by Dale Mayer
“Forensics will likely come,” he said. He looked around and nodded. “It’s blocking your car from getting out, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, the one day I pull into the garage …” she said with a sad smile.
“Not a problem,” he said. He looked back at the house and said, “Go check on Danny, would you?”
She bolted into the front door. She had checked on him earlier, but, knowing that the damn stalker was loose again, she couldn’t let her guard down now for sure. She cried out in relief when she saw Danny, still in his bed. She walked over and sat down, reached out to touch him with her shaking hand. “Dear God,” she whispered, “this nightmare needs to end.”
Hearing footsteps on the stairs, she twisted around and saw Greyson standing in the doorway, his hand to his chest and his eyes closed.
“Thank God,” he whispered. “You worried me when you didn’t come back.”
She realized then that he thought something had happened to her son—or to the both of them. It had all been too much. She couldn’t help herself as she got to her feet and bolted toward him. He opened his arms, and she flung herself into them, never more grateful when they closed around her, keeping her safe.
“It’s been a hell of a night,” Greyson said, as he held her close.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”
She tried to step away, but he held her gently and tucked her back in. “Just relax,” he said. “You’ve had successive shocks,” he said, “and, if you don’t need a moment, I do.”
She giggled with laughter at that, and he grinned. He looked down at the dog, who had been sitting in the corner. Then Kona sniffed around, got up, and wandered toward the bed. Greyson looked over at Jessica and asked, “Is it okay if Kona checks on the boy?”
“If you think it’s safe.”
“I suspect it’s your boy who brought Kona into your life and kept her here,” he said. He let the dog come closer. The dog gave several long sniffs up and down the sleeping boy, but, apparently satisfied that Danny was fine, she sat down, turned, looked at Greyson, and then slowly laid down.
“Oh my,” she said. “What does she want?”
“To stand guard, from what I can see,” he said. “But, as much as that might be a good idea, I’m not quite prepared to do that yet.”
She nodded. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea yet either.”
He nudged the rope and called the dog toward him. Kona hopped up and walked over willingly. They closed the door partially and went back downstairs to the kitchen.
“The cop car is still there,” she said.
He nodded. “As soon as they leave, I’ll go out and hunt for your stalker.”
“Won’t it be too late by then?”
He shrugged. “Obviously the earlier, the better. But I don’t want to draw any attention from the cops or be tagged for interfering in their hunt.”
She winced at that. “They should be happy to get any assistance,” she said.
“They might be, but I’m an unknown factor. And remember. Somebody attacked two cops, and we were the only ones here,” he reminded her. “They’ll look at us sideways for quite a while.”
“I didn’t do anything,” she said. He watched as she walked over to the teakettle and quickly filled it and put it on. She turned and looked at him. “I could make coffee if you prefer.”
“Tea is fine,” he said. “It’s almost five o’clock in the morning. Good thing I let my Grandparents know I was not going to be going back home last night.”
She stared at him in shock, checking the clock on the stove. “Oh, boy. It’ll be a rough day with Danny having lots of sleep and me having none,” she said in a wry tone.
He nodded. “Toddlers are a handful in the best of times,” he said with a laugh. “But, when you don’t have any sleep, I imagine it’s much worse.”
“Do you have any children?” she asked in an open, frank way that he liked.
“Nope,” he said. “Never been married, never had a family, but have tons of friends with toddlers.”
“Well, the next line should be, what exactly is wrong with you then?” she teased.
“Meaning all the good guys are married?” he said, enjoying the banter.
“That’s one of the lines,” she said. “Most guys I meet these days are divorced.”
“That’s because divorce is so prevalent in our society now.” He walked over with the dog and said, “Do you have a bowl I could put some water in?”
She gasped. “Oh, my gosh, I should have thought of that.” She quickly pulled a mixing bowl from her cupboard with a decent-size flat bottom, then filled it with water and put it on the floor off to the side.
Kona had several slow drinks and then glanced around at him.
“I think she’s looking for food,” Jessica noted.
“Sorry, Kona. I doubt any dog food is here.”
“There’s not,” she said. “I have some ham and cheese though.”
“Not exactly the food we want to get her accustomed to having,” he said with a smile, “but I’m sure Kona deserves it after the morning she had.”
“That she does.” As Jessica spoke, she was already hauling out a chunk of a home-cooked ham.
He looked at it, and his mouth watered. “Did you bake that yourself?”
She nodded. “I like to cook. A ham like this gives me lots of leftovers,” she confessed. “It gives me a great finger food for Danny, and it’s economical to buy when on sale too.”
“I’m sure Kona wouldn’t object to those nice fatty chunks there.”
“If you want to work cleaning bits off the bone, I’ll cut her up some cheese.”
He got up, walked over, and dropped the leash, so Kona was free to wander, giving her just enough rope to see what she’d do. He picked up the small paring knife and cleaned the bone up as much as he could. “Are you making soup out of this?”
