“I remember a time when that smile greeted me every day. I kind of miss seeing it.”
Dariaâs heart pounded with fear as she looked up at Georgeâs face. Panic coursed through her. She’d never felt fear like this when she’d been married to George and she didn’t like the feeling now. But she couldn’t help it.
“You shouldn’t be here, George.”
“Why the sudden frown? Were you expecting someone else?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“So Iâve heard. But I disagree. We’re married, Daria. Anything that makes you unhappy is my business.”
Irritation curled through her. “We’re divorced, George.”
“That wasn’t my choice.”
“Regardless, you signed the divorce papers.”
Daria glanced past him at the expensive car he parked in the driveway behind her battered truck and wondered how she ever thought they would be compatible enough to spend a lifetime together.
George sneered. “You’re expecting him aren’t you? Has that cop moved in with you now? It wasn’t enough for him to park himself on your street corner. He has to move into your bed now too?”
Her hands started to tremble. How could George have known Kevin had been spending his nights in the car in front of her house? He couldn’t. Unless he’d been watching.
“Stop it, George.”
He reached down and started searching through the grocery bag she left on the porch when she came in to turn off the alarm. For a fleeting moment, she wished she’d looked at who was coming into the driveway first before punching in the security code number. Twenty seconds of the door being ajar was all it would take. The alarm would go off and everyone in the neighborhood, including Mrs. Hildebrand, would be poking their faces against the windowpane to see what was up. More importantly, the alarm would automatically alert the police, making sure George wouldn’t have a chance to…
“What is this? Candles. Flowers. Looks like you’re planning a nice seduction and you forgot to invite me.”
“George, if you don’t leave now…”
His face was dark. “What? You’ll call your cop friend?”
She pulled at the screen door in an effort to shut it, but the spring kept it from closing quickly enough. George jammed his foot into the threshold, preventing it from closing further.
“Think about what you’re doing, Daria. You’re making a huge mistake with that cop. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t love you like I do.”
“I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave immediately.”
Heart pounding, she yanked at the screen door even though George’s foot was still stuck.
“Damn it all, Daria. We belong together.” He grasped the screen door handle and yanked it open fully. She’d been holding on so tightly that the force pulled her forward, causing her to stumble onto the porch.
Fear collided with doubt. She’d never seen this side of George before. He gripped her by the upper arms and shook her violently, causing her head to snap back and hit the doorjamb. He did it only once. But that was all it took to convince Daria that George had gone mad.
Abruptly, he freed her and took a wide step back. His eyes were bright and crazed.
“Damn… My God, I’m sorry, Daria. I don’t know what got into me. I’m so sorry. It’s been so hard. But you’ve got to see.”
Fear was replaced by anger. “I see what I should have seen a long time ago. We’re divorced, George. You need to accept that and get on with your life. And I need to get on with mine.”
He shook his head. “You love me. You told me so.”
“That was a long time ago.” Daria swallowed hard. She needed to say the words. And George needed to hear them. “You need to leave right now, George. Now!”
His face turned hard and red. She expected he would be angry, maybe upset enough to break down and cry. She’d seen him cry before, and knew that he could be an emotional man. But this was different. She didn’t expect the ferociousness of his glare.
“I tried. I really did,” he said. “You’ll be sorry, Daria.”
She left George holding the screen door open as she stepped into the house. After slamming the door in his face, Daria bolted it.
As she breathed hard, she heard the car door slam, then the gunning of the carâs engine. She ran into her bedroom, grabbed the phone, and peered out the window in time to see George driving down her street.
She let go of the breath she was holding, her shoulders sagging with a sigh as she dropped the phone back in its cradle. He was gone.
She was going to have to tell Kevin about this meeting. He’d be angry. Oh boy, would he’d be angry. It was just more fuel for the argument that her life was in danger. And after this meeting, there was no doubt in her mind that it was true. George hadn’t been the George she remembered.
Kevin wanted her to leave her home, insisting it was the only way. Looking around her bedroom, she realized he couldn’t possibly know how difficult that would be for her. He’d grown up in a home, with a family and the same neighbors for years. He’d seen the seasons change many times from his bedroom window as he grew up.
She would do that here. One day, this house would be filled with children who would play in the back yard. As those children grew, they would scrape lines on her newly patched wall to measure their growth through the years. And she would cherish every bit of it.
Kevin would be angry and he’d ask her to leave. But Daria wouldn’t think about it just now. She needed to clear her head, have a glass of wine and calm her nerves. She absolutely wouldn’t let this ruin their evening. She paced down the hallway and quickly opened the door to retrieve the grocery bag she’d left there on the porch. With trembling hands, she carried the bag of groceries into the kitchen and dropped it on the table. And then she remembered.
“The wine,” she groaned. “Oh, how on earth could I have forgotten wine?”
She pulled her daily planner out of her purse, and rummaged through it for her to-do list. After finding it, she ran her finger down the list and noticed that she had indeed forgot to write down wine.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid. Can this day get any more messed up?” she mumbled to herself.
