“No. The minute the window broke, the alarm went off. The sheriff’s office was alerted and so were the Fultons. Roy and Bernice immediately drove over to the house to see what was going on.”
“They could have been killed. I didn’t even think to text them about Bailey and Sonny,” Stella said. She covered her face. “What’s wrong with me, Sam?”
“There was a lot going on last night, Stella. You had your hands full trying to save Bailey. I made certain they were aware. I did tell Roy that it wasn’t a smart idea confronting whoever was trying to break in, but you know Roy. He wasn’t going to let someone get into your house. I don’t know if the alarm going off scared him, or hearing the sound of Roy’s truck, but he was gone by the time Roy got here with his double-barrel shotgun. Bernice was armed with hers as well. After hearing what happened to Sonny and Bailey, if they weren’t already, I think they’re now itching to use those shotguns.”
Stella picked up her burrito. “I wonder what he was looking for?”
“I have no idea, but now we know he wants in the house. I checked the window. The glass is spider-webbed, but it held. I’ve called to get it repaired. We don’t want it like that through the winter. Nor do we want him to know there’s any part of this house that is vulnerable.”
“He must have known you weren’t here, Sam.”
Sam nodded. “That wouldn’t be difficult. I park in the same place all the time. If he was watching before you came home, he would have seen you drive up alone. Until this is over, we’d better stick together. Especially since we don’t have Bailey right now.”
Stella’s stomach dropped. She put the burrito down and took a sip of coffee. “There was so much blood, Sam. I didn’t think it was possible to save him.”
“But he’s alive. Amelia’s a really good veterinarian. The town is lucky she decided she wanted to live here.”
Stella nodded. “We were actively looking for a vet after Fiddleson retired and he couldn’t get anyone to take his place. It’s so beautiful here and the clinic was so successful we thought it would be a piece of cake, but evidently, there are reasons people don’t want to raise families here. And long hours don’t appeal to everyone. Also, there seems to be this idea that not everyone can find a partner here.”
Sam flashed a small smile at her. “You do have quite a few female friends, all rather good-looking with great jobs, who don’t have partners, Stella.”
“By choice, Sam. Not everyone wants to settle down with a man.”
“You certainly didn’t. I had to go very carefully, never let you see I had my sights on you. You would have run like a little rabbit.”
“You didn’t have your sights on me.”
“From the first time I ever spotted you. You were wearing your favorite pair of jeans, which, by the way, you still wear. You had on a little black-and-white sweater with squares all over it. Your hair was up in some kind of messy knot that kept falling out and you’d put it back up every now and then. You wore black boots and you had Bailey with you. You were standing across from the jobsite where I was working and you were talking with Zahra and Shabina. You kept laughing. You have the most beautiful laugh.”
Stella was shocked that he remembered what she was wearing and that she’d been with two of her beautiful friends and he’d looked at her instead of them.
“I made it my business to find out about you. Wasn’t that hard. Everyone in town knows about you. You’re royalty. You’ve helped so many businesses. I just had to listen. It was clear you didn’t date anyone and you didn’t have a partner. I just kept to the background and observed you, trying to figure out why and what you needed.”
“Did you figure it out?”
“You need a patient man.”
Stella found herself laughing, and that astonished her. Right in the middle of the worst time, with Bailey in the hospital, she could sit at the breakfast table and laugh. “I suppose that’s true. I can’t believe you remember what I was wearing.” She took another sip of coffee. “How did things go with your father?”
“Better than I expected. Marco is complicated. He’s used to being the complete authority. Everyone is supposed to fall in line the moment he decrees something. He has it in his head that we’re going to have a relationship, which is fine, but he wants it on his terms. He’s had time to think about how it’s all going to play out. He doesn’t know me at all. The last he saw of me, I was young and impulsive. He still thinks of me that way.”
“Surely after meeting you again he has to know you’re nothing like that, Sam.”
“Marco doesn’t let go of his authority easily. I let him talk. The more someone talks, the easier it is to understand them and hear lies. He’s good at mixing truth with deceit.”
“Is he doing that?”
“He always does it. He’s had to do it in order to stay alive. In his business, you can’t trust too many people. Modern-day business is much more under the radar than it used to be, but there is always somebody who wants to take away what he has. He told me about his heart. I could tell he wasn’t lying about that. He seems to really want to retire. That’s always a scary proposition. Sometimes you can in that business, other times you don’t get to. He knows that.”
“Why?”
“He knows everyone’s business. Secrets. Things that can put others behind bars. He’s always been notorious for being close-mouthed.”
“What about Lucio Vitale? Is he really his bodyguard?”
“I don’t think so, although he would protect him. I think he’s much higher than a mere bodyguard. Still, Vitale could very well take out a gun and put a bullet in Marco’s head. That entire business is twisted when it comes to loyalties, although I believe Vitale is loyal to Marco for whatever reason. And if he isn’t, having met me, he would think twice before killing my father.”
“Do you think Marco will really retire and settle here?”
“He knows if he does he’ll have a better chance of staying alive,” Sam said. “He’s pragmatic about that kind of thing. He claims he met someone that he believes would move here with him and be happy.”
