Dare Me Again: A Christmas Chronicle

by Karin Tabke

  “Pfft, all men want a boy first. Elliot did, too, but…Well, God didn’t mean for us to have children. Back in my day there was no in vitro stuff. Not that it was Elliot’s problem, it was mine. My uterus was not conducive to pregnancy. Of course, we could have used a surrogate, but… Oh, well,” she sighed and hugged Kat to her again. “It’s okay. We have you and now we have a baby coming.” She unlocked her door and called. “Elliot, guess who’s home?”

  Kat giggled and let them fuss over her. She loved them dearly.

  Simon was a cop for a reason. His instincts never steered him wrong. He knew exactly why his wife wasn’t returning his calls or texts. She was in the city and damn, fuck it all to hell, so was Scott! His frustration mounted when he couldn’t get an immediate flight back to the Bay Area.

  He made another call.

  “Thornton.”

  “Kat’s in the city and I’m fucking stuck in LA for another hour. I need you to get to her and hold on to her until I get there.”

  “Stevie’s with me, we’ll head over to the apartment right now. And I have some news on Scott’s conditions.”

  “What are they?”

  “He’s wearing a bracelet. Twenty-four seven monitoring. It’s on until after he testifies, and he’s mandated to stay within city limits. He steps one foot outside of San Fran, he goes back in.”

  “Anyone on him?”

  “The DA’s office is monitoring but they’re having some issues picking up and holding Scott’s signal.”

  “Son of a bitch! Those monitors aren’t foolproof. Scott has somehow disabled it or figured out how to jam the signal. I’m calling SFPD to get over to the apartment.”

  “Stevie and I are around the corner. I’ll call you as soon as we get there.”

  “Hurry.”

  Simon exhaled loudly, then called the DDA and reamed him several more new assholes.

  Kat gave Rosie and Elliot kisses and promises to visit with them after the New Year, then headed to her apartment.

  As she walked down the hallway, she smiled. There was another reason she had come back here. As much as she loved the comfort of the home she shared with Simon in the south bay, she missed her apartment. She missed the vitality and diversity of the city. But mostly she’d needed to be in the city where she’d fallen in love with Simon. Although, truth be told, she’d fallen in love with him the minute she bumped into him coming out of an elevator at a San Diego hotel. He’d caught her to him to keep her from falling, and well, she’d felt as if she had been hit by a truck. If there was one thing she could thank her ex-lover Evan for, it was his dare that the three of them go back to her room.

  Heat washed though her. Embarrassment, too. But she had no regrets, despite the pain that had followed. That night was bittersweet, but had it not happened, she would never have met Simon.

  She scowled when she thought of Evan. What a blind fool she had been.

  When she opened the apartment door she stood still and inhaled the scent of her perfume, Chanel No. 5. Funny, despite the fact that she loved her fragrance, and never left the house with a dab or two, she’d never realized how intensely it scented the air. It seemed odd that it would still linger as strongly as it did, despite her two-month absence.

  Closing the door behind her, she remembered that she needed to call Simon. Feeling more than a little sheepish for not calling him right back, she hit the icon with his picture on it. The call went immediately to his voice mail. “Hey, baby, it’s me calling you back. You sound worried. I hope everything’s okay in LA. Call me back. Love you.” She hit the send icon, walked into the kitchen, and dumped her purse onto the table. Suddenly she was ravenous. She’d skipped breakfast because her stomach wasn’t on board, but now it had settled. Knowing there was no food in the place, she glanced at her watch. One o’clock. She picked up the apartment phone to call Lucca’s, her favorite deli, for a delivery order, but it was dead.

  That was odd. She looked at the handset, then at the wall-mounted piece, which appeared undisturbed. She clicked the phone off and on again, but there was still no dial tone. She shrugged, hung up the handset, and scrolled through her cell phone until she found the number she was looking for.

