She’d thought about videoing it all, but who was she going to show it to? Besides, maybe this was one of those times when it was more important to just live in the moment and enjoy it while it was happening.
CHAPTER THREE
A couple of days after the festival, Kieran left the bookstore and began to walk along the back lane, looking up at each of the buildings to see if they had a security camera that might have picked up some valuable footage relating to the break-ins. He wasn’t holding out much hope, however, as most businesses in the area didn’t feel the need for that type of expense, being a small town with relatively little crime.
Unfortunately, both crimes appeared to be an inside job, which made little to no sense. Mary Albridge and Drake Swanson and their businesses had nothing in common except that they’d both been part of New Hope for a lot of years. Both Mary and Drake could trace their lineage in the town back to the original founders. Drake’s grandfather had been mayor for several years, and Mary’s deceased husband had also held the position for a term or two.
Drake himself was a bit of a mystery. The man was rarely, if ever, seen in New Hope Falls. Kieran wasn’t altogether sure if that was because the man traveled a lot or if it was because he was that reclusive. The only reason he knew the guy actually existed was because they’d been in school together. Drake had been a quiet kid a couple of years behind him who’d spent most his time with his nose in a book. Although Kieran had no idea what the man had done after high school since Kieran’s family had left New Hope Falls before he’d hit his teens.
Adam, the young man who managed the bookstore, had been the one who’d called in the robbery, and he’d been the only person to talk to Kieran when he’d shown up.
Turning around, Kieran paused when his gaze fell on the garage door halfway down the block. When the new owner of the old bank building had taken possession a few years ago, a lot of work had begun almost immediately. The building had been gutted on both floors, and then the garage had been added on half of the lower level.
The renovations had been a topic of interest, mostly because they hadn’t been done by a local company. And from the look of the cameras above the garage at the back, they took their security seriously. There was no back entrance except for the garage, so Kieran made his way to the end of the block and circled around to the front of the building.
Let’s Move was written in elegant black script on a white sign that was situated above the door and picture window. The window was frosted but had figures of women and children clad in flowing skirts dancing etched into it.
After a moment’s hesitation, Kieran pulled open the door and stepped inside. The atmosphere inside was different than anything he was used to. There was a light citrusy-floral scent in the air that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and the classical music playing was a long way from the worship or country music he usually had his radio tuned to.
“Hello, Chief.”
Kieran turned his attention to the speaker. A teen with short jet-black hair and lips and a string of piercings in her ears sat in one of the chairs. “Hello. Do you know if the owner is in?”
“Cara?” At Kieran’s nod, she said, “Yep, but she’s gotta class at the moment.” The girl snapped her gum as she looked down at her phone. “Should be done soon though.”
“Is it okay if I wait?” Kieran asked as he gestured to the other chairs that ringed the small waiting area, not wanting to make the girl uncomfortable.
“Like I’d say no to a cop,” the teen scoffed with a grin.
He gave her a smile in return as he took a seat near the door, feeling more than a little out of place. The chairs were surprisingly comfortable, but he still shifted uneasily as he waited. Maybe he should just come back another time.
Just as he got to his feet, however, the door leading to the back of the studio opened, and a slender woman stepped out. She wore a light blue leotard with a matching filmy skirt, and her light brown hair was pulled back into a bun perched high on her head.
He knew of her from church and also because her business was right on Main Street, not too far from the sheriff’s station, but they’d never been officially introduced.
Her eyes widened when she saw him, and she stepped back, lifting a hand to rest just below her throat. She seemed to take a couple of quick breaths at the same time. For a moment, she hesitated before walking further into the waiting area.
“Are you Cara?” Kieran asked.
She crossed her arms over her waist, her lips pressing tightly together for a brief moment. “Yes, I am.”
“Kieran Sutherland.” He held his hand out.
After another brief hesitation, she placed her hand—which was surprisingly cold and trembled slightly—in his. “What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if your security cameras were working.”
She frowned for a moment, then nodded. “The last time I checked, they were.”
“Excellent. Do you think I could take a look at them?”
Before Cara could answer, several women walked out of the door behind her, all in various stages of pregnancy. Cara turned toward them, smiling and chatting with them as they moved past her.
There were a couple of women who looked like they were ready to give birth any minute, and from the promise they made to Cara to let her know if they had their babies that week, they likely could. The women all gave him curious looks. He recognized a couple of them and nodded in greeting as they headed for the door.
Once the women—including the goth teen—had said goodbye and left the studio, Cara turned to him, seeming to be more in control of herself. “So, you were asking about my cameras?”
“Yes.” Kieran cleared his throat. “We’ve had a couple of burglaries on Main Street, and I wanted to see if there were any cameras around that might have caught some information that would be helpful to our investigation. I noticed you had cameras up on the back of your building. I wanted to see if they were the real thing and not just some fakes.”