She quickly glanced at the clock over the sink. She still had twenty-five minutes before Kevin was due to arrive. She’d have to change things around a little. She had enough time to drive to the package store for a bottle of wine, race home, and prepare the bath. She couldn’t get dinner in the oven before Kevin walked through the door, but maybe they could do that together while they shared a glass of wine and she told him all about George’s visit.
She scribbled a quick note on her to do list and added a few exclamation points.
Feeling good, she dropped the planner on the counter, grabbed her purse and keys, and headed out the door.
*
Kevin tried not to read any more into why Daria’s truck wasn’t parked in the driveway when he got there other than her errands had taken her longer than she’d anticipated.
He could tell now that the alarm system had been installed and was working properly that she’d let her guard down. Yeah, well maybe it was because he’d been in the house last night, in her bed with her naked body pressed up against his, instead of sleeping in an awkward position in the front seat of his SUV.
He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her all day, how her soft body fit so perfectly with his, how her small hands had managed to drive him wild in so many ways last night. Just thinking about it now made it hard for him to breathe. All day he had to keep a stupid grin from his face or every single person at the station would have known why he was smiling like the village idiot.
He climbed out of his SUV and walked up the brick pathway to the front door, shaking his head when he noticed the porch light had been broken.
Again.
What kind of neighborhood was this anyway? He needed to be around more to let the street kids know he wasnâ�
�t going to allow them to mess with him.
Kevin decided to wait on the front porch in the dark until Daria got home. He didn’t have a key, but the thought of things moving in that direction brought a smile to Kevin’s face. It was something he’d never thought of with another woman. Now the thought of moving out of that cramped apartment building and moving into a house with a yard was appealing.
Who was he kidding? Kevin didn’t care if he was in a breadbox just as long as Daria was there with him. It was all Daria. That had been a shocking revelation for him this morning as he showered and shaved in her bathroom.
As he turned and dropped himself down to the top porch step, he heard the sound of the screen door open and shut with a gust of wind. Something was stuck there, keeping it ajar. Probably a newspaper, or maybe whatever the neighborhood kids used to break the porch light. Spot probably started barking and scared them away again.
But as Kevin looked over his shoulder, he did a double take. Not only was the screen door not latched, the front door was wide open. The hairs on the back of his neck stood to life and dread tumbled down upon him. He stared into the night and listened.
Spot. There was no barking. Nothing. Not even when he’d driven into the driveway instead of parking on the street like he usually did, he suddenly realized.
The dog had always howled. Even within the confines of the house, Kevin had always heard the dog’s bark. Now there was silence.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, and his gun from his holster at the same time, and then called for backup as he headed for the front door. But nothing, no amount of police training was going to keep him from going inside to investigate before backup arrived.
Blood hammered in his ear as he bound through the front door and into the hallway. The stench, thick and strong, that immediately assaulted his nose was one he knew well. His hand flew to his mouth as beads of sweat sprang to his face. He wiped his mouth as the sickeningly metallic stench choked him.
Carefully, he reached for the light switch, but it did nothing against his urgent flick up and down. As he moved slowly down the hall, heard the roar of his blood pounding through his veins, he felt his boots stick on the wetness of the floor, and he knew he’d just compromised a crime scene. But dammit, Daria could be in there.
With his gun in front of him, he inched his way down the hall, listening for movement. When he reached the kitchen, he lightly ran his hand up the wall and flicked on the light switch. The sudden glare stung his eyes and made him blink. But none of that kept the horror of what he found from invading his mind as he took in the scene before him.
It was worse than he’d feared. Blood was everywhere, splattered on the newly painted hallway walls, on the old linoleum kitchen floor and on the cabinets.
He glanced back down the hall he’d just walked and almost dropped to his knees, shuddering. A dark bloodstain pooled right in front of the door. His bloodstained footprints trailed along another set of prints down the hallway and led to the kitchen. With his eyes, he followed the path leading to his shoes. Another large set of footprints and a smaller set that looked like the size of a woman’s running along the same path he’d just taken in what looked like a chaotic pattern and…
Breathing hard, he screamed, “Daria!”
In the middle of the floor in a huge heap was her white terrycloth robe soaking up the blood there. He was standing in flower petals drench in blood. Candles of different colors and sizes were scattered around the kitchen floor.
His gun poised in front of him, Kevin ran to the bedroom and flicked the switch. Light spilled into the room. The bed was still unmade, the crisp white sheets and blanket were still a tangled heap at the bottom of the bed.
The room, the bed they’d made love in, looked exactly as it had that morning when they’d both left for work. How could it possibly look this way when just outside the door it was as if there’d been a bloodbath?
Kevin glanced over his shoulder with horror. And where the hell was Daria?
With a trembling hand, he dialed. Instead of calling for backup, he punched in Ski’s number. Ski answered on the third ring.
“Where the hell is Carlisle?”