  She called and was immediately put on hold. As she made her way to the thermostat in the living room to turn the heat on, she stopped. The scent of her perfume became stronger. She moved toward her bedroom and frowned. The door was closed. She never closed it when she was gone. Hell, she never closed it period. As she placed her hand on the knob to open it, a voice on the other end of the phone said, “Lucca’s, what can I get for you?”

  Kat jumped, startled, the hair on the back of her neck spiking. She shook her head and walked back to the kitchen. “Hi, I’d like to place and order for delivery.”

  “Shoot,” the guy said.

  Kat gave him her order and name. Since she was a regular, they had her address and credit card info on file. After she hung up, she walked back to the bedroom door and stood staring at it. As the heat kicked in, she shivered, but not from the cold.

  Her gut told her to leave, but her brain said she was being absurd. The only way into her bedroom was via her door, which had been locked, or the balcony. And one would have to be a monkey to climb the five stories to her balcony.

  Had someone managed to slip into the secure building, the Nosey Rosie Patrol would have detected anyone coming off the elevator to their floor. There weren’t any other apartments, just hers and Rosie’s. Simon’s overprotectiveness was making her paranoid. The door was closed because Simon must have shut it when they had left two months prior. She headed for the bedroom and the comfy winter clothes she’d come for.

  Chapter Five

  Just as she reached for the knob, her doorbell rang. Not once, but repeatedly.

  Who the heck was that?

  Hurrying to the door to stop the incessant ringing, she didn’t bother to look through the peephole and yanked it open. “Okay, okay! I’m here.”

  She opened her door to find her husband’s best friend, Jack, and his girlfriend, Stevie, standing there. To say she was surprised was an understatement. Her eyes widened as she took in Stevie’s appearance. Stevie Cavanaugh was one tough cookie, but standing there with her long dark hair unbound, dressed in a pair of skinny jeans, black leather riding boots and a fitted white gauze poet shirt, she looked like a cover model. “Stevie, you look amazing.” Gone from her pretty face was the stress of her job as a homicide detective, and also gone was what Kat, who was curvy, thought had been a too-thin body. Stevie had put on a few strategic pounds. Pounds that nicely filled in her curves.

  Kat smiled and stood back, opening the door wider. “Jack, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but it looks like having an FBI agent boyfriend does a body good.”

  Jack laughed, pulled her across the threshold into his embrace, and planted a kiss right on her lips as Stevie strode past her into the apartment.

  “I keep telling Stevie she looks like a million bucks,” Jack said, holding Kat firmly in his embrace as Stevie continued through the foyer into the hallway, looking pretty nosy.

  “Um, what’s going on?” Kat asked.

  “How long have you have been here?” Jack asked.

  “In the building about twenty minutes, in the apartment maybe five or so. Why?”

  “Pregnancy agrees with you, Doc,” Stevie said over her shoulder as she drew her weapon from the holster nestled at the small of her back. “You look stunning.” As the detective did the stealth cop thing, Jack moved Kat farther into the outside hallway, then gently moved her out of the doorway.

  “Do you two always stop by a friend’s house with your guns drawn, nosing around?” Kat asked.

  “Sit tight, Doc. We just need to clear your place,” Jack said.

  “Of what?”

  When Jack didn’t immediately answer, Kat got riled
. “Simon sent you to check up on me, didn’t he?”

  Jack pursed his lips, but didn’t answer.

  “This is Simon totally overreacting and to what, I don’t know!” Kat said, feeling like she was a prisoner in her own life. Really, how many times over the years had she come into her apartment in the middle of the night and was completely safe? She lived in Pac Heights, one of the safest neighborhoods in the city, for Pete’s sake.

  Crossing her arms over her chest, Kat waited for Detective Cavanaugh to “clear” her apartment. Total absurdity.

  Stevie strode from the back of her apartment to the foyer at the same time she holstered her gun.

  Given the dread she’d felt standing by the door earlier, Kat sighed with relief. See, it had just been her imagination all along. “Okay, now you can call Simon and tell him he had nothing to—”

  “How long did you say you’ve been here?” Stevie interrupted.

