep me busy while these fuckers took care of business."
"We'll work something out. I'm not letting you go without something." Just then there was a knock at the doorway.
"Excuse me ladies. Ms Swan, we've got the Closed Circuit System and the downstairs apartment up and running. When you get a chance we can go over the operation."
"Thanks Andy. I'll be out in a few minutes." He left us and Rose turned to me looking down at her watch.
"Hey babe. I just realized what time it is. The game starts in an hour." Fuck! No! I hate missing games.
"Shit. Looks like I'm not heading out with you. Hopefully, the education portion of our tour won't last all that long and I can head over soon. Go ahead and get cleaned up. Let everybody know I'll head over ASAP. Text me updates between games though. I wanna know how we're doing. K?"
"You bet, I can't leave you out of it." Edward's supposed to be there today too, I hope you can get over there so you guys can finally meet. Alice and I are interested to see how much you two butt heads." Rose smirked and turned towards the shower.
"Excuse me?"
"I didn't say anything."
"BULLSHIT!!!" and headed out to meet Andy. He was in the kitchen mounting a new flat screen TV monitor on the corner of the island at the edge of the bar on a mount that rotated. There was a spot right under that for the emergency phone/intercom system but the best part was the whole unit had a cover that came out of the bar back making it look like there was a bread-box with a roll-top front when there would never really be a bread-box. Very James Bond-y. I'm a closet gadget girl so I was liking this.
"Hey Andy, interesting set-up you've got here. I understand you wanted to show me how some thing worked?"
"I sure did. Give me just a moment to mount these last few screws and we can get started. The guys are in the process of connecting the control pads in each unit to your master unit and running through the test sequence on that and the intercom system." I nodded and sat down at the table taking everything in. Carl was cleaning up the massive amounts of wiring that was just lying around in piles. It was obvious they'd needed it for the various jobs they'd been doing all day but it looked like a mess.
"So do you like the faux bread-box?"
"I do actually. It was one of the first things I noticed after I realized just how much cleaning I'd have to do down here."
"Haha, actually, your affection for your kitchen is one of the reasons we've got the breadbox. We've found over time that most people who love their kitchen as much as I've been informed you do use the kitchen/great-room area of the house as a hub for most activity, which is why the closed-circuit unit and the intercom unit base are here. At the same time, most prefer not to be constantly reminded of the need for security. Thus, by using a faux bread-box, the intercom is hidden from being an everyday reminder but accessible. At the same time, the TV here is a fully functional television, it is also an HDTV and has been wired into your existing cable. A new cable and power connection were installed at the side of the island and were made to blend in." Shit they were, these guys were good. I couldn't see them at all.
He went on to explain the location of the cameras on the front and back door as well as the stairwell, laundry, fire escape and alleyway. Everything visible via camera was saved on a harddrive in the house that was now stored in a closet in the house as well as sent back to their offices and archived for a period of time.
Just as we were getting ready to head downstairs so Andy could show me how to use the first keypad and set the passcode, Charlotte got home and Rose got out of shower so Charlotte joined the tour and Rose took off to the game promising to keep me updated if I promised to head out ASAP.
We set the code to Peter's apartment and headed up to Charlotte's place. We ran through everything twice there so she made sure she understood exactly how everything else worked. Then we headed down to the 2nd floor. They were installing a unit there but trying to route it into my unit downstairs so I could control both from either pad right now but if I decided to rent out the 2nd floor I could use the 1st floor pad to program the other pad to be independent. This was apparently being a little tricky in the programming. It wasn't ready when we got there so we just headed down to my place. Carl was pretty much done cleaning up and was actually cleaning up with some Clorox wipes. I was a bit impressed, I won't lie. I got my first text from Rose.
Just won the first game. Jazz isn't happy about setting, he wishes you were here but we're playing well. ~R
I knew Jazz wouldn't be happy going back to setting. He'd been really happy to be set free last game. Don't get me wrong. He's a good setter but there's something about putting all your strength behind a wind-up and absolutely nailing the ball that's really therapeutic. And when the ball's a good kill, there's a joy that comes after that's just really hard to explain unless you've lived it. Mostly I think because this game is a game of finesse. It's not a power sport. And sure anybody can jump on the court, but not anybody can play.
