Twisted Threads (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 3)

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Sean had left Emily’s front door open, and, ignoring the audience, they all climbed the porch steps and went inside. Sean’s eyes went first to the fireplace mantel. He hadn’t done that earlier. No photos were displayed there. Otherwise… A broad frame that held an unfinished quilt partially rolled filled the center of the room, a straight-backed wood chair pulled up to it. On a long open desk sat a sewing machine, a second chair in front of it. The wood surface of a large, sturdy table could barely be seen beneath bolts of fabric and a section of a quilt, partially pieced with tiny triangles. A handsome wood rocking chair in a corner was the only furniture typical to a living room.

  Because it wasn’t a living room, it was her studio, he thought, then focused on the ironing board that lay on its side and the iron that had tumbled almost as far as the hall, the cord snaking behind it.

  “That must have been quite a noise,” he said, wondering if the man who’d tripped over it had crashed to the floor, too.

  “It was.” If she hadn’t had her arms tightly crossed in front of her and he hadn’t felt the quivering tension beneath the hand he’d kept on her back, he might have been fooled.

  Officer Slawinski stood gaping.

  Sean took charge. “I found that window open. The screen is leaning against the wall of the house. The blinds were raised as you see them now.”

  “But...” Emily’s voice was soft.

  He raised his eyebrows and waited.

  “I never raise the blinds,” she blurted.

  He’d noticed.

  “And I know the screen was on.”

  The young officer had pulled himself together. “Was the window locked when you went to bed, ma’am?”

  She looked stricken. “I...don’t know. I had it open while I worked. I like the fresh air. It wasn’t that cold.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t remember closing it. I don’t always.”

  Sean saw Slawinski almost say something but then change his mind. Even he could see that she’d never go to bed again without locking and checking every window and door compulsively.

  “I’m guessing our intruder expected a usual layout for a living room,” Sean said. “Which means he didn’t turn on a flashlight.”

  Unlike heavy drapes, blinds wouldn’t entirely block a beam of light moving through the house. A neighbor who happened to be up and saw it would wonder, and conceivably call the police.

  The fact that the guy had taken a chance of crossing a cluttered room without benefit of any light meant he wasn’t looking for electronics to steal. But Sean already knew that.

  “So he fell over my ironing board.” She stared down at it..

  “That would definitely wake you,” Slawinski said kindly.

  “I wasn’t asleep yet. Just...trying.”

  Again, neither of the men remarked. A glance at a wall clock told Sean it was now almost four in the morning. He nudged her into motion, and they all proceeded down the hall to her bedroom.

  “What else did you hear?” he asked gently.

  “Nothing, until...” She stopped, started again. “If it had been a smaller crash, I’d probably have convinced myself I left something on the edge of a table and…I don’t know. But this—” Her long white throat worked as she swallowed. “I jumped out of bed and closed the door, but it doesn’t have a lock. They don’t in houses this age,” she told them, as if that was something important to know. “Not even those push-button ones, so I shoved my dresser over in front of the door.”

  The door gaped enough they could all slide sideways into her bedroom, even Sean who wasn’t a small man. That chilled his marrow, just as it had earlier. If she hadn’t reacted as fast as she had, the intruder would have gotten his hands on her.

  It took an effort to sound calm. “That was smart.”

  He didn’t know if she heard him or not. She continued, “Then...then I sort of froze, trying to convince myself I was imagining things, or overreacting. It was so quiet, I thought whoever it was had taken off. I mean, he must have known even someone sleeping would have heard and probably called 911.”

  “As you did,” Officer Slawinski observed.

  “But I didn’t. Not then.” Her sidelong glance held shame. “I’d left my phone in the kitchen.”

  Something else she’d probably never do again at night, Sean guessed. She already carried so much sadness, he hated knowing that a new fear would now add a weight, that sleep would become even more elusive as she lay straining to hear the smallest of sounds.

