Valley of Shadows and Stranger in the Shadows: Valley of ShadowsStranger in the Shadows
Page 33
“I don’t know what your plans are, Lord, but I sure would like to. Chloe’s not the kind of woman I can be just friends with. If that’s all You’ve got planned for us, I’m not sure I’m up for the task.”
Cain barked, his feet slipping on tile as he raced through the kitchen and parked himself in front of the front door.
“Are they here?” Ben strode across the room and nudged Cain out of the way as a soft tap sounded on the wood. “Hi…”
The greeting died on his lips as he caught sight of Chloe, her face white, the few freckles that dusted the bridge of her nose standing out in sharp contrast.
He pulled her into the house, his hands skimming down thin arms and coming to rest on her waist. She was shaking, her breath coming in short, quick gasps. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Yes. No.” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she swiped it away, the gesture abrupt and filled with irritation.
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything.” She sniffed back more tears, pacing across the room, her limp pronounced, her posture stiff.
“That covers a lot of bases, Chloe.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“What happened?” He urged her around to face him. Her eyes were deep emerald and filled with stark emotion. Anger. Frustration. Not the fear or sadness he’d expected to see.
“Just one more piece of evidence proving that I’m as unhinged as the D.C. police think.”
“No one thinks you’re unhinged.”
“No, they just believe my imagination is working overtime. The worst part is, they’re right.”
“You’ve got a reason for saying that. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Abel was outside when I got home from church. I hadn’t left him out there.”
Ben’s hand tightened on Chloe’s shoulder and he had to force his grip to ease. “Did you call Jake?”
“I was going to. I got in my car and grabbed the phone, but my downstairs neighbor came out before I made the call. I guess Abel was hanging out in the foyer. Connor thought he was a stray and put him outside. He was very apologetic.”
She paused, a smile chasing away some of her irritation. “The fact that I was having a panic attack when he came outside sent him into fits of remorse. He wanted to call an ambulance, but I told him I’d be fine once I stopped hyperventilating.”
She was making light of the situation, but Ben knew it had bothered her a lot more than she was saying. “I’m sure he’ll get over the trauma eventually. Did you ever call Jake?”
“So he could come and tell me that Abel slipped out of the house while I was leaving?” She raked a hand through her hair and shook her head. “No way. I’ve been through that kind of embarrassment one too many times.”
“I think it’s better to be a little embarrassed than a lot dead.” The words were harsher than he’d meant them and Chloe stiffened, the color that had slowly returned to her face gone again.
“Connor went up to the apartment with me. It was locked up tight. No sign that anyone had been there. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“That’s how your apartment was when we found the photos on your digital camera and how it was when you overdosed on pain medication you’ve said you didn’t take.” His words were hard, ground out through gritted teeth and frustration. Chloe was an intelligent, strong woman. The fact that she seemed to want to believe that she was imagining things was something he couldn’t understand.
“But this time nothing happened. No weird photos. No missing medicine.”
“How do you know, Chloe? Did you check every container in your refrigerator? Make sure the furnace hadn’t been tampered with? We need to call Jake and let him do what he does best—look for evidence.”
“And when he finds nothing, I’ll be right back where I started—struggling to figure out what’s going on while everyone around me insists that nothing is.”
“You’ll never be back where you started.” He smoothed the bangs out of her eyes, silky strands of hair catching on his rough palms. “You have people here who believe in you. That’s not going to change.”
“Won’t it? What if this stuff goes on for a month? Two months? Don’t you think Jake is going to get a little tired of running to my rescue when there’s nothing to rescue me from?”
“There’s something to rescue you from, Chloe. Just because we don’t know what that is yet, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Jake knows that. I know that. Neither of us are going to give up until we find the person responsible for everything that’s happened to you.”
She smiled, moving away from his touch, her hair sliding over his knuckles, the dark strands falling over her shoulders and covering the scars on her neck. What she’d been through couldn’t be hidden, though. It lived in her eyes and her voice. “I think I know that, but I still don’t want to go through the same thing I went through in D.C., feeling sure something terrible was going to happen only to have the police prove me wrong every time.”
“They didn’t prove you wrong. They just never proved you right. That’s what we’re going to do and the first step is letting Jake take a look at your apartment.”
“He can look, but you’re the one who’s going to take responsibility if he decides it was a big waste of his time.”
“Jake’s philosophy is better safe than sorry. I feel the same.” Ben picked up the phone and dialed Jake’s home number, antsy to get things moving. No way did he believe Chloe had let Abel out of the apartment without realizing it. If she hadn’t let the puppy out, someone else had. The sooner they discovered what that person had been doing in her apartment, the better Ben would feel.
“Reed here.”
“Jake, it’s Ben.”
“What’s up?”
“We’ve got a situation. I thought you might like to check it out.”
“Tell me.”