“We’ve had it rather often lately,” she said, “so I’ll probably just freeze it for now and make a soup later.”
“That works too,” he said cheerfully. He bagged it up for her and cut up the rest of the ham, separating the better slices for her and Danny from some of the fatty tidbits for the dog.
Kona had taken up residence at his feet and stared up at him, watching every hand movement as he wielded the small knife.
When Jessica had a few pieces of cheese cut into small bits, Greyson mixed the ham and cheese together and put them in a small bowl, placing it down for Kona. She looked at him.
He smiled and said, “Okay, go ahead and eat.” She immediately lowered her head and worked away on the cheese and ham.
“She has excellent manners,” Jessica said in surprise.
“All the War Dogs are very well trained,” he said.
“What a different world this must seem like for her,” she said sadly. “You would think that a dog coming back from military service in a war-torn country should be able to rest, not sit here and try to save a mother and her son from a stalker.”
“And yet it’s a good thing she did,” he said. “I’m still not so sure the stalker has gone very far.”
“That’s very disconcerting,” she said.
Just then a knock came at the door. Kona growled, lifting her head from the empty bowl. Greyson picked up her leash and walked to the front door. It was one of the cops.
“We need to come in and ask some more questions,” he said.
“Come on in then,” he said. “We’re just having a cup of tea.” As he walked past, he picked up Kona’s empty bowl, put it in the sink, and filled it with water.
Jessica had been busy cleaning up the kitchen, and she turned to the cop. “Did you find him?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “We’re still trying to get a K9 unit.”
“As I said, I’m willing to try,” Greyson said. “This is Kona, a War Dog. She’s highly trained.”
At the mention of War Dog, the cop looked down at
Kona in surprise. “Interesting,” he said. “I don’t know much about the program.”
“Well, dogs have different specialties,” Greyson said, “but they all have extremely thorough training and excellent obedience. She certainly thought she had a bead on the attacker’s scent earlier.”
He hesitated and then said, “It can’t hurt.”
“No, it can’t,” Greyson said. He walked out onto the rear veranda and said, “I need her to get his scent again.” When he spotted the balaclava he’d ripped off the guy’s head, he picked it up and shoved it under Kona’s nose and said, “Let’s go find him.”
Kona immediately started barking. She wanted to go back through the house and out the front. Greyson looked over at the cop and said, “I’ll go hunt,” he said, “but Jessica and her son need to be protected in case that asshole comes around through the back again.” The cop nodded and said, “I’ll be here, and I’m telling my partners that you’re headed out.”
“Good. Wish us luck.” And, with that, he headed out the front door and down the street. It was all he could do to keep up with Kona as she pulled on the rope. He’d left it as a simple slipknot around her neck, which would choke her if she kept pulling, so he tried to stay up with her. But she was on a mission, and she wasn’t about to let it go anytime soon.
Chapter 7
After her first cup of tea, Jessica paced. “How long do you think he’ll be?”
“Well, the stalker had a good head start,” the cop admitted, “so I don’t know. He could be hours.”
She glared at him. “You should have let him go right at the beginning.”
“I shouldn’t be letting him out there at all,” the cop corrected her. “He’s a civilian and not trained. I also don’t have permission from my boss.”
“Yet, if he finds the guy, you’ll get a commendation, and, if he doesn’t find the guy, you’ll get a slap on the wrist,” she said.
“Quite possibly, yes,” he said. “I’d just as soon catch this asshole.” He glared out the front window. “Remember. Two of my friends were attacked too.”
“What about their vehicle?” she asked. “My car is in the garage, and your police car is stopping me from getting it out.”
“Forensics is working on it right now,” he said. “They arrived about five minutes ago.”
She looked at him in surprise, walked to the dining room, where she could see out the window. Sure enough, people were going over the vehicle. “I’m surprised they don’t just tow it back to the station.”
“They will,” he said. “They just want to make sure nothing of interest is in there first.”
She nodded. “I can tell you that you should also be looking for this guy’s truck,” she said, frowning at the reminder. She’d worked hard to forget all that unpleasant mess. “I don’t remember much, only that the license plate ended with N.”
He looked at her in surprise. “When did you see his vehicle?”
She proceeded to fill him in on the fender bender and the threat that he made against her.
He whistled at that. “Have you had any contact with your ex?”
“Nothing except for divorce-related communications with our lawyers. Not until that fender bender message,” she said, “and, since then, my phone has had a million unidentified calls, where nothing is said, and then he hangs up. I accused the silent person on the other end of being George,” she said with a frown. “I heard a startled gasp but no acknowledgment.”
“Of course not,” he said. “It’s not likely he’s willing to give up his identity, is he?”
“No. Although I sure as hell wish he would,” she said. “I’m really pissed off about how this whole mess is affecting Danny.”
“Do you think this is all about child custody?”
“George didn’t want anything to do with my son when I was pregnant,” she said. “He wanted to break up so he wasn’t responsible for child support and wanted it known that, as far as he was concerned, I was supposed to have an abortion, and it went against his wishes to keep my son alive.”
