The Shadow: Someone is Watching (Rahab's Rope Series Book 1)

by Kimberly Rae

  “I’d like to see it,” Quinn said. “We can check it with the one Cole called in.”

  “It’s on a sticky note in the kitchen. I’ll get it.”

  “Before you do that,” Steve said, “can you confirm that this was the man?”

  He handed her the photo of the man in the plaid suit and Kelsey nodded. “That’s him. Same outfit even.”

  “What was he doing at my house?” Meagan asked, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “Is it cold in here? Why did he bring me flowers?” She took the photo and held it. Her hands shook and she gave it back to Steve. “Is he your new suspect?”

  “He’s one suspect,” Steve said. He looked over the flowers. “Did a note come with them?”

  Kelsey re-entered the room and handed the sticky note to Quinn. “Yes.” She pushed away large orange lilies and white carnations until she found the small card. She handed it to Meagan. “I didn’t open it.”

  Meagan held her breath as she tore the miniature envelope. She read the note inside. Her heart thudded and her lungs emptied of oxygen. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”

  Steve held out a hand for the card. She gave it to him with reluctance and he read aloud, “We make a great team. I love you.” His eyes pierced her. “Want to explain this?”

  “I—I can’t. I’ve never met the guy. I’ve never even seen him except in the flight surveillance videos you showed me.” Her throat closed up. She fell into a chair, hands on her cheeks, and looked from one person to another, stopping at Cole. “What is happening?” she whispered.

  Cole’s eyes held concern, but Steve’s did not. “You said we could search the house. Are you still okay with that?”

  “Yes, go ahead,” she said. The two men left the room and Pops reached over and took her hand. “Pops, I’m so scared,” she said, putting her free hand over her eyes. “What does this guy want with me?”

  “I don’t know, pumpkin,” he said. “But fretting about it won’t fix it. Let’s pray.” Kelsey joined them and Pops looked over at Cole. “I take it you’re the handsome soldier who came to visit the other night. Glad to see you made it all the way inside. My little granddaughter has only brought two other guys inside to meet me. I didn’t like either of them. We’ll see how long you last. Come and pray with us.”

  Meagan was glad she still had a hand over her face so no one could see that it was on fire. Cole must have come over and completed their circle, for Pops began to pray. His voice soothed and his words comforted. She placed herself under the refuge of the everlasting arms, and by the time her grandfather finished, she was able to add her amen to his words.

  “We’ll trust God on this,” he told her. “He’s never let us down before, not in four generations. He’s got a plan for this as well.”

  “Thank you, Pops.” She hugged him and avoided looking at Cole. The men returned, Quinn now with rubber gloves on, a small bottle of sand-art in hand.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  She smiled at the memory. “In India. The brothel children made it for me.”

  Quinn’s glance at Steve held information Meagan wished one of them would say out loud.

  “I need to take your sand-art bottle to our lab,” Steve said. “And I’d like to take the vase in to get fingerprints.” He looked at Kelsey. “You’re the only one besides the suspect who has touched it?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I would like my bottle of sand back when you’re through with it,” Meagan said, “but keep the vase.” She looked at the bouquet and shuddered. “Take the flowers, too. I don’t want them.” The men were near the front door when Meagan called them back. “I just remembered something. Wait here, please.”

  She ran upstairs to her room, opened her closet door, and searched through the laundry basket until she found the pair of jeans she had worn the day Cole hammered her car. She dug into one pocket, then another, until she found the crumpled note. On her way down the stairs, she heard Cole tease Steve, who held the vase, about his taste in flowers.

  “Stay out of this, Cole,” Steve said.

  “I was just joking.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” Steve barked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The vase had to be heavy. “Stop being everywhere and searching things, and stop hanging out with my suspect. This case is mine. So butt out or else.”

  Cole’s voice lowered. “Or else what?”

  Quinn must have already gone out to the car. Steve set the vase down on the small table in the hallway and stood nose-to-nose with Cole. “You’re not taking this job away from me.”

  “I don’t want your job,” Cole said. “I’m just—”

  She stepped on a creaky stair and they both looked up. “I have a note,” she said. “Someone left it for me at the store. It might be from this same guy.” She gave it to Steve. “Would you please tell me what is going on?”

  He pocketed the note and pulled out his phone. “You and Lucias Moore are working together in the drug trade, that’s what’s going on. As soon as I find that grey Oldsmobile, and as soon as I find the evidence I need about you, you’re both going to jail.”

  “But I told you, I don’t even know this guy!”

  His finger swiped his phone twice and he held it up for her to see the screen. “No? Then how do you explain him having a framed picture of you on a table in his house?”

  The blood drained from Meagan’s face. Her mouth opened but no words came out. Cole came to stand beside her. “Meagan?”

  “Lucias Moore is our main suspect.” Steve said. He shut down the phone. “And if I find what I think I’ll find in that bottle of sand. I’ll know for sure that you—” He pointed at Meagan. “—are his accomplice.”

  32

  Saturday, January 3

  1:00 p.m.