She stared at him for a moment before nodding. “Yes. They’re real.”
“Could I see the footage?” Kieran shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Uh…please?”
He wasn’t sure what it was about this woman that had him feeling a little out of step. Or maybe it was just everything he’d been dealing with lately that had him feeling that way.
First, the stuff with the cold case file, then the ridiculous twist that Anna Carrington’s vandalism case had taken when Coral Thompson had attacked her, and now two burglaries. It was like the town had turned from being a safe refuge from the rest of the world into being just like the world.
“I suppose you could.” She nodded toward another door. “We can use the computer in my office.”
Kieran followed her into the small room, looking around as he did. Unlike the elegant décor of the reception area, the office was rather starkly decorated. Basically, there was just a desk and a computer and a couple of chairs.
“Have a seat,” she said as she rounded the desk to sit in front of the keyboard and monitor. “Just give me a second to pull up the camera footage.”
“I kind of thought this was a dance studio,” Kieran said, watching as her gaze flicked to him then back to the monitor.
“It is, but it’s more than just that. I teach exercise classes for adults, mainly women. One of those classes is for pregnant women. Stretching and strengthening in preparation for labor and delivery. The dance classes I teach are for children.”
Kieran watched as she worked on the keyboard and mouse. He’d seen her from a distance over the past few years, but he’d never introduced himself, and now he wondered why that was. From what he’d overheard at the station, she kept pretty much to herself, but he had seen her at church fairly frequently.
“What time-frame were you wanting to look at?” Cara asked.
Kieran pulled a small notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open. He read over the information he’d gotten
from Mary and gave her the dates he needed to see. She used the mouse again then turned the monitor, so it was angled toward him.
“This is going back to the start of the time period you wanted to see.”
Kieran leaned forward, not happy with the angle of the camera. “Is this the only camera you have back there?”
She hesitated then clicked to bring up another angle. It wasn’t any better than the previous one.
“Is that it?” Kieran asked out of desperation, even though two cameras were more than he’d ever expected to find. “No other cameras?”
When she hesitated yet again, Kieran found himself focusing more intently on her. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she had secrets. Well, of course she had secrets. He didn’t know her at all, but after this, he would be doing a bit of an investigation into her.
“There’s one other one, but I’m afraid its angle isn’t any better than the ones you just viewed.”
“May I be the judge of that?” Kieran asked.
Her brows drew together, then she nodded. He could see what she meant when the picture came into focus. The camera looked straight down over the garage door. Only someone coming right up to the door would be seen.
“Did you research New Hope Falls at all before you moved here?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Cara shifted on her chair, playing with the pen she’d picked up off the desk.
“One camera might have been overkill. Three definitely is,” Kieran said. “Are you worried about something?”
“One can never be too safe,” Cara replied. “It seems that there has been an uptick in the crime around here in the last month or so.”
“Do you have another reason for being prepared beyond just in case something happens? Something I should be aware of?”
“Are you here to question me?” Cara asked.
“Well, not about a crime, obviously, but I can’t help but be curious,” Kieran said, making note of her deflection. “After all, you are a resident of my town. I feel as if we haven’t made you feel that this is a safe place to live.”
Cara’s shoulders pulled back as she lifted her chin. “I knew what type of place this was before I moved here.”
“So you did research the town?”
“I didn’t need to. My mom lived here as a child, and she used to talk about it all the time.”
That hadn’t been what Kieran expected her to say. “Your mom is from around here?”
“Not from, exactly, but she and her family lived here for a couple of years when she was eight or nine, but she talked about how much she loved it.” Cara’s gaze turned to the monitor, but Kieran suspected she wasn’t seeing the picture that sat on the screen. “When she died, I needed a change of scenery, so I chose to come where she had spent a few happy years.”
As she talked, Kieran felt bad for having pushed her into an explanation that had its roots in pain. “I hope you have experienced similar happiness while you’ve lived here.”
“It’s been good.” Another hesitation. “It’s been where I’ve needed to be right now in my life.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Kieran said.
Silence fell between them for a moment before Cara softly cleared her throat. “Was there anything else you needed?”
“No, I think that was all for now.” He put his notebook back in his pocket and got to his feet. “Thank you for letting me see the footage.”
“I’m sorry it wasn’t more helpful.” Cara turned the monitor back to face her then got up.
As they left the office, she pulled the door closed behind her. Kieran took one last look around the now-empty reception area then he opened the door to the street. “Thanks again.”
“You’re welcome.”
The glass door closed behind him with a thud, and Kieran glanced over his shoulder to see Cara locking it. Their gazes met for a moment before she turned away and disappeared into the shadows of the interior of the studio.
He found himself staring at the empty space. It seemed he’d missed out on something over the past few years by not introducing himself to her sooner. Now he found the mystery of her intriguing, and it was a huge temptation to ignore all the other things he should be focusing on right then in order to delve into a search of Cara’s past.