The cop stared at her steadily. “And is that how it happened?”
“We never discussed abortion,” she said, “and it was a perfectly healthy pregnancy. I was healthy, and we’d been married for over a year by that time. There was absolutely no reason for an abortion,” she said, “and it’s not something that I would ever do.”
“So you broke up. How far along were you?”
“He walked out about a week after finding out that I was pregnant,” she said. “I didn’t tell him for several weeks because I wanted to be sure, so I was in about my fourteenth week when I told him.”
“And he was gone by the fifteenth?”
She nodded. “At the time, I thought it was probably just an excuse for him to leave because we hadn’t been terribly happy for the previous year. Somehow I thought maybe the child would make things better.”
He nodded. “I hear that a lot.”
“But I didn’t do anything, like trap him with the pregnancy,” she said. “I was on birth control, but I’ve always had problems regulating my cycle.”
He kept taking notes, nodding once in a while. “Where does your ex work?”
“He has his own medical supply business,” she said, “and he travels a lot.”
“Maybe he thought that would impact his lifestyle.”
“I think he only thought it would impact his bank account,” she said drily.
“And how much does he pay for child support now?”
“He doesn’t,” she said. “I just wanted my son, so that was our agreement upon separation. I would take my son, and he’d get to walk free.”
The policeman stopped and stared at her. “Most courts would have awarded you child support,” he said. “And it doesn’t make any sense for your ex-husband to come back now. It would be pretty easy to nail him for child support.”
“Well, that’s one theory,” she said, “but, considering he’s already hired a stalker, and I was attacked outside on my back veranda, plus suffered a car accident, I’m beginning to wonder if George is hoping I just wouldn’t be around. That way he wouldn’t have to pay child support at all. Plus he’d get sole custody of his son. Which, like three months ago, he decided he wanted after all.”
The cop stared at her. “Do you think he’d kill you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, holding out her hands defensively. “The man I thought I knew wouldn’t have walked away because I was pregnant,” she said. “So obviously I didn’t know who he really was to begin with.”
“Do you believe this guy who said it was a warning from your ex-husband?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” she said in bewilderment. “I didn’t understand the whole warning from my ex anyway. It’s not like I went after child support or anything else,” she said, “so it wasn’t even logical to have this conflict escalate now.”
“Unless he was trying to do something and wanted to make sure that you were compliant.”
“Maybe because George suddenly wants Danny now?” she said. “But threatening me to make that happen doesn’t make sense. Otherwise our lawyers or the courts are hashing out the divorce. I haven’t had any direct notification from George at all since we separated,” she said, feeling sick to her stomach. “And I really don’t want to. Danny and I have been perfectly happy without him.”
“So you’ve been separated for about two years?”
“Yes,” she said, “and nothing, not a word. Not even a peep from him, other than via the divorce attorneys, until three weeks ago when that stalker guy hit my car.” Shaking her head, she continued, “And that’s only if that accident even had anything to do with George in the first place. For all I know, this stalker guy is just off his rocker and goes around terrorizing single women.”
“And that could be true too.” The cop got up and said, “I’ll step outside and check on their progress.”
She followed him and watched as he headed to th
e front door. While he stepped out and closed the door, she walked around and checked to make sure everything was locked inside. So far it seemed like she was good to go.
The cop stepped back inside. “A tow truck’s here now, and they’ll take the patrol vehicle away. I’ll talk to forensics and see if they found anything.”
She nodded and stood in the open front door. It was almost six o’clock in the morning now. Danny would wake up somewhere between six-thirty and seven. It would be a very long day at this rate. She watched as the cop car was loaded up on the tow truck and hauled away. The forensics team piled into their van and left, and the cop came back inside.
“Have you heard from Greyson at all?”
She pulled out her phone and shook her head.
He worked his way around to ask her, “Just what is your relationship with him?”
“Friends,” she said briefly, sticking to Greyson’s rule about not saying too much. “I’m very grateful right now because, without him and Kona, I think the scenario last night would have had a completely different ending.”
He nodded at that. “I need to get back to work,” he said. “I can’t just stay here.”
She frowned at him. “But we don’t know where the stalker is.”
“And that’s why I’ll tell you to go inside and to lock all the doors. I’ll have somebody drive by and check on you in a few hours.”
Stunned, she just stared at him as he walked away. Because, in a few hours, it could easily be too late. She tried to protest and ask for protection.
He just waved at her and said, “No money in the budget for that. I’ll talk to my supervisor, but that’s all I can do.” He got into his vehicle and headed down her driveway and onto the street.
Jessica pulled out her phone and quickly sent Greyson a message, typing, Any luck? I’m alone now. The cop left.
Instead of a message back, he phoned her. “He walked away from you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Coming up the back alley,” he said, “and we’re still tracking.” It took her a moment to figure it out.
“Oh, my God. Are you saying he’s come all the way back?”