“Can’t tell you, Kevin. I…he’s gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“I lost him somehow in city traffic. I found the car by that restaurant downtown where he had lunch last week so I got out of the car and looked around. I figured he’d gone in to meet someone for dinner so I waited a bit and then went inside. ‘Cept he wasn’t there.”
“Where the hell did he go?”
“I don’t have a clue. His car was gone when I came out. It was as if he knew I was tailing him, Kevin, and was trying to give me the slip.”
“Dammit! Find him. I don’t care what you have to do. Just find that bastard!”
Kevin closed his eyes as he hung up as a quick prayer escaped his lips. His throat constricted. Daria. My sweet Lord, not Daria.
Minutes later, Daria’s house was crawling with crime scene investigators. One of the CSIs came over to Kevin carrying his shoes.
“The initial testing of the blood from the mobile crime lab shows it’s the same type. We’re using a site kit to type the blood. We should have the results in a few minutes. There is enough blood poured all over the place to cause fatality or damned near close to it.”
“No,” Kevin said. Oh, please, dear God, Daria couldn’t be dead.
“You shouldn’t have gone into the house. You’ve compromised the crime scene. You’re footprints are all over the place. I hope you’re not too attached to your shoes.”
He shook his head, glanced down at his stocking feet. “I left them in the kitchen. You can take them.”
Officer Johnson came up behind him with Matt. “We talked to a few of the neighbors. They all knew Detective Gordon’s SUV, but noticed another car here earlier though. A Lexus. Mrs. Parson’s heard some arguing and then heard the car speed away.”
“Did she see the driver?” Kevin asked.
“No, said she was trying to mind her own business. But she does remember seeing Daria come home and then heard the truck speed down the street. Said she remembered it because she was angry someone would drive that fast down this side street, especially a neighbor.”
“Daria was in a hurry, that much was for sure,” Matt said.
“The Lexus left. And then Dariaâs truck left. The question is why? Did she come home to this? Maybe interrupt another breakin? Or was she here when it happened?”
“There’s more,” Johnson said. “We found these.”
The officer handed Matt two sealed Ziploc bags. Inside the first was the wrench Daria reported missing during the last breakin. Now it was covered with blood. The other was Daria’s day planner.
Matt glanced at the day planner and then at Kevin. To Johnson, he asked, “Was this in the open?”
“Right on the counter, open to today,â Johnson said.
Matt handed the planner to Kevin and through the clear plastic, his eyes grazed the page until he found the last entry. There was a drop of blood on the center of the page. The last entry read “Get rid of George forever.” The words were heavily underlined several times with a couple of exclamation points and the line was checked off as finished.
“She was a list maker?” Matt asked.
Kevin nodded. “Obsessively so. She always carried around the planner and scribbled down a list of things to do.”
“Looks like she left in too much of a hurry to bring it along this time. Keep it as evidence.”
Kevin closed his eyes and sighed. “What about Mrs. Hildebrand, the neighbor next door?â
“She said she heard the same argument as Mrs. Parsons.”
“With the guy in the fancy car?”
“Exactly. And she heard Mrs. Carlisle leave here burning rubber down the road just before Detective Gordon arrived.”
Shaking his head, Kevin said, “I didn’t see her pass me. I would have recognized tha
t beat up old truck instantly.”
“She said she’d looked out the window just before and saw Mrs. Carlisle with a man hoist something into the back of the truck.”
Kevin sputtered, “She has her days mixed up. She has to be getting her days mixed up. Captain, with all due respect, Mrs. Hildebrand’s a real nice lady but she can’t see beyond her hand.”
Matt propped his hands on his hips. “And right now she’s quite upset. Seems her dog was poisoned in what looks like an attempt to shut him up during the breakin.”
“Is Spot okay?” Kevin asked.
“I hope so. He was probably given something to give him a good bellyache. But just in case one of our officers is bringing her to the vet to have him checked out. As for what she saw, Mrs. Hildebrand could just be upset. We’ll talk to her again tomorrow when she’s calmed down a bit and see if her story changes. She saw something, and recognized the sound of Daria’s truck when it pulled in. She’d considered going over to ask Daria to bring her to the vet and that’s when she saw her take off down the road.”
“So Daria was driving?”
“Yes.”
Kevin released a breath of relief. “Then she is alive.”
Matt pulled him aside, out of earshot of the other officers. “Look, I know how personal this has gotten between you two, but you need to stay focused. Walking through that house without backup wasâ”
“Stupid. I know. But isn’t that what you did?”
Very little was ever spoken about Matt Jorgensen’s past. What little Kevin did know was usually talked about in hushed voices. The man had lost his wife in a brutal murder ten years ago and he’d been fingered for it. Rumor was the police hadn’t even looked for another suspect. It had been Matt’s own digging and relentless work with his attorney that eventually got him off the rap. But the case had grown cold and the killer was never found. Matt had gone to the academy soon after.
“Yeah,” Matt said quietly. “And look what it got me?”
Kevin looked at Matt directly. “Am I a suspect in this?”
“Don’t be foolish. I’m saying we need to talk with her, Kevin. Do you have any idea where she’d be?”
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