She sucked in a sharp breath, turning her gaze to the window. Love. She loved him. Or did she? This could be simply infatuation, the flood of affection that came with a new relationship. She’d have to be careful. Dec had his own demons to wrestle with when it came to love. Confiding her own feelings to him too early might just scare him away.
“Where are we going to dinner?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise,” he replied. “Oh, by the way, there’s a box in the backseat. Can you reach around and get it for me?”
Rachel leaned between the two front seats and grabbed the small white box. “What is it?”
“It’s for you,” he said.
She laughed. “For me?”
“Since this was an official date, I figured I ought to give you something to remember it by. Go ahead, open it up.”
“When did you have time to buy me something?”
“I made a few phone calls and then sent one of my guys out to pick it up.”
She pulled the cover off the box and sighed. Tucked inside pretty pink tissue paper was a tiny bouquet of flowers, a nosegay. “In Victorian times, men used to give little bouquets like these to a woman they wanted to court,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“How do you know that?” Rachel asked.
“I’m not a complete idiot in the romance department,” he said. “My grandmother had a huge flower garden and she used to make us help her pick weeds. She used to rattle on about tussie-mussies and what all the different flowers meant. My brothers and I would just roll our eyes. I guess some of it must have stuck.”
“Do you know what these mean?” she asked.
Dec examined the bouquet as she held it out to him. “The red roses are for passion. The forget-me-nots speak for themselves. The lavender is…devotion, I think. And the ferns are fascination.”
Rachel held it up to her nose and drew in a deep breath. “You surprise me,” she said.
“That’s good, right?”
She leaned over the center console and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Yes, that’s very good.”
They rode for a time in silence. Dec reached out and grabbed her hand, then brought it to his lips. “I’m looking forward to tonight,” he said. “It’s our first official date.”
“It is,” Rachel said. “I’m actually kind of nervous.”
“Don’t be,” Dec teased. “I promise, I won’t try to kiss you at the end of the evening. And I definitely won’t ask if I can come in for a drink.”
“Good,” she said. “Because you should know, I’m not that kind of girl.”
“No, you’re definitely not that kind of girl,” Dec said.
Rachel’s cell phone rang and she picked up her purse, then set it back down. “No,” she said. “No calls tonight.”
“You should check to see who it is,” Dec said.
She reached in her purse and glanced down at the caller I.D. The lighted display showed a number from the university exchange. She put the phone back, but then decided she ought to take it. “I promise I’ll make it quick,” she said, flipping it open. “Rachel Merrill.”
“Professor Merrill, this is Officer Franklin from university security. I’m afraid we have some bad news for you.”
Rachel glanced over at Dec and forced a smile. “Yes?”
“Someone has broken into your office and vandalized it.”
“I see,” Rachel said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Can you give me more details?” She listened as the officer relayed the damage and the method of break-in. “And what would you like me to do?”
“We’d like you to come down and see if there’s anything missing. We’ve called the police because we understand you’ve been having trouble with a stalker. They’re going to be sending a detective down. Can you meet him in a half-hour?”
Rachel drew in a deep breath. “I really don’t think so. This will have to wait until tomorrow morning. I’m sure you can take care of it on your own.”
“But, Professor Mer-”
She snapped the phone shut and tucked it back into her purse. “Sorry. Just some university business.”
“Everything okay?” Dec asked.
She nodded. They drove on, Rachel mulling over the news she’d received and attempting to act as if it hadn’t bothered her. The stalker was getting much more bold and aggressive and yet the police seemed no closer to finding out who it was. Even Dec had been stymied. Detailed examination of the security tapes from the parking lot hadn’t shown any hint of the person who vandalized her car. Either the stalker knew where all the cameras were and avoided them, or he was just downright lucky.
They were nearly downtown when Dec’s cell phone rang. He reached into his jacket pocket and grabbed it, but she reached out and took it away from him. “Don’t,” she murmured.
“It’s the office,” he said. “I promise to make it quick. They might have something on your case.”
The moment he flipped the phone open, Rachel knew what the call was about. Of course he’d find out about the vandalism. The university police had called the Providence police and they would have called his office. And his office would call him.
She listened to his side of the conversation as she stared out the window, knowing what would come next. When he stopped speaking, she risked a glance over at him to find his mouth set in a tight line.
“So you weren’t planning to tell me what your call was all about?”
“I didn’t want to spoil our date,” Rachel said.
He cursed softly, shaking his head. “You didn’t think I’d find out?”
“I didn’t really think about it. I-I’m sorry. I should have said something, but I didn’t want to ruin this.”
“Baby, we can have as many dates as you want. But this is your safety we’re talking about. That is number one. If you’re not with me on that, then we have a serious problem.”
“I didn’t want tonight to be about you doing your job,” she snapped. “I’m tired of that. I just wanted to have a nice night, just the two of us.”