  “Things are finally getting somewhere,” Steve told Quinn before dropping him off at the office. “Get the vase and the sand to the lab. I’ll pick up Stephanie, take her home, and be back here by two.”

  “You got it.” Quinn shut the door and Steve headed out on the road toward the mall.

  So the guy in the plaid jacket was Lucias Moore. Steve sent Stephanie a text to meet him outside the Food Court and thought through the possibilities. They’d find Lucias’ prints on the vase, and opium in the sand-art bottle. On Monday, they’d take the warrant to Lucias’ house and get whatever he was hiding in his bedroom. They’d take prints off the photos on the wall and match them to the prints on the vase.

  If all went well, he’d be making two arrests on Monday. Closing a case of this caliber would have to move him up in the ranks. He’d be given harder cases, bigger cases. Journalists would start to know him by name. Co-workers would ask for his help specifically when they hit on a hard-to-crack investigation.

  By the time he picked up his wife, Steve was smiling. She climbed into the passenger seat. “You look happy,” she said. She reached back to set a large bag from Belk in the backseat.

  He glanced her way. “You look pretty pleased yourself.”

  “I am. I got a super cute dress. It wasn’t the size I wanted, but the color is pretty.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Don’t you want to see it?”

  “Aren’t you going to wear it tomorrow?”

  She sighed and crossed her arms. “Never mind.”

  What had he done now? Steve waited for some tears or a nagging comment. After two minutes passed, he decided the silent treatment was worse. “So, we got some good evidence today,” he said. She kept her gaze out the side window, but he figured that was a good thing. If she kept quiet, maybe he could think through things clearly for once. “Meagan, the girl you’re going to scope out for me tomorrow, is running scared. I’ve got her on the hook. I’m going to do a polygraph test on her next week, but it will just be for the official file. I don’t need the wires to tell me when she’s lying.”

  Stephanie turned and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

/>   They were halfway home. A few more miles and he could be on his way back to the office. He wanted to get as much done on this case as possible today, since Stephanie would have the car tomorrow. “A person’s sensory recall comes from a specific part of the brain,” he told her. “The right side is where the brain manufactures new ideas. The left side is where it remembers things. So if you question a person and they look up and to the right, they are creating a story.”

  “Lying.”

  “And if they look up and to the left, they are searching a memory.”

  “Telling the truth.”

  Steve tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music on the radio. “There are lots of other ways we’re trained to tell truth from lies, things like body language and facial expressions. The eye one works best in my opinion, though, unless the person is left-handed, in which case the right side and left side are opposite.”

  “So how do you know if a person is right or left-handed?”

  He almost rolled his eyes. “It’s pretty easy to tell.”

  “What if they’re faking it? Or what if they’re ambidextrous, what then?”

  “It’s not that—”

  “Or what if they learned that tactic, so they’re pretending to be right-handed when they’re really left-handed? What if they’re dyslexic?”

  “What? What would being dyslexic have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the expert. You tell me.”

  This was why life was easier at the office. “Here, we’re home. Let’s talk about this some other time, okay?”

  She reached back for her bag. “You’re not coming?”

  “This case is hot right now. I’ve got to get back.”

  “Of course you do.”

  She always seemed to be sighing these days. “I’ll see you later tonight,” he said. “Want me to bring home dinner?”

  “Will you be home by dinner?”

  “Probably.”

  She looked at him like she knew better. “I’ll make myself a sandwich.”

  “Suit yourself.” He turned the car around, glad he had a reason to go back to work. When it came to wanting respect, or appreciation, there was a lot more chance of getting it at the office these days than at home.

  __________________________

  Saturday, January 3

  1:00 p.m.

  “I just called in reinforcements,” Kelsey said. “Brianna’s bringing pizza and an old movie. We’re going to eat ice cream out of the carton and forget everything that just happened.”

  “It’s a great idea, but not possible,” Meagan said. She hadn’t been able to stop wringing her hands since the FBI agents left. “Some guy is trying to trap me, or set me up, or something. Why else would he say he loves me and we’re a great team? I’ve never even met him!” She pulled her hands apart and looked at her palms. “My hands are dry. I need some lotion.” She stood and faced Cole, who hadn’t moved from his spot near the fireplace. He’d be plenty warm by now if there had actually been a fire in it. “And why did those guys seem so interested in my sand-art bottle? There are a lot of secrets everybody seems to think I should know, and I don’t know a thing!” She bit her lip and asked Pops to hand her a tissue to blow her nose. “I’m going to make some hot chocolate.”

  “Make some for me,” her grandfather said. “And bring me some of that pecan pie your friend brought over.”

  “You’re diabetic, Grandpa.”

  “Just cut me a sliver then.”

  Kelsey followed Meagan into the kitchen. “Sorry. Guess I shouldn’t have brought the pie. Is a sliver okay?”

  “Yeah.” Meagan opened the fridge and pulled out the pie. “But he’ll eat three slivers if you let him.”

  “I’ll only eat two,” Pops yelled from the living room.

  Meagan leaned onto the kitchen counter and her laugh was a little too close to hysterical. “What am I going to do, Kelsey? How do I fix this?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything you can do at the moment, which is why we’re going to distract you with a forget-about-it party.”