  Kat frowned. “Five maybe ten minutes.”

  “Did you go into your bedroom at all?”

  “No, I was about to when you rang the doorbell.”

  Stevie gave Jack a look that said, “Houston we have a problem.”

  “What?” Kat asked.

  Stevie inclined her head toward the back of the apartment. As Jack moved past her to see for himself, Kat moved with him.

  “Stay here, Doc,” said Stevie, gently but firmly.

  Icy fingers of dread scraped along her spine, making her shiver.

  When Jack returned a minute later, he had the same look on his face as Stevie. Kat swept past them both, strode down the hall and into the bedroom, and stopped short at the threshold. Her knees shook and had Jack not come up behind her and slid his arm around her waist for support, she would have collapsed.

  Her bedroom was trashed. Cancel that, her bed was trashed. The headboard cracked in half, pillows torn to shreds, the sheets pulled off and slashed, and—her cheeks flamed. Her panties were ripped into pieces, littering the floor. The smell of Chanel No. 5 permeated the room. Whoever had done this had taken her perfume and lotion and dumped them all over the place.

  The person who’d done this hadn’t been looking for some baubles to steal. He’d been in a rage.

  He’d wanted to hurt her, but had to settle for her bed and possessions instead.

  Oh God. Her stomach churned. Ten minutes she’d been in here. Had she just missed the person who did this? What if—what if—

  She covered her mouth with her hand, feeling sick.

  “There doesn’t appear to be any forced entry from the French doors to the balcony. I think whoever did this had a key or knew where to find one,” Stevie said.

  “But they would have to get through the lobby door first and you need an electronic key card for that,” Kat explained, her voice shaky; she had difficulty breathing. God, she wished Simon was here.

  Stevie shook her head. “They could have waited for someone to come in or out and caught the door before it closed, then taken the stairway to remain undetected. The apartment door is relatively easy to breach.”

  The cell phone in Kat’s hand screeched out “Bad to the Bone.”

  “Simon,” she gasped after engaging the call.

  “Are you okay?” he demanded.

  “Someone was here! They destroyed our bed,” she cried as panic overtook her.

  “Are you unharmed?!” he demanded.

  “Yes.” She exhaled, trying to get a grip on her fear and racing emotions. “Jack and Stevie are here.”

  “Hand the phone to Jack, please.”

  “Simon, what’s going on?”

  “Hand the phone to Jack, please,” he enunciated in the deadliest tone Kat had ever heard come from him. She handed the phone to Jack. And for the first time since she had met Simon, she understood that while she might not be aware of the day-to-day danger that lurked behind the most innocuous door, her husband was. He was hypervigilant, and she needed to take a page from his awareness book.

  “She’s okay, man, just shook up,” Jack started as he strode from the apartment to the vestibule.

  Kat trembled, shaking her head. Stevie took her into her arms and rubbed her shoulders. “It’s okay, Doc, whoever did it is gone. You’re in no immediate danger.”

  Kat shivered hard, because that might not have been true. For all she knew, there had been someone inside just before she’d come in. If she hadn’t stopped to visit with Rosie and Elliot…

  Who hated her enough to do all this? There was only one person she knew of who fit the bill: Evan Scott. But that was impossible. He was in a San Francisco jail awaiting trial for corporate espionage and attempted murder.

  Unless he wasn’t in jail anymore.

  Jack walked back into the apartment and handed Kat her phone.

  “Hey, Princess,” Simon said softly. “I need you to listen to me, no interruptions, okay?”

  Shaking, she nodded and said, “Okay.”

  Jack guided her to a chair and sat her down.

  “I’m on my way to you, about forty minutes out. I want you to pack what you can there, then Jack and Stevie are going to drive you in their car to meet me. Then you’re going to take my Jeep and drive up to the cabin in Truckee.”