  “Then the doorknob turned and the door whacked into my dresser. I think I screamed and that’s when I ran to my window, opened it and practically fell out. I could hear the dresser scraping on the floor.” She shivered.

  They all looked at the long scratches in the polished oak.

  Sean rubbed her back, stroking up and down. Despite her height, her bones felt so fragile. “Smart again,” he murmured.

  “And...and I was barely outside when Sean was there. I called 911 with his phone while he went in the house.”

  “Let’s go back to the living room,” Sean suggested. “Do you have a sweater, Emily?” He could tell she was feeling some shock, plus the night was cold for her to be wearing only a thin knit shirt with a drooping neckline that bared a good deal of her shoulder. Both Slawinski and he had been trying not to look, although a vision of her delicate collarbone and creamy skin stayed with him anyway.

  “Oh. Yes.” She looked around vaguely before opening a dresser drawer and taking out a sweatshirt. She put on some slippers, too, before returning to the living room with the two men. They had her look for her purse, which she said was exactly where she’d left it. The wallet was inside, cash and credit cards where they should be. Setting the purse down again, she asked if they might be able to find fingerprints.

  “Yes, ma’am, although we’ll have to borrow a tech from the sheriff’s department.”

  “I’ll arrange that,” Sean said. “It probably won’t do any good, but you never know.” He hesitated. “Have you had anything like this happen in town recently?”

  “Oh, we get a break-in now and again, but it’s usually teenagers. This seems more...” Slawinski’s gaze touched on Emily then shied away, meeting Sean’s instead.

  Purposeful, was what he wanted to say. Potentially violent. Yes, Sean could think of a lot of ways to end that sentence, and he didn’t like any of them.

  Taking advantage of an open window and sneaking in to see what could easily be grabbed... That made sense. But breaking through Emily’s bedroom door to go after her once she’d already screamed and probably awakened neighbors made no sense at all. If rape had been this guy’s goal, once he’d screwed up and made a racket, he should have fled.

  “Ma’am, is there someplace you can spend the rest of the night?” Officer Slawinski asked.

  She had somehow summoned a polite smile. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t sleep anyway.”

  “I have a spare bedroom,” Sean said abruptly. “Ms. Drake is coming home with me.”

  She kept her mouth shut until the uniform was gone, then faced Sean, her expression cool and closed. “Thank you for your offer, but I’ll be fine.”

  “Then I’ll stay here.” Did she really think he’d leave her alone? Unprotected? Not happening. He sat down on the rocking chair, planting his feet solidly on the floor. “Go to bed, Emily. Nobody will break in on my watch.”

  Recognizing that she was cornered, she glowered.

  Finally, she let out a huff. “You know perfectly well there’s no way I can go to bed and leave you sitting out here on a hard chair. You win. I’ll go home with you. It’s only for a couple of hours anyway.”

  He smiled. “You need anything?”

  She shot him a glare. “My phone. My purse.” While she fetched them from the kitchen, he closed and locked her bedroom window and turned out lights. He returned to the living room to see her crossing to the still open window. “I’ll do that if you bring me a dishtowel. We don’t want to add fingerprints.”r />
  She gave a jerky nod and produced a plain muslin cloth. He wrenched down the stubborn window sash and locked, leaving the blind up in the unlikely hope the intruder had touched the plastic doohickey at the end of the pull cord with a bare hand.

  She locked her front door, and Sean once again placed a reassuring hand on her back, disturbed to remember all the fantasies he’d had about bringing Emily Drake home with him. In none of them had she come only because it wasn’t safe for her to stay in her own house.

  *****

  Emily opened her eyes, confused because the room was too bright. And...the window was off to her right, not her left. Alarm quickened her pulse before she remembered.

  She had gone to bed in Sean Holbeck’s spare bedroom after repeatedly insisting she wouldn’t sleep anyway. She’d thought if he went back to bed she could curl up on his sofa and watch TV with the volume low. But he had somehow escorted her all the way into this bedroom and persuaded her that it wouldn’t hurt to lie down and try to rest.