Instead, he returned to the station and followed up with the tech on the fingerprints they’d taken at both break-ins. Still, once he was at his desk, Kieran fought the urge to pull up a screen to start a search on Cara. Though he wanted to know everything about her, he acknowledged that he had no legal reason to use police resources to investigate her. Just because someone went overboard on security wasn’t any reason to scrutinize their life.
No, there was only one way to get answers to the questions he had, and that was to ask them of her. He had an inexplicable urge to get to know her better that went beyond her excessive security. Maybe he’d have to ask her out on a date if he wanted to accomplish that.
That thought took him completely off-guard as he’d had no interest in dating since moving back to New Hope. Something had clearly intrigued him about the woman, but that didn’t mean he had to do anything about it.
Or maybe it did.
~*~
As soon as she’d locked the door, Cara escaped up the stairs to her apartment. It was only when she was secure there with the alarm on that she allowed herself to relax the tight control that she’d grabbed onto when she’d seen the cop standing in her reception area.
Her first thought was that he was there to tell her that her father had died, which was ridiculous. News of her father’s death would only come from one person…the only man her father had trusted throughout the dealings he’d had as he’d turned state’s witness in several cases that had shaken up the crime family he’d been the head of.
Following his testimony in those cases, he’d been moved to the other side of the country and put in prison under a new identity. Her father hadn’t even trusted his own attorney, so in the end, it was one man—Doug Anders, an assistant district attorney that he’d worked with—that he’d put his trust in.
To date, through all the prison changes in the first couple of years, the man had never let them down. And Cara knew that on the day her father died, she would get a visit or a phone call from Doug.
Still, seeing a law enforcement officer in her space had shaken her up a bit. Thankfully, all he’d wanted was to see her cameras. Relief had rolled through her at his request, but at the same time, she’d still been wary.
She’d never had a reason to not trust the cops, but she knew that some would take the knowledge of her identity and pass it on to people who were looking to hurt or kill her. After all, she was supposed to have been in the car with her mother when the bomb went off. Her father had moved mountains to stage her death, knowing that she was better off dead to the world than alive.
It was after her mother’s death that her father had approached the district attorney to make a deal. In exchange, he was given a new identity, but more important to him, she was also given a new identity. He’d been stashing away a lot of money into several accounts for her and her mother over the years, so by the time he went to prison, she had more than enough to live on for the rest of her life.
The money had been another area that left her conflicted, knowing where her father had gained a lot of it. When she’d asked him about where he’d gotten it, he’d told her that it had come from the legitimate businesses and investments he had, but she hadn’t been convinced. To that end, she gave money on a regular basis to organizations that dealt with drug addiction and human trafficking. It made it easier for her to use the money her father had given her for other things.
On more than one occasion, he’d apologized for the horror his life choices had brought her, and she knew the money was his way of trying to make things easier for her. After all she’d lost, he had wanted to provide a way for her to find new joy in her life, though it would be different from what she’d had before.
He’d been so pleased when she moved to New Hope Falls and opened her dance studio.
It wasn’t until she was in her teens that she’d realized that her father wasn’t just away on a lot of business trips, but that he had a whole other family in New York. A wife. Sons. A position as the head of the Moretti crime family. The realization that her mother was his mistress, and that they would never be together as a real family had been devastating to her.
After everything that had happened, she was now alone. Her mother had kept their world small. No doubt because being a mistress to a crime boss wasn’t something she could talk about. She’d stayed at home and homeschooled Cara, enabled by the money Cara’s father had sent them each month. So it had just been the two of them—sometimes three, when her father came—but never more than that.
She’d carried on with the tendency to keep a distance from people, especially after everything that had happened.
Kieran had seemed curious about what had brought her to New Hope Falls, but had it been a normal curiosity? Or something more sinister? She’d heard about the break-ins, so she knew he hadn’t been lying about those. And it made sense that since her studio was on the same side of the street as the two places that had been broken into, that he’d see her cameras and want to view the footage.
But something told her that she hadn’t seen the last of the man. The question was, what would bring him back? And how was she going to deal with him? She couldn’t ignore him if he came around again. There was nothing that was as likely to raise some red flags as her hiding from him.
Since Cara had no idea when Kieran was going to be back around, she pushed aside the worry and turned her focus onto the one thing guaranteed to calm her nerves. Dance.
With the studio being into its second month of the new session of classes, it was time to start putting together their Christmas recital pieces. She only did pieces for the classes she actually taught dance to, which were for girls ten and under. It wasn’t that she didn’t allow boys or men in her classes, but so far, only those of the female persuasion had shown an interest in anything the studio offered.
Because of Him: A Christian Romance (New Hope Falls Book 2) Page 3