“How do you feel about him coming here, Sam?”
“I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other. My father is going to do whatever he decides to do, Stella. There’s no stopping him. I’m going to live my life the way I choose. Hopefully with you. You’re my choice. If he fits in once in a while, that’s good, but if he doesn’t, he doesn’t. I don’t know him anymore, and he doesn’t know me. We’ll see how it works out.”
Stella nodded, biting on her lower lip for a moment. Sam knew his father better than anyone, and she had the feeling his father was used to manipulating people. Sam wasn’t a man to be manipulated by anyone. She always wanted to be Sam’s choice. Always.
“That’s good, Sam. We’ll work around that.” She rubbed her hands on her thighs, detesting that she was showing her distress. “I hate that Bailey isn’t here and I can’t be there with him. He’s been with me practically every minute of the day since I got him as a puppy. It feels off without him. I know he has to feel like I’ve abandoned him.”
“You know better than that, Stella.” Sam’s voice was so gentle it turned her heart over. “I talked to the vet’s office first thing to make certain Bailey had made it through the night okay.”
“You know I’m going to want to talk to Amelia myself.”
He smiled at her. “Of course, I know that. I’d be shocked if you didn’t. She was actually sleeping when I called. Vincent answered. He said she’d be awake by ten.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without Bailey.” She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat and picked up her coffee cup.
“He’s a tough dog, Stella. Amelia’s a good veterinarian. She hung in there last night and fought for him.”
“I knew she was good. I sat on a committee and we read everything about her. She was at the top of her class in school, then interned for some of the best vets for livestock and then small animals. Everywher
e she worked, she was given glowing recommendations. She had come to the Sierras often to climb and backpack, so when the clinic came up for sale, she was interested, but couldn’t quite swing the loan on her own. We knew she’d have that money paid back immediately. Her work ethic was too good. I’m so happy we went after her so aggressively. If we hadn’t …” She trailed off.
“Bailey’s going to make it, Stella,” Sam said.
The confidence in his voice steadied her. She nodded. “Did you talk to the sheriff yet? Or Sonny?”
“Sonny. He says he feels fine. A little headache, nothing more. I went down to the site to look for tracks. Whoever this watcher is knows what he’s doing. I think he’s lived here a long time, Stella, maybe was born here. He knows how to move on rough terrain without leaving a footprint. I found a few things, broken and bruised limbs on brush, twisted leaves, but little else. Nothing that I could follow.”
“I still have to ask myself what he would want in the house,” Stella said. “Maybe all this time he was watching the house in the hopes we would leave.”
Sam gathered the empty dishes and took them to the sink. “I’d like to think that, but we’re often at the Grill. He would have had ample opportunity. It’s only been recently that you’ve been locking the house. I think it would be a good idea to put your journal and sketches in the safe with your gun. If he does get inside, you don’t want him to easily access those.”
She rose as well, clearing the rest of the table. “You think he must be the killer.”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know, but the timing is just too coincidental. I think it’s far better to be safe.”
MOMMY, DADDY’S DOING the bad thing again.
A riot of sounds hit first, birds calling back and forth. So many different types, Stella was aware they were various species. Insects droned and inevitably frogs croaked. Early morning brought with it the continuous cacophony of nature. Somewhere an owl screeched as it missed its prey before retiring. She heard the continuous flutter of wings and the skitter of rodents and lizards among the leaves on the forest floor.
The terrain appeared steep, long grasses thick, colored mostly gold and brown with some green still in evidence in spite of the cold. Trees rose toward the sky, a forest of them, some trunks thick, others mere saplings, many with their leaves already falling to the ground. Beams of color burst all through the branches to hit the rotting vegetation on the ground. Bushes were thick, matting together, while ferns and shrubs added to the wild landscape.
The lens focused on one tree, the trunk sturdy. The camera seemed to go up and up until she could see the bottom of what appeared to be a steel or aluminum frame jutting out from the tree with a pair of muddy boots on the floor of bars. One boot was planted flat while the other had the toe pressed firmly into the bars. She could see just the edge of heavy hunting camo pants coming down over the boots as the camera lens began to close in that abrupt way it had of doing long before she was ready.
STELLA SAT UP quickly and kicked off the covers. The room was surprisingly warm, a fire going in the fireplace she rarely used. Sam sat in the chair across from the bed, his dark eyes on her, waiting to give her whatever she needed. That expressionless mask was becoming a little more readable to her and he looked— wary.
She took several deep breaths and shoved both hands into her hair. She’d braided it to keep it away from her face, but she felt as if she’d sweated and it was all over the place. “He’s accelerating, not taking any time between his kills.”
“He’s got a taste for it now, or whatever triggered him has made him so unstable he’s getting out of control. If that’s the case, he’ll make mistakes.”
The killer didn’t appear to be making too many mistakes, not as far as she could see. There had been other backpackers around on Mount Whitney, yet he’d calmly faked altitude sickness and murdered two people.
Stella wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked back and forth. “Thank you for the fire. I don’t even know when I’m cold anymore.”
“It’s getting cold up here. It will start snowing soon,” Sam said.