  “A what?”

  “I grew up with three sisters. Whenever one of us would get our heart broken, or have an extra bad day, we’d throw a forget-about-it party. We’d dress in our pjs and eat ice cream out of the carton and watch old movies.”

  Meagan’s response was emphatic. “I’m not wearing my pjs with Cole Fleming still here.”

  Kelsey laughed. “He’s already seen them once.”

  “An embarrassment I’d like to avoid repeating, thank you.”

  The door swung open. When Cole entered the kitchen, Kelsey dissolved into laughter and Meagan blushed furiously. “Did I interrupt something?” he asked.

  “Not a thing,” Kelsey said. “I’m just headed up to get Meagan’s slippers for her.”

  “Kelsey...” Meagan warned.

  “The ones with the bunny heads?” Cole smiled. Meagan wanted to crawl under the kitchen table. “They’re cute.”

  “Hey, Meagan!” Pops called from the other room. “See if that man of yours can fix the leaky pipe while he’s in there.”

  Could her face get any hotter? She put a hand to her brow and shook her head. “Let’s get that cut of yours bandaged so you can leave.”

  His grin was huge and once again made him look like a little boy in a big man’s body. “I’m in no hurry,” he said.

  Meagan had no response for that. “I’ll go get the first-aid kit.” She fled the room, sidestepping Kelsey at the bottom of the stairs with the slippers, and kept going until she was in Grandpa’s room with the door shut behind her. Chaos, everything was chaos now. She had to do something, was willing to do something, but what? March down to the FBI office and demand that Steve give her some information? Track down the flower delivery guy and threaten him with her mace? “God, I’ve tried to create a stable environment for Pops, to keep his heart as stress-free as possible. Now we’ve got FBI agents searching the place, Kelsey trying to get me to forget, and a really, really good-looking guy who is as secretive as he is charming in my kitchen.” She dropped to sit on Pop’s bed. “Lord, would you give me some wisdom, please? Is it okay to trust Cole Fleming? He doesn’t seem like the guys we encounter in our work, but I know the heart can be deceitful.” She pulled the first-aid kit from under the bed and opened it, sorting through the materials. “Everything is just so wrong right now. How do I make it right again? Steve thinks I’m with the bad guy. Nobody seems to recognize this bad guy might be after me. And he got inside the house today...” She pressed her fingers against her eyes. She couldn’t cry. Not now. She had guests.

  Get busy, Meagan, she told herself. Do something.

  Her mother had always said, “You can’t hike the Appalachian Trail right this second, but you can take one step right this second.” What was a step she could take? She looked around the room, searching for inspiration, and her gaze fell on the old-style phone hooked to the wall above a small table with a pad of paper on it. She pulled the earpiece off the wall and punched in numbers she had memorized just in case.

  “Gainesville Police Department. How may I help you?”

  Meagan took in a deep breath. “I need to know what to do to get a conceal-and-carry permit, and also how to get a restraining order.” She wrote the information on the pad and thanked the person before hanging up. On Monday, she would start the process of getting a gun, and if this plaid-jacket guy got anywhere near her home again, she’d have the law to help protect her and Pops from him.

  Surprised at how much better taking that one step made her feel, Meagan gathered up the first-aid supplies and headed back toward the kitchen, where Cole Fleming waited.

  33

  Saturday, January 3

  1:30 p.m.

  Cole enjoyed the look of pleased surprise on Meagan’s face when she returned. “You made the hot chocolate?”

  “It wasn’t hard.” He smiled. “I can cook as long as there are packets or
boxes with instructions on them.”

  She laughed and the sound churned up a longing that surprised him. When was the last time he set aside the mire of work and just enjoyed a few hours of something good? The Bible said to think on things that were good, and just, and pure, and lovely, and a few other words he couldn’t remember. He had lost that focus. The darkness too often pulled him under. How could he work for justice and not get overcome with evil?

  “You’re thinking awfully hard,” Meagan said. “Afraid I’ll diagnose that you need stitches in that hand?”

  He looked up at her from where he sat. Every day he was becoming more convinced that Meagan Winston was something good. Good and just and pure and lovely. He would forget everything else today and think on her. “Your hot chocolate’s going to get cold.”

  She sat across from him at the table and lifted the mug, wrapping her hands around its warmth and taking a sip. “Just right.” She smiled. “Should I take the other mug to Kelsey?”

  “She’s got one. She and your grandfather are watching football.”

  “You can join them if you’d like,” Meagan offered.

  He wanted to stay where he was. “I’d rather see what I can do about that leaky pipe of yours. And I should look at it before you work on my hand. Wouldn’t want to get a fresh bandage dirty and you have to redo it.”

  “That’s considerate of you.” She glanced at the sink. “I’ve tried fixing that pipe several times already. The house was built in 1952, so stuff all over the place needs work. I Google home repairs, and the guys at Lowes know me by sight now, but even at that I can only manage temporary solutions. One of these days the whole place might fall down on my head.” Meagan took another sip. “You fix pipes?”