  “You can’t survive with no sleep at all, Emily,” he’d said in a low, husky voice that was also somehow...tender.

  She frowned. She didn’t remember ever using that word in reference to a man before, not even the husband whom she’d loved with everything she was and who had loved her as deeply. And how strange to associate it with a man who was also so obviously capable of violence. She closed her eyes and had a flash of him flinging himself in her bedroom window. Somehow then she had hardly noticed he was barefoot and shirtless, but in retrospect, it was different. The play of muscles on his broad back had been beautiful. Now she was faintly appalled that the big, black handgun had seemed a natural extension of his hand, but then...her relief had been huge. After she scrambled behind a rhododendron, her knees had given out and she’d made herself small, waiting.

  But once he’d coerced her into coming home with him… I slept, because he made me feel safe, she realized. But...for how long? There was no clock and no bedside table in the bare bones room.

  She eased out of bed, pulled the sweatshirt over her head and stuck her feet in her slippers. She felt surprisingly good, she realized, disconcerted. Suddenly shy, she opened the bedroom door and went down the hall to the kitchen.

  Fully dressed but wearing neither badge nor weapon, Sean sat at the small kitchen table with a laptop open in front of him. He looked up with a smile. “Morning, sunshine.”

  Her mouth fell open at the sight of the clock on the microwave. “It can’t be after eleven.”

  “Accurate to the minute.” He sounded obnoxiously cheerful and pleased with himself. “You needed the sleep.”

  She sank onto the only other chair. “But...”

  “But what?”

  “I slept for six hours.”

  “Closer to six and a half.”

  “I haven’t done that in years.” And why was she telling him anything that personal? She didn’t know.

  He stared. “Seriously?”

  “I usually sleep a couple hours at a time.” If she was lucky.

  Even without looking at him, she saw him shaking his head. He pushed back from the table. “Breakfast or lunch?”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Indulge me,” he said, with no give.

  “I thought I’d go home and shower.”

  “I took the liberty of grabbing a change of clothes for you while I was over there meeting the fingerprint tech.”

  Which presumably meant he’d helped himself to her keys. Her mind took a sideways jump. “You went through my drawers?”

  “Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all.

  She felt her lower lip poke out as if she were a sulky child. “Why can’t I just go home?”

  Suddenly, he was all cop, his expression implacable. “Because we need to talk first.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “You found something?”

  “No, Emily. Nothing like that.” There he went, gentle again, even though this morning she was very aware of his size and masculinity. “Why don’t you just take that shower and then have a bite to eat?”

  She had two choices: do as he wanted, or stomp defiantly out his door and go home. She couldn’t forget he’d charged to her rescue last night without any hesitation. And...she’d slept so well in his house, she felt as if she had champagne in her veins. It was the oddest sensation.

  “Fine,” she said, still sulkily, her eye lighting on the neat pile of familiar clothes that sat on the counter. She stood, snatched them up, and went back down the hall without looking again at him.

  Many of the houses in this part of town had been company-built for workers back in the logging days. The additions of second stories, attached garages, broader porches and architectural embellishments made it hard to tell now which houses had begun life as basic wooden boxes. Sean’s had been altered little, in contrast to hers; somewhere along the way, a homeowner had added gingerbread trim to the eaves of her house and widened the porch enough to allow for a swing that hung from the rafters. Sitting in it, setting it to swinging, was her way to time travel. Memories were so bound to objects and places, and she didn’t want to lose any.

  The last update in the hall bathroom here in Sean’s house had to have been done in the late sixties or early seventies by someone with no appreciation for the age of the house. Would he remodel? She turned on the shower in the bathtub and waited for hot water, then stayed under it longer than she’d intended. A fresh bar of soap and a full bottle of shampoo might have been set out just for her.

  Sean had been busy that morning.