Dec glanced over his shoulder and pulled across a lane of traffic before guiding the car into an empty parking spot. He turned off the ignition and then faced her. “This stopped being about the job a while ago, Rachel. You have to know that. And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’ve been spending too much time thinking about you and not enough time thinking about your stalker.”
“No,” she said, reaching out to touch his cheek. “No, you’re the only one who has kept me together through all of this. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“Rachel, my first priority has to be your safety. And I honestly can’t say that it has been. I didn’t have to stay with you. I could have sent you somewhere safe or put an army of my guys around you.”
“You can’t leave me,” she said, hearing a desperate edge to her voice. “I’m not sure I could feel safe without you.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. “We’re going over to the university. And we’re going to figure out who is doing this.”
“All right,” she said. “Maybe there will be a clue there. Maybe there’s a witness who saw something. We can figure this out.” But even as she said the words, Rachel had her doubts. Her stalker had pretty much gone unnoticed for the past few months, slipping in and out of her life as if he knew her every move. They weren’t any closer now than they had ever been.
She held the tiny bouquet up to her nose and inhaled the scent of the flowers, closing her eyes. This couldn’t go on forever. Sooner or later there would be a confrontation and whoever was doing this would reveal himself. And then she’d find out whether Dec would ever be a more permanent part of her life.
DEC WATCHED RACHEL THROUGH the glass window of the control booth, standing in the shadows so she couldn’t see him. She was aware that he was there though. Since her show had gone on the air, she’d constantly glanced up to reassure herself. But with each glance, Dec felt more guilty.
&n
bsp; He knew from the start he was breaking every professional rule he’d ever laid out for himself. Every instinct had told him to maintain his distance, to keep an objectivity with Rachel until her case was resolved. But he hadn’t listened to his instincts, or at least not his professional instincts. He’d let his desire lead the way. And Rachel’s stalker had continued on without consequence.
A knock sounded on the control room door and Rachel’s producer turned as a skinny young man walked inside. He carried a package, wrapped in brown paper, and a stack of letters. “This is Dr. Devine’s fan mail,” he said. “And a package that came for her this morning.”
“I’ll take that,” Dec said.
The young man handed him the mail, then stood awkwardly in front of Dec, shifting from foot to foot. “Are you watching over Dr. Devine?” he asked.
Dec nodded.
He reached into his back pocket and withdrew another envelope. “Would you give this to her? It’s an apology note. I know it probably won’t help, but I want her to have it.”
“You’re Jerry,” Dec said.
The young man nodded. “The infamous Jerry,” he said with a weak laugh. “Tell her I’m sorry I screwed things up.”
“Why did you confess to something you hadn’t done?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought people would look at me differently. Nobody ever sees me around here. I just bring the mail in and clean up the studios and make coffee. Nobody really cares what I do. But for a little while, they knew who I was.”
“You shouldn’t have confessed,” Dec said.
“I know. After I did it, I couldn’t take it back. The cops wouldn’t listen. They didn’t believe me, that I made it up. I knew too many details, they said. But I only knew those things because everyone at the station was talking about Dr. Devine’s stalker.”
Dec nodded. “I’ll give her the letter.”
The young man smiled, then nodded, backing out of the control room. “Thanks. I really appreciate that.”
“I’m surprised the station let that guy come back,” Dec muttered after Jerry was gone.
“He’s the owner’s nephew,” Rachel’s producer said.
Dec groaned. “Yeah, well, he should have known better.” He turned his attention to Rachel’s mail, flipping through the envelopes. They’d all been opened. Perhaps it was station policy or maybe security was looking for more letters from her stalker, but as he read through a few, Dec didn’t find anything of interest.
Then he turned his attention to the package, flipping it over. The moment he did, his heart stopped. A slash of red paint covered the brown paper, the same shade that had been tossed on Rachel’s car.
He excused himself from the control room and walked across the hall to a small conference room. He set the package on the table. There was no telling what was inside. The prudent thing to do would be to call in the bomb squad.
He picked up the package and carried it through the hallway to the back door of the station. When he’d reached the middle of the empty parking lot, Dec knelt down and carefully began to unfasten the tape and string that held it together. He’d had some training in disarming explosives when he was in the navy, but if there was some type of explosive device inside, it probably wasn’t as sophisticated as what he was used to dealing with.
He got the brown paper off the box without incident, then ran his finger under the lid of the shoebox. There weren’t any trips or triggers, so he carefully tipped the box over and lifted the bottom off the top.
A small can of paint, streaked with dribbles of red, tumbled out. Stuck to it with a piece of tape was a note. Dec picked it up and squinted to read it by the parking lot lights. I’m watching you, the note said. We’ll talk soon.
“Damn it,” Dec muttered. He raked his hand through his hair, then carefully put the can of red paint back into the box. His first thought was to turn it over to the police. But maybe it was better to first give it to one of the private labs he used, just to make sure nothing was missed.
