by Beverly Bird
Then he heard a shriek.
Sam’s gaze shot to the garage and he saw Cait coming down the steps at such a clip his heart froze. “Be careful! You’re going to—” He broke off as she reached the fourth step from the bottom and simply leaped the rest, landing on the driveway like some sort of trapeze artist, fluidly and without missing stride.
She kept coming straight at him. And she was shouting. Sam took a cautious step backward. “What—”
He never got the question out. She hit him in the chest with both hands. “What have you done?” she demanded.
“Me? I was just getting—”
She beat her fists against his chest. “No more! Do you understand me? No more! I’m not going to let you unravel my life!”
“I was getting your cat!”
“He wouldn’t even be out here in the first place except for you and Hines and…and…”
“Are you accusing me of letting your cat out?” He was dumbfounded at the turn this encounter had taken.
“I’m accusing you of getting me evicted!”
“Over a cat?”
“Over that!” she shouted, pointing at the dog.
“What’s that dog doing here?” called an old woman from the back porch of the house.
“I don’t know,” Cait called back.
“Treeing the cat,” Sam said reasonably.
“Are you the man who came here the other day in that noisy car?” the woman asked.
“Probably,” Sam said. He looked at Cait. “Is she talking about me? What does Estrada drive?”
She looked at him as though he had lost his mind, then she launched into him with her fists all over again. It wasn’t until he’d caught her wrists to protect himself that Sam really got a look at her face.
She was crying.
Sam felt his breath stall. His heart tightened into a hard little knot that hurt. “Hey, hey, what’s all this about?” he asked quietly.
Cait felt suddenly mortified, and his concern stoked something inside her. She yanked away from him and turned her back, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes to dry them. She would not fall apart in front of him.
She already had, she thought. She was being totally, completely irrational.
“It’s about your dog.” She sniffed. “Make him go.”
“How do you know it’s my dog?” he asked evasively.
She glanced back at him disbelievingly.
“Okay, okay, he’s my dog.” He held out his hands as though to placate her. “Just hold on, okay? Don’t leave yet.”
“I’m not going back inside without my cat.”
“Good, because I want to talk to you.” Sam turned to the tree again and wrapped both arms around Houdini’s neck to restrain him. “Can you get me a rope?”
“What for?”
“So I can tie him up.”
“Why?”
“So I can find out why you’re crying without worrying about him taking off. I’m a very conventional dog owner.”
Cait looked at him oddly, then scrubbed her hands over her cheeks. “I’m fine. Get your dog and go home.”
“What about your cat?”
“I’ll lure him down after you’re gone.” Cait glanced at the house. Mrs. Brody was still watching. Her heart squeezed. “It’ll just be another moment,” she assured the old woman as the golden retriever started howling again.
“I have a rope,” the woman offered.
“Thanks, I’d appreciate that,” Sam said.
“That’s not necessary,” Cait said quickly. “He’s not staying.”
But Mrs. Brody scurried inside and came back with a rope. She hustled to the yard with her little bird steps and handed it to Sam. He used it to lash the dog to the tree. The horrible animal kept barking.
“Will he stay put now?” Mrs. Brody asked worriedly.
“Probably not for long,” Sam said. Then he climbed the tree and came down with the cat, who was hissing and clawing madly. He shoved Billy into Cait’s arms.
The cat was the best thing she had felt all day. Cait buried her face in his fur as he calmed down a little. “Thanks,” she whispered. “You can go now.”
“Not without antiseptic.”
She looked at him quickly, her insides shaking. “What?”
He held up his scratched hands in response. Cait winced. “I’m sorry.” Then her mind reeled. She was sorry? His dog had started all this! “What kind of an idiot would own something like that incorrigible mutt, anyway?”
“He’s not a mutt. He’s a purebred.” Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Are you casting aspersions on my dog?”
“Yes. He’s crazed!”
“He’s a dog. Dogs chase cats. It’s in their blood. What kind of a sparrow would own a cat?”
Cait felt her spine snap straight. “Cats are mannerly, neat, quiet.” She glanced pointedly at the dog, who was still barking. She shuddered at the mere thought of the chaos involved with owning one, then she noticed Mrs. Brody watching them avidly.
Sam wasn’t going to leave easily, she thought. And she wasn’t about to argue with him in front of her landlady, either. Mrs. Brody was—God forbid—probably getting ready to serve her with eviction papers right then and there. Cait freed one hand from Billy and grabbed Sam’s arm. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” he asked warily.
“I’m going to clean those scratches for you. I’m a nurse, remember?”
“And a very good one,” he assured her.
She glared at him. “Stuff it.”
“That was a compliment,” he said indignantly as they climbed the steps.
Now that she was sure he would come with her, Cait dropped his arm. She couldn’t touch him, not even casually. It made something curl too deliciously in the pit of her stomach. “It wasn’t a compliment. You were kissing up to me. Though for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.”
“I’ve explained that already.”