One of the first leagues I ever played in we had a couple jocks who'd played football and lacrosse join the team. They'd watched their girlfriends play in college and they thought it'd be a great bonding experience. They were athletes right? They could pull off switching to a different sport. They'd watched it on TV and watched their girlfriend's games for years, so they joined. Girlfriend 1 and 2 never opened their mouths. Needless to say, the guys were highly embarrassed when Alice, Rose and I quite literally picked them up and dragged them to places on the court repeatedly, or bent their knees for them or god forbid they got in my way on 2nd ball. Shit, they were dead. D-E-D dead.
It took them about 3 games before one of them had it and yelled at me. Rose blew a fuse. The girlfriends just sat back and snickers the fuckers.
"Alright ASSHATS, lets get this straight, you're going to yell at us for getting in your way when for the last 3 weeks you've done nothing but disgrace the sport of volleyball and act like cocky fucktards? Seriously? We tried to be nice about this. You've grown up playing sports we get that, you didn't grow up playing this sport. This is NOT a contact sport. This is NOT a power sport. Sure we get to hit the ball, but this is a sport of placement and fineness. Think about it. The ball comes to your side of the net, FAST, you dig it" Rose said holding up one finger "and you not only just put your arm out willie nillie, you dig it toward a target, every single FUCKING time. THEN, the SETTER, a particular person…" she said pointing at me "uses his or her hands in a very delicate and specific way to set the ball accurately and quickly to a hitter of his or her choice based on factors such as who's in what rotation, who's playing their strong position, what offensive play haven't we played in a while, what defense is the other team prepared for at THIS VERY MOMENT in time. AND THEN, the specific hitter is then in charge with hitting the shit out of the ball or making the decision to dink or tip the ball to make sure they get around or through the blockers. THIS game is NOT a game of brawn. It's a game of quick thinking and placement. And THAT is just the offense. Seeing as how your girlfriends brought you here with their skill and knowingly kept their mouths shut, they obviously don't think much of you. I honestly hope neither of you gets laid for months."
At that the other team cackled in laughter.
That day lived in infamy with us for a long time. The boyfriends didn't come back the rest of the season. Apparently they apologized to the girlfriends the next day and shortly after asked for lessons.
Charlotte and I ordered some Chinese and waited for the guys to get the kinks out of the system. Unfortunately by the time they did, we were done with dinner and the second game was over and we'd won that one as well. Rose told me she thought there was a good chance of them winning the next one and me not needing to worry about heading out since it was best of 5.
The guys finished up the rest of the install and Andy showed us the rest of the system including the intercom/emergency phone unit and showed Charlotte the closed caption system so in case she ever needed to use it she could. Just as Andy and the guys were heading out the door finally finished, my phone rang. Alice.
"My dearest Sync, we missed you tonight spouting out orders and keeping us in line."
"I missed you too my bouncy ball."
"We're heading home. Do you need us to come to your place tonight again?" I looked at Charlotte.
"Al, gimme a sec."
"Sure." I pulled the phone away from my ear and covered the earpiece.
"Hey Char, They wanna know if we want them to come here with us tonight or if we want to be alone tonight. What do you think?" She bit her lip and thought hard.
"Um… No. The security system is on and Peter's going to be at some point tonight right?" I nodded.
"You sure? He won't be in until late."
"Yeah, we've gotta start sometime and we've got this kick-ass security system put in but maybe we could watch a movie till Peter gets here though."
"Of course." I grabbed the phone again. "Ally, We'll be fine. Everybody can head home. Peter will be heading back when he's done and Char and I are just gonna watch a movie. How'd the rest of the game go?"
"We won, I think the guys were all a little upset about this week honestly. Getting out a little frustration. There was a lot of zoning-in if you ask me."
"Gotcha. Oh, Al, can you help me get the bathroom together really soon. Rose helped finish the painting today and it looks fantastic but I need the full effect. I just can't see it yet, ya know."
"We'll take care of that very very soon darling, have no fears. Alright. Have a good night you two. Sleep well. Love N Hugs." I hung up and told Charlotte to go change and I'd grab a few movies for her to choose from.