Ben gave Jake the details, knowing his friend would be as anxious to find out what was going on as he was.
“I’ll be at your house in fifteen minutes. If Chloe gives me the key, I can go back to her apartment and check things out.”
“Thanks.”
“What did he say?” Chloe leaned against the wall, her posture deceptively relaxed, the anxiety she’d managed to harness showing only in her white-knuckled fists.
“He’ll be here in fifteen minutes to get your keys. He wants to check things out.”
“There won’t be any evidence to lead him in the right direction. There never is.”
“This time might be different.”
“Or it might be the same as every other time.” She smiled, but the frustration in her eyes was unmistakable. “I’m ready for the nightmare to be over, but no matter how hard I look, I can’t see any ending to it.”
“There’s an ending to it. It may take time, but we’ll find it.” Ben pulled her forward, wrapping his arms around her waist. She leaned her head against his chest, her hair tickling his chin, a subtle floral scent drifting on the air. He wanted to inhale deeply, take it into his lungs and savor it. Memorize it so that in five years, ten, twenty, he’d remember standing in his house with Chloe, staring out over the parsonage yard, realizing…
What?
That it felt right, good, permanent. That there was going to be much more to their relationship than either of them expected or even wanted.
He shoved aside the thought, but didn’t move away from Chloe. Partly because holding her did feel right, partly because she seemed to need his support.
Her hands rested on his waist, her body not stiff, but not relaxed, either. As if she didn’t want to allow herself to get too close. And maybe she didn’t. She’d been through a lot with Adam. Keeping her distance might be the only way she felt she could keep her heart intact.
He wished he could tell her she was wrong, but he felt the same way. Time wasn’t on their side and the longer it took for them to track down Chloe’s stalker, the more likely it was that that person would act again. Maybe next time with more serious results. “God is in control, not the person who’s stalking you. It’s His timing, His will that’s going to be done. We can take comfort in that.”
“Maybe so, but right now it seems like a cold comfort.” She frowned, stepped out of his arms. “I’ve been a Christian since I was fifteen. I know God will work things out in His time and His way. I just wish I knew what that meant for my life.”
“I think that’s the hardest thing about faith, Chloe. Trusting the driver even when we can’t clearly see the road He’s taking us on.”
“Oh, I can see the road all right. It’s covered with ice and has a hundred-foot drop on either side.”
Ben chuckled, smoothing his hands over Chloe’s silky hair, framing her face with his palms. “If God’s the driver, you don’t have to worry about going over the edge.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’ve been doing most of the driving these past few years.”
“If that’s the case, you’d better take it slow and drive carefully.”
“You’re not going to tell me I should get out of the driver’s seat?” She raised a dark eyebrow, the smile that curved her lips softening the sharp line of her jaw.
“I didn’t think you’d want to hear me say something you already know.”
“I do know it, but doing it isn’t always as easy as it should be. I like plans. I like purpose. I like to know where I’m headed.” She turned to stare out the window, her gaze fixed on some distant point. A thought. A memory. Something sad and ugly from the look in her eyes.
He wrapped an arm around her waist, tugging her back against his chest, wanting to offer comfort, but not sure that words could touch the hurt that Chloe tried so hard to hide. “There is a plan, you know. And a purpose. Whether you see it or not.”
She nodded, her hair brushing against his chin, the silky strands reminding him of long-ago days, of femininity and softness, sweet smiles and gentle laughter. It had been a long time since he’d had any of those things in his life. Today, with Chloe in his arms and the gray-gold beauty of autumn outside the window, he missed them more than he had since the first days following Theresa’s death.
That meant something and he couldn’t ignore it. If there was one thing he’d learned from watching Theresa live, watching her die, it was that life was too short to waste time, to make excuses, to turn away from what God willed and wanted. His wife had embraced every challenge, every problem with open arms and an open heart. She hadn’t let fear stop her, hadn’t let her disease keep her from the things she felt called to do. Her example had set the course for much of Ben’s life in the years since he’d buried her.
And it would set his course now.
If this was what God had planned for his life, if Chloe was, he wouldn’t turn his back on it.
His arm tightened a fraction on her waist and he pulled her a little closer. One way or another, he had a feeling that with Chloe things were going to get a whole lot worse before they got better.
Chapter Seventeen
Jake arrived less than fifteen minutes after Ben called him, his face set in hard lines, his long legs eating up the ground as he paced Ben’s living room. He didn’t look happy and Chloe figured that could only mean bad news.
“I just got a call from a friend on the Arlington police force. He heard I was checking into your case and thought I might be interested in knowing that your fiancé had filed a crime report a few months before he was killed. Did you know that?”
“Yes. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. Someone broke into his apartment, took a watch, a tie and cuff links. A few dollar bills he’d left lying on his dresser.”
“It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but now it does?”