She ignored that. “Wait for me right there.” They stepped over the threshold into her apartment and she pointed at the kitchen.
“My mother always used to fix me up in the bathroom,” Sam said.
“I’m not your mother.” And the only way to get to her bathroom was through her bedroom. Cait felt something shiver inside her at the thought of letting him get that close to the heart of her. Though he’d already gotten pretty close. So close, in fact, that…
She pressed a hand to her stomach with the thought, then steeled herself and stalked off.
She put Billy on the bed and took a moment to rub him between the ears. “Poor baby.” His hair was still all puffed up from his encounter with the dog. She went into the bathroom and found a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. For what she had in mind, it was all she needed.
Cait went back to the living room and found Sam still standing there. “What are you doing?” she asked as he looked around.
“Trying to figure out what makes you tick.”
Something about his tone told her he was serious. Her heart shifted. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Under the circumstances, I think it does.”
He was talking as if he knew about the baby. Her heart slugged. But that was impossible. “My living room isn’t going to impart any clues.”
He finally looked at her. “It already has. You like old things.”
She glanced around at her almost-antiques and flushed. “They’re not that old.”
“Things with character,” he clarified. “Things that last.”
Like nothing else in her life ever had, Cait thought. But this baby would. This child would be with her forever.
Suddenly she ached with the need to make him understand why she needed to get away from him, why he needed to leave her alone so she could love this baby in peace. The urge to talk, to spill things out, was so strong she turned away into the kitchen, shaken by it. “Do you want me to clean those scratches, or are you just going to let them fester?”
He followed her, eyeing t
he bottle of peroxide. “You’re going to hurt me.”
“Yes. And I’m looking forward to it. Hold your hands over the sink.”
He did and she saw him tighten his jaw, bracing himself for it. “What did I ever do to you?” he muttered.
You made me want something I can’t have. “Your dog terrorized my cat.” She splashed the peroxide over his hands.
He yelled as it foamed up on the scratches. “Jeez! Ever hear of cotton swabs?”
“I don’t have any.”
“I’ll bet. You’ve probably got clamps on the off chance you have to perform open-heart surgery on your kitchen table.”
“Are you calling me rigid again?”
“Have dinner with me and prove to me that you’re not.”
She’d already proved it once, Cait thought, and it had gotten her…here. Pregnant, which was overwhelming and wonderful. With Sam seeming as though he wanted to set his sights on her, which was confusing and terrifyingly enticing.
Her hands were a little unsteady as she screwed the cap back on the bottle. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I’m pregnant with your child. Cait put the peroxide bottle down and pressed her palms to her cheeks. It was like an alien being had taken up residence in her mind, hissing words that she didn’t dare speak aloud. And with the way she’d been acting lately, any one of them was liable to come out for real.
“Cait?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
She dropped her hands and glared at him. “You’re in my kitchen, that’s what’s wrong.”
“You know, it just occurs to me that you’re being a lot more antagonistic toward me than the situation between us warrants.”
“There’s no situation between us,” she whispered desperately.
“Not if you won’t let there be one. I’m trying to convince you otherwise.”
She shook her head hard and fast as she thought of Billy and the candle snuffer again. “I have enough on my mind without…without…”
Sam watched, waiting for her to finish. But she only moved one hand to press it against her mouth, then she turned away. This time he noticed that the hand was shaking and her eyes went bright as though she was going to cry again.
Something inside him hurt to see her this way. She was the steadiest, kindest, calmest woman he had ever met—even when Hines had been in the process of abducting them. So what was this? “Look at me,” he said quietly.
“No.” Her voice came back muffled. “If you don’t leave now, I’ll…I’ll call the police and have you removed.”
“Oh, sure. Your landlady would love that kind of commotion.”
She turned back to face him, and her eyes shot fire. “This is none of your concern. It’s me this time, just me. Not you.”
Finally it hit him.
The way she’d run out of the apartment down the stairs when Houdini had gone after the cat. She’d already been crying. She’d already been wild. “Something’s happened to you,” he said. His voice was flat, implacable, something he rarely heard from himself. And whatever it was had happened before he’d even arrived. It had nothing to do with Houdini.
He watched her look around the kitchen as though seeking an answer. He still didn’t think she’d give him one, but then she surprised him. She sat down suddenly at the kitchen table as though someone had removed the bones from her legs, groping a little for the chair and easing herself into it. “Someone broke in here,” she said in a voice so small he almost didn’t hear it.
But the words hit him like sledgehammers. “When?” he asked harshly.
“Today. Billy was here when I left for work this morning,” she said desperately.
“What does the cat have to do with it?”
She looked up at him, something in her eyes flaring again. “Because he was here, then he wasn’t! When I got home, he was gone! That means someone put him outside!”
“Maybe he scooted out the door when you left this morning.” He wanted desperately for there to be a reasonable explanation for this. Because if there wasn’t, then someone was still after her.