She was grateful that he stayed in the chair across from her, where she could see his reassuring presence, but didn’t touch her. He always seemed to know what she needed. When she first woke up after one of her nightmares, even though she was handling them better, she was close to panicking— too close. She needed to allow herself the time to breathe. To admit she was afraid. That she detested she was able to connect with a serial killer, even if it meant catching him and preventing him from killing more people.
Sam let her be who she was. He didn’t “fix” her. He didn’t ask her if she was all right. He knew she wasn’t. He just simply let her work through the nightmare the way she had to, and he was there for her, staying silent until she needed to bounce her ideas off him. If she wanted to talk about it, he’d talk about it. If she wanted to divert attention to something else, he would go along with it. That was Sam, exactly what she needed. She was coming to see, more and more, just why they fit together.
She missed Bailey pushing his head into her lap. She missed being able to scratch his ears, giving her something else to concentrate on while she processed. He made her feel safe. He had always given her companionship when she’d lived alone for those years.
“When I first took on the resort as manager, it was really rundown. I lived in the big cabin, which was a wreck, by the way. I got Bailey from a rescue place. He’s a mix, mostly Airedale, but the breeders were upset because another male had gotten in that wasn’t all Airedale, so they gave the pups to the rescue place. He was the sweetest little puppy. I didn’t go anywhere without him. This little bundle of curly fur.”
She rubbed her thigh where Bailey usually positioned his head when he was trying to comfort her. “I called Amelia a dozen times today and she assured me he was doing so much better. She didn’t want me to visit him because she said I’d get him too excited and she’d never get him to calm down again. I just wanted to bring him home. He has to be there several days and needs to be very quiet.”
She knew Sam was well aware she’d argued with Amelia over visiting with Bailey, but in the end complied with the vet’s wishes. She was babbling and Sam just let her, the way he always did. She sighed and forced herself to get to the main topic.
“I didn’t get much at all. I’ll sketch what I did, but I had no idea what I was looking at. You might know. As for the part of the forest, there was no identifying path or trail that I could see. I could hear all kinds of birds. Shabina knows so much about birds, particularly in our area. If she has recordings of birds, if I listened to them, I might be able to tell her which ones they sounded like. She could maybe identify them and also the area for us.”
“That’s a good idea.”
She scrubbed her palm over her face as if she could erase the sinister feeling that always came when she had the nightmare. A little shiver went down her spine. She found herself looking around, wanting to get her gun out of the safe where she kept it and just have it on the bed beside her. She took another cautious look out the bank of windows.
“Do you think he’s out there again, Sam?”
“Yes. He’s keeping his distance. While you were sleeping, I took a walk around the property, inside the gates and all around the cabins.”
“Sam,” she protested. “After what he did to Sonny and Bailey, you can’t take chances like that. I don’t care what you did in the military. This person is really scary. There’s something wrong with him. People like that are …” She stopped herself from saying invincible.
Sam’s dark gaze was fixed on her face. “Sweetheart.”
The way he said that single endearment turned her heart over, but it didn’t change the truth. Whoever was out there was playing for keeps. He had a knife and he’d plunged the blade four times into Bailey. He might have done so to Sonny had not Bailey attacked. Stella was certain he wanted Sam dead. She didn’t know why she was absolutely convinced o
f it, but she was. That brought her up short.
“Sam, if this man is the serial killer and he’s after you or even me, why hasn’t he targeted either one of us recently? You just said it yourself. You went walking by yourself at night on the property. He could set you up, draw you out. He hasn’t done that. He could make your death look like an accident if that’s his thing. You go out every night, sometimes several times a night.”
Sam hesitated.
“Just say it.”
“Lately, I’ve had Bailey with me. Now, Bailey’s incapacitated. We might see that change. The killer might target me now.”
She dropped her face into her hands. “This gets worse and worse.”
“No, it really doesn’t, Stella. We still have only a couple of things we’re dealing with and we take them one thing at a time. You do your sketch and journal like normal. See if Shabina has any recordings of birds and can help identify where the next murder is taking place. As for this watcher we have, he’s been around now for a little while. We’re both getting a feel for him.”
Stella had to admit Sam was right about that. Sometimes even when she went into town, the hairs on the back of her neck would stand up as if she felt the watcher close.
Sam continued. “He’s got some vantage point. In the morning I’m going to scout around and see if I can find his tracks. He’s got to be up high across from us. There are only a few places that would give him a good view of the house. He’s good at hiding his tracks when he wants to, but he might not think about it when he thinks he’s safe.”
“Could he be on a boat?”
“I thought of that, but he would be too low to see much if he was on the water. I would imagine it would be too frustrating.”
“We’d see the boat, even if he didn’t have running lights, most likely,” she agreed.
“I think he’s a good distance away. He might not think I’ll go looking across the narrow part of the lake up on the slope. That’s where I think he’s established himself. If I’m lucky, he’s sloppy there. Has a nice little blind set up for himself where he feels safe. Brings food and water. If he’s left anything behind, I might be able to get something with fingerprints on it.”
Murder at Sunrise Lake Page 27