  Tucked among her clothes, she’d found her hairbrush, toothpaste and toothbrush and an elastic band for her hair. His thoughtfulness gave her a funny, soft feeling in her midsection. As she braided her still wet hair, Emily studied herself in the mirror in perplexity. Something about her face seemed different today.

  She’d slept, she finally decided, what else could it be? She was used to seeing the strain of exhaustion. Nothing else had changed, except that her home had been violated. She made a face at her own image. Oh, yes, one other thing: she’d learned that, while death was inevitable, she didn’t want her own to be violent.

  Sean had decided on breakfast, she found upon returning to the kitchen. Omelets smelled fantastic, and he was buttering thick slabs of whole grain toast to go with them. When he saw her, his smile crinkled the skin beside those very blue eyes. “Perfect timing.” He nodded toward a carafe. “Pour yourself some coffee, or there’s orange juice in the fridge.”

  She went with both, pouring him some juice, too, when he asked.

  Her lingering shyness fled the moment she put the first bite in her mouth. The omelet was filled with chunks of bacon, a variety of vegetables and cheese. He offered homemade blackberry jam she recognized; she, too, bought her jam from Selena Pratt, who had a table at the farmers’ market regularly held at the river pier where fishing boats tied up. Jed Fitzpatrick ran a whale and sealife cruise that left from the pier, too, from April through October. When she and Tom first moved to Cape Trouble, she’d sold small quilted pieces at those markets herself until she was able to open the store. She’d loved chatting with her fellow craftspeople and the tourists and local residents that browsed her offerings.

  Emily didn’t let herself think about what Sean wanted to discuss until she had cleared her entire plate. Then she took a sip of coffee, sighed and said, “Thank you. That was wonderful.”

  He smiled. “You’re welcome.” He’d eaten every bite, too, even though this might have been his second breakfast. He’d likely been up for hours. And…that big body must burn a whole lot more calories than hers did.

  He watched her as she took another swallow of coffee, then set down her mug.

  Bracing herself, she said, “Okay. I’ve been obedient. So what is it I need to hear?”

  The intensity in the eyes that drilled into her had a different cause than she’d seen before, but made her just as uneasy.

  “What happened las
t night doesn’t make sense,” he said bluntly. “Most burglaries happen when the homes are empty. People are at work or on vacation. That said, if someone was casing our neighborhood, your open window might have been a temptation.” He held up a hand as if he read her mind. “This is a safe town, relatively speaking. You should be able to leave windows open at night. In fact, my bedroom window was open, too. I like my room cold when I sleep.”

  She nodded, grateful that he didn’t seem to think she’d been asking for someone to break in.

  “But let’s assume the intruder thought sleeping residents wouldn’t notice if he hopped in that window.”

  She didn’t want to understand where he was going with this, but did. Her fear last night had been a kind of horror. When she saw that doorknob turn, she felt the presence on the other side of the door as malevolent. Evil. Melodramatic, but she couldn’t think of another word as fitting.

  Relentless in the way of a freight train bearing down on her, Sean continued. “A burglar would have turned on a flashlight, started looking for goodies. No high-end DVD player? He’d have looked for an iPod, the latest smart phone. Gone through your purse. It was in plain sight on the counter. If he knew a woman lived there alone, he might have gotten ballsy and opened the door to a spare bedroom to check for a laptop, a rare coin collection, who knows.” He leaned forward. “But all of that is irrelevant, because the minute he picked himself up after tripping over the ironing board, he’d have been back out that window and running for all he was worth.” Muscles clenched in his jaw. “There’s no way in hell, knowing you had to be awake, he’d have gone down your hall, straight to your bedroom. Unless his real goal was you.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She couldn’t look away from Sean now that he’d laid bare the frightening truth.

  There had been nothing even remotely rational about the behavior of the man who’d broken into her house last night.

  No, that wasn’t what Sean was trying to tell her; the truth is, the intruder did have a rationale, only it was far more frightening than she’d wanted to believe.