Cait shot to her feet again. “Billy has no urge to go outside,” she said. “He doesn’t like it outside. I’ve owned him for years, and he’s never once made a dash for the door.” She paused, then added, “They broke my candle snuffer, too.”
“Your what?”
“This.” She headed into the living room and he followed her. She picked it up from the floor where she’d dropped it earlier.
“How do you know it wasn’t broken before?” he asked.
“Because I don’t break things!”
There was that, he thought. “Okay. Where’s your phone?”
“Why?”
“I’m going to do something about this.”
“Whoever was here didn’t leave a calling card.”
“I’m calling the police, damn it!”
“Why are you yelling at me?”
“Because I can’t stand you being scared. It does something to me.”
Everything inside her went still, then shimmered. No, no, don’t let that happen. Don’t let him get to you. But she wished it was true. It made something achy bloom inside her.
She couldn’t quite find her voice.
He went to look for a phone without her telling him where to find it. It took Cait several moments to go after him. He’d located the kitchen extension and was hanging up when she got there.
“They’re on their way,” he said.
“But what can they possibly do?” she asked shakily.
“For one thing, they can tell us where Branson Hines is.”
Her face bleached. She felt it happen, felt the blood drain to her toes. “He’s in jail. And why me? Even if he got free again, why come after me? I was just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time that day. I never met him before in my life. He can’t possibly have a grudge against me.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s just ticked off that we escaped.”
“Then he’d go after you, too! Has anything weird happened to you?”
Sam thought about it. “No.” Not unless he counted the way she was getting to him.
The police arrived in record time. Cait heard the cruiser pull up outside before she even had a chance to clear her head so she could face them. She wasn’t sure if she was comforted by their arrival or embarrassed about the way they’d come so quickly. She went to the door to let them in.
They were a man-and-woman team. The woman was pretty and freckled and brusque. The man was young with dewy brown eyes and a quiet voice. Sam trailed after the woman as she began to inspect the apartment. The man motioned at Cait to sit on the sofa.
She did so obediently. He sat beside her. “I’m Officer Nodesky,” he said.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Cait giggled a little nervously at her response. Polite to the death, she thought shakily. “Thanks for coming.”
He grinned, setting her at ease. Cait spent the next ten minutes outlining how she knew someone had been in the apartment. Was that skepticism she saw in his eyes? Did he think she was strung out, crazy, because of her kidnapping ordeal? He’d be right, she thought desperately, except she was absolutely sure that someone had been here. Cait opened her mouth to tell him about the feeling lately that she was being watched, then Sam and the other officer came back into the room.
“When was the last time you changed that doorknob in the kitchen?” the woman asked. Her name tag read L. Needles, Cait saw.
She frowned. “Changed it?”
“Took it off and replaced it?”
“Never,” Cait said. “I’ve never done that. Why would I?”
L. Needles scribbled something in her notepad and looked at her partner. “That’s how they came in,” she told him. “There are fresh scratch marks on it and it’s wiped clean. My guess is that the scratches are from a tool of some kind. One of the workbenches downstairs in the garage has been disturbed. There’s dust all over
everything except that.”
Officer Nodesky looked at Cait. “Is anything missing? Did you notice anything else amiss besides the candle snuffer and your pet?”
Cait flushed. “I really didn’t look. I didn’t have a chance.” She looked accusingly at Sam. “His dog caused a scene, then he called you and you came right away.”
“Does your landlord live in the house?” Nodesky asked.
Cait nodded woodenly. “Landlady,” she corrected. “Her name is Mrs. Brody.”
“I’ll go talk to her.”
As soon as he was gone, Sam took his place on the sofa. Cait looked at him warily. But in the end, when he took her hand and stroked a thumb over her knuckles, she let him. It sent little shivers and shock waves through her system, but she let him.
It felt so good not to be alone right now.
“You’ve got to know that Branson Hines comes to our mind at a time like this,” Sam said to Officer Needles.
Cait gripped his hand hard and nodded her agreement.
“That’s understandable,” the officer said. “But he’s in jail.”
“You’re sure about that? He escaped once before.”
“Not this time. I had the desk sergeant make a phone call while my partner and I drove over here. Hines is present and accounted for in his cell.”
“What about his wife?”
“She’s in Laredo. She left town right after he was taken into custody and he’s been making repeated phone calls from the jail to a fleabag motel there.”
“That’s that, then,” Cait said. But it made no sense. Who else would want to stalk her?
Officer Nodesky came back. “The landlady was out in the afternoon,” he reported. “She had a hair-dresser’s appointment.”
“Which curl?” Sam asked, breaking some of the tension, earning a smile from Nodesky. He could always manage to do that, Cait thought, when things got rough.
“She says she left a little after two o’clock and got home about four, shortly before Ms. Matthews did, and in time to hear the ruckus with your dog,” Nodesky continued, then paused and scratched his chin. “By the way, there’s a rope attached to that tree, but no canine.”