“I was thinking about things last night. Ben had asked me if I’d felt stalked before the accident. The weeks leading up to it are blurry, but I don’t recall anything strange happening. To me.”
“But things were happening to Adam?” Jake pulled his notebook out, started writing. “What besides the break-in?”
“What are you thinking, Jake?” Ben lounged near the door, his shoulder against the wall, his thick hair mussed.
“I’m thinking there may be a connection between the break-in and the accident. I’m thinking that maybe Adam is that connection. That he was the intended victim, not Chloe.”
“I wondered that, too, but why try to kill Adam by sabotaging my car?”
“Good question. I don’t have an answer yet, but I plan to find one.” Jake paced back across the room, paused in front of Chloe, his dark blue eyes staring into hers. “Do you have any ideas? Anything that didn’t seem important at the time, but that seems like it might be connected now.”
“Yes.”
“You answered pretty quickly.”
“Like I said, I was thinking about it last night. I planned to call you tomorrow.”
“You should have called me this morning.”
“What’s done is done, Jake. Let’s move on from here.” Ben seemed completely at ease, but Chloe sensed a tension in him that belied his relaxed posture.
“Good point.” Jake’s sharp gaze was still on Chloe “So, tell me what you thought of last night.”
“Not much, just some little things that didn’t seem related when I looked at them separately. Once I started connecting the dots, they seemed to make a cohesive picture.”
“Go ahead.”
“A week or so before we broke up, Adam had his cell phone and home phone number changed. He said he was getting too many crank calls.”
“Did you ask him what he meant?”
“Yes. He didn’t give me a lot of details. Just said he was getting a lot of hang ups during the day and in the middle of the night. Once he had the number changed everything seemed fine.”
She hesitated, then continued. “After I found out he’d been seeing someone else, I figured the calls had been from his girlfriend and put the issue out of my mind.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing definitive. Just a sense I had that something was wrong. In the months before we broke up, even in the weeks after, Adam didn’t seem himself.”
“He was seeing another woman and hiding it from you. Once you did find out, you broke up with him. I think that’s a good reason to not be himself.”
“That’s what I thought, but Adam didn’t believe in dwelling on things. Whether it was his mistake or someone else’s, he was always quick to forgive and move on. Maybe I’m wrong, but when I think back, it seems like he was worried. Maybe even scared. And that wasn’t like Adam at all.”
“Looking backward at something doesn’t often give us a clear picture.” But as he spoke, Jake was scribbling in his notebook.
“Maybe not, but I’ve struggled to think of a reason someone would want to hurt me. If the stalker is after me because of The Strangers case, why the slow torture? Why not just do what Jackson did and get it over with quickly? If he’s trying to keep me from discovering information hidden in one of the computers I was working on before the accident, he succeeded. I quit my job. Moved away. Why keep coming after me and risk being found out?”
“You’re making good points.”
“They’re Ben’s not mine, but they make sense.”
&nbs
p; “They do and they’re leading in the direction I’ve been thinking this case was going—if we’re going to find your stalker we need to start looking at people who knew your fiancé, who were close to him, who might have had something to gain from his death and yours.”
“Everyone loved Adam. I can’t imagine someone wanting to hurt him.”
“Someone did hurt him. It’s time to find out who. When I get back to the office, I’m going to call and see if any evidence was collected from Adam’s apartment after the break-in, and I’m going to see if I can get copies of phone records for his two old numbers. Maybe we’ll find a pattern of calls, match a number and name to it. You make a list of Adam’s friends and co-workers. And see if you can track down the name of the woman he was seeing.”
“His business partner might be able to tell me. James and Adam went to high school together. They were like brothers.”
“Then that’s where you should start. I’m going to head over to your apartment and do the preliminary walk-through. You can meet me there in a half hour and we’ll go through the place together.”
He stepped out the door and drove away, leaving Chloe alone with Ben again. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. In the moments before Jake had arrived, she’d stood with Ben’s arm wrapped around her waist, his breath ruffling her hair, the comfort of his presence making her want to lean back against his chest, accept his support. His strength.
She hadn’t, but that was more a matter of timing than willpower. If Jake hadn’t arrived and broken the silence that seemed filled with dreams and hopes, Chloe might have caved in to temptation, allowed herself to lean on Ben for a just a little while.
And that would have been a disaster. A little while with Ben could never be enough.
“Did you love him?” Ben’s question pulled Chloe from her thoughts and she met his eyes, saw sympathy and concern in his gaze.
Had she loved Adam?
For a while she’d thought so, his attentiveness, humor and gregarious personality a perfect foil for her own more serious nature. Things had changed though, the excitement of new love fading. Or maybe the relationship hadn’t changed as much as Chloe’s perception of it had. She’d wanted to be first, not second, a necessity rather than an extra, a vital part of Adam’s life rather than one more person to spend time with. She wanted so much more than what Adam wanted to give.