He walked over to his car and unlocked the truck, then put the box, along with the paper wrapping inside. He wouldn’t tell Rachel about this. It would only worry her further. But he did want to talk to Jerry. It seemed a bit more than coincidence that he was the one delivering the package.
Dec pressed the security buzzer for the back door and a few moments later the station guard came and let him in. He walked back toward Rachel’s studio, searching for Jerry along the way. He found the guy in the coffee room, refilling the sugar and creamer dispensers.
“Hey,” Dec said. “I need to talk to you.”
Jerry glanced up. “Did I do something wrong?”
“That package you brought in. Where did you get it? It didn’t come through the mail. There was no postage on it.”
“Some lady dropped it off this morning.”
“She brought it in?”
Jerry shook his head. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, no. She was out in the parking lot and I was coming into work. She asked if I’d deliver it to Dr. Devine. I said yes.”
“And you didn’t think anything of it? You know that Dr. Devine has a stalker.”
“But this was a lady,” Jerry said. “Dr. Devine’s stalker is a man.”
“We don’t know that.” Dec sighed. “What can you tell me about her? Describe her.”
“I don’t know,” Jerry said. “She wasn’t old. But she wasn’t really young either. And she had kinda dark hair, but you couldn’t really see because she was wearing a big hat. And sunglasses.”
“How tall? As tall as Dr. Devine? And older or younger than Dr. Devine?”
“She was a little older I guess and about the same height,” he said. “She had a pretty good body. I noticed when she was walking back to her car.”
“You saw her car?” Dec asked, stepping closer.
Jerry backed away. “Yeah. It was grey or maybe light blue. Some kind of sedan.”
“What make and model?” Dec asked.
“Hey, I don’t know much about cars. I couldn’t tell you. But it didn’t have four doors, only two. It was a little smaller, so maybe it was a foreign make.”
“Anything else you can remember?”
Jerry thought about it for a while, then shrugged. “She was really nice to me,” he offered.
“All right,” Dec said. “I want you to keep this between me and you. Don’t tell anyone else. Do I have your promise on that? I’m going to call someone from my firm over to see if you can pick out a photo of the type of car it was, or maybe make a drawing. Will you do that?”
“Only if you promise to give Dr. Devine that letter,” Jerry said.
“All right. But I’m going to read it first.”
A flush crept up the young man’s cheeks. “Sure. I guess.”
Dec made a quick phone call to the investigator he’d assigned to Rachel’s case, then turned and walked back to the control room. He slipped through the door and took a seat in the shadows again. Rachel’s voice came over the station speakers as she explained the proper and improper ways for men to masturbate. Dec hadn’t realized there was an improper way, but then he learned something new from Rachel every day.
Finally, he had something new to offer her. Her stalker wasn’t a man, but a woman. His buddy at the FBI had been right all along. So that seriously cut down on the number of suspects they were looking at.
This woman had struck at the university, at the radio station and at Rachel’s home. There had to be a way to connect all these dots, Dec mused. Somehow, he sensed that if he’d been working on the case full time and not spending his time protecting Rachel, he’d have been able to work this out. But his mind had been completely distracted by her.
The best thing to do would be to put a different detail on her, give her another bodyguard so he could go back to doing what he did best-investigating. But the thought of putting Rachel into someone else’s care, even one of his own guys’, wasn’t really an option.
For now, h
e’d have to do both jobs, starting with a thorough interview with Rachel. He was beginning to think her stalker knew her well, that there was a reason beyond just some crazy obsession that she was doing this. Rachel couldn’t know that many women personally, and of those she knew, how many of them could she have angered enough for someone to want to take revenge.
The minute he got her home, they’d begin. And he wouldn’t stop questioning her until he was sure he knew everything about her.
9
RACHEL ROLLED OVER IN BED, then pushed up on her elbow and shoved her hair out of her face. A persistent ringing had drawn her out of a deep sleep. As she looked around, she realized the sound was coming from Dec’s jeans, which were draped over the end of the bed.
Dec was lying beside her, his naked body sprawled across the mattress. She loved the way he slept, completely vulnerable, his body open to her touch. He was always so watchful when he was awake, but asleep, he let down his guard and she could get a sense of the man he’d be once he didn’t have to protect her anymore.
They’d been sleeping together like this for three nights now, discarding the last pretenses of propriety. They’d both accepted the fact they were sharing a very intense sexual relationship and in order to continue that, it was best if they shared a bed every night.
Sleeping in his arms, his long, lean body curled against hers, gave her a wonderful sense of security. And she liked having him there to touch and to kiss when her dreams woke her up. The nightmares had eased, but Rachel still had strange dreams, fitful images of danger that often made her wake up trembling.
But he was with her now and all she needed was to snuggle against his body to know that she was safe. She did that, throwing her arm around his waist and kissing his bicep.
Dec shifted, then opened his eyes and looked at her. A tiny smile curled the corners of his mouth and he groaned softly. “Morning.”
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