  “Simon—”

  “Evan’s out, baby, and he wants you. He’s in the city and on the move. I want you as far away from there as possible while I track his ass down. Once I do, he’s going back for what he did to the apartment. When he’s back behind bars, I’ll meet you at the cabin.”

  Kat’s heart dropped. “Out? How?”

  “He struck a deal, they let him go, but he’s wearing a bracelet. The cops had trouble picking up his signal earlier today, but he’s on the grid now. He’s less than a mile from the apartment. Do you understand why I want you out of the city?”

  Her hands shook uncontrollably. “Yes, it makes sense, but I don’t want to be separated from you.”

  “Stevie will drive up with you while Jack stays back and works this end with me.”

  “No—it’s Christmas Eve, it’s supposed to snow, and I don’t want Stevie stuck with me on her and Jack’s first Christmas.”

  “She has no issue with driving you up there, neither does Jack.”

  “I’m not a kid, Simon, I can drive myself.”

  “No arguments on this, baby. Now get packing.”

  While she was packing, SFPD showed up, along with a crime scene crew. Nosy Rosie, with Elliot in tow, barged in, demanding to know what the hell was going on. Jack took them aside and explained the situation.

  Despite the tense situation, Rosie wolf-whistled when she got a gander at Jack’s admirable backside as he strode back toward Kat’s bedroom where the techs painstakingly went over it. “They never grew cops like that when I was your age.”

  “I’m standing right here, Rosalinda,” Elliot said, pouting.

  She wagged her eyebrows before morphing into Revenge Rosie.

  “Rosie,” Kat cautioned, when her friend started telling the cops how to do their job. “Let the police do what they need to do. And promise me you won’t go looking for Evan and go Tae Bo Ninja on him.”

  “I can’t make any promises if I see him, doll. That man has been nothing but trouble from the get-go.”

  “They’ll get him.”

  Twenty minutes later, Jack, Stevie, and Kat met Simon at the CHP substation on 8th Avenue.

  Chapter Six

  Kat flew into her husband’s waiting arms and it was only then that she felt safe. She didn’t want to drive up to the mountains without him. She didn’t want to leave his side.

  “I’ll protect you,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “But I can’t focus on Scott if I’m worrying about you here.”

  “But—”

  He pulled away, holding her in the circle of his arms, and looke
d intently at her. “Go to the cabin. Stevie will follow you up in her car, Jack will work with me down here. Once we have Scott, we’ll drive up and they can go home.”

  She didn’t like it, not one bit, but she had to admit that having Stevie watching her back as they drove north was comforting. “How are you getting back to my car?”

  “One of the officers here will give us a ride back to the apartment. As to your drive, I suggest you provision in Sacramento. Then make a beeline to Truckee.”

  Catching her hard shiver, knowing she was terrified, Simon took her face gently into his big hands, and said, “Only the four of us know the address to the cabin. You’ll be safe there with Stevie.”

  “Okay,” she said, knowing he was right. “I’ll go, but promise me you’ll come up as soon as you can.”

  “I swear to you, Kat, we’ll spend Christmas together.” He kissed her again and said, “But I have a good mind to take you over my knee first for not listening to me, pregnant or not.”

  “I’m sorry, Simon, it’s just that—”

  “No, you need to understand, I know I’m tyrannical when it comes to your safety, but it’s only because I won’t risk anything happening to you.”

  He hugged her fiercely, then got her situated in his Jeep. “My cell charger is in the glove box. Make sure you’re powered up. I’ve put the address in the GPS. The key to the cabin and the instructions to light the furnace are written down in an envelope in the glove box. Everything else is easy common sense stuff. There’s an emergency kit in the back of the Jeep if you need it. You’re gassed. When you stop for provisions, gas up again, then text me when you’re back on the road.”

  She nodded, suddenly feeling like a little girl on the first day of school, terrified of being left alone. Leaning back into the Jeep he took her into his arms again and kissed her long and hard. When he drew away, there was no denying the tension in his face. “Go.”