As an owner on the bottom floor of the condo complex, she had two entrances to her home. The front door she normally used and a door that led to the grassy public area between buildings. Hadn’t she locked it earlier?
She remembered checking it, but had she actually turned the lock in the door? Felt the hard snap of the dead bolt beneath her fingers?
As that fear kicked in again, knocking her heart against her chest with heavy thumps, she fought for a deep breath. It was an odd night wrapping up a tiring and difficult stretch of weeks. That was all. It was summertime and people enjoyed the common area of the complex long into the evening, barbecuing, or it could be neighbors sitting around talking. Maybe someone tried the wrong door heading back to their own home.
Yet even as she tried to talk herself out of what she’d heard, Evangeline reached for the sharp kitchen scissors in the small caddy she kept near the stove. With the handle-end wrapped tightly in her fist, she left the kitchen and headed for her back door. Even from this distance, she couldn’t see any sign of entry. The door was closed firmly. She kept her gaze trained on the hallway and the small powder room that speared off near the back door.
Could someone be hiding in there?
Tightening her grip, Evangeline moved closer. Just shy of the bathroom she twisted so her free hand could swing around the doorframe and flip on the lights, even as her body remained physically protected by the wall.
Only no one was there as light flooded the small space.
The heavy thump of her heartbeat calmed slightly as she took in the area. The back door was closed and she could see from where she stood that the dead bolt was still thrown. No one was in the bathroom. There wasn’t any other place to hide on the back side of the condo. And Troy had been with her for the past hour, walking through the front of her home.
They’d have both heard if anyone had gotten by.
Satisfied it was one more weird occurrence in a night full of them, Evangeline rechecked the dead bolt for her own comfort and walked back to the kitchen, dropping the scissors back into their rightful place.
“Skittish much, Whittaker?”
The sound of her voice did little to comfort the tangling, jangling nerves that still twisted beneath her skin, but she was determined to ignore it.
What was it Troy had said? Very little couldn’t be helped by a bit of food and a good night’s sleep.
She’d had the burger and now it was time for rest.
The lovely image Troy had painted of his stepmother’s kind warmth and genuine caring kept her company as she walked into her bedroom. It was only as she hit the light switch and saw the book on her nightstand, propped up and facing her, that she screamed.
She had never purchased a travel book about the state of Michigan.
Nor had she left one in her room.
CHAPTER 5
Troy answered the call on the first ring, his in-dash Bluetooth lighting up with Evangeline’s name.
“Hello?”
“Troy!” A hard sob muffled his name but nothing could hide the agony in her tone. “Someone’s here! Or was here!”
He had just turned into his neighborhood and was already swinging around the nearest cul-de-sac as her frantic words continued spilling from the speakers. Something about her back door and a book and her bedroom, all running together in a rush of words.
“Evangeline.” When she continued sobbing, he pushed harder. “Evangeline!”
“Yes?”
“Are you still in the house? Have you called nine-one-one?”
“No one—” She hiccupped. “No one is here. I checked.”
She checked?
White hot anger filled him at the thought of her being in the house by herself, walking around looking for an intruder.
And what the hell was an intruder doing in her home in the first place? He was just there. Hell, he’d left less than ten minutes ago. And while he’d own being somewhat distracted, especially there at the end with their kiss, he’d have known if someone was in her condo.
Wouldn’t he?
He might not have seen her entire place but he hadn’t missed how the bedrooms had been tucked away off a hallway on the opposite side of the living room. The layout was well done, keeping the bedrooms separate from the kitchen to allow for privacy while entertaining. Would that have given someone time to get inside? Or more to the point, to get out while he and Evangeline had been enjoying dinner?
He raced through several lights leading into downtown, retracing the route he’d just driven.
He needed to get to her.
That lone thought accompanied him as he navigated through the last mile to her home. As the various landmarks that made up his hometown flew past, Troy considered all he knew.
Evangeline’s initial 911 call earlier this evening. The strange, empty alley even CSI couldn’t decipher. And now a possible intruder.
What was going on with this woman?
Did someone have an ax to grind? Or worse, was she targeted in some way? As an image of their latest case file on Len Davison came up, Troy’s blood ran cold.
Was it possible Davison was changing pattern?
He wasn’t that well versed in serial-killer behavior but he’d had enough police training to understand the basics. The adherence to pattern. The odd comfort the killer found in repetitive actions, matching some internal motive only he or she understood. And the even more dangerous points of tension when that pattern escalated.
It was Len Davison’s escalation that had put the GGPD in their current situation, facing off against the man’s devious mind. But another change in that pattern? That would be akin to a bomb going off in the middle of Grave Gulch. They had some sense of what they were up against based on Davison’s approach to his victims. Men of a certain age, out alone after dark. A kill every two months.
But if that pattern changed?
Then no one in Grave Gulch was safe.
Troy swung into Evangeline’s parking lot, pulling into an empty space in front of her home. He raced for the door, his hand lifted to pound on the thick wood just as it swung open. She stood there, still in the outfit she’d worn through dinner. If he’d thought she looked peaked and scared when he met her on the street in Grave Gulch, it was nothing compared to the pallor that now filled her face.
“You’re here.” She said it on a breathy sob before throwing herself into his arms.
Troy held on tight, his gaze already roaming over her head and through the open door beyond. He couldn’t see anything out of place but she’d sobbed into the phone about her bedroom and a book.
Pulling back, Troy stared down at her. Her dark eyes were wild in her face, the pupils blown wide with another burst of fear-pumping adrenaline. But in the midst of that panic, he saw something else.
Terror.
And the man who’d spent his life imagining his mother’s last moments simply couldn’t walk away.
“Let’s go inside and I’ll check everything out.”
“I already did.”
“I’ll do it again. And then I want you to tell me what happened.”
They walked back into the house, his arm around her shoulders. With deliberate motions, he turned and closed the door, flipping the lock as he did so. Pointing toward the sofa, he directed her there. “Why don’t you take a seat for a minute and I’ll check everything out?”
Evangeline nodded, taking the seat as he instructed. Her shoulders trembled and he walked back to her, grabbing a blanket off the back of the couch and settling it around her shoulders.
“It’s the dead of summer.”
“And you’re shaking like it’s February.” Troy nestled the blanket around her shoulders. “Warm up a bit. I’ll be right back.”
He walked through the entire house, itching to pull his service piece out of its holster but holding back.
Evangeline had already confirmed her own visual search and it felt like an unnecessary step that carried more risk of scaring her instead of protecting them. But he remained conscious of its heft and weight as he combed her house, room by room.
Enter, sweep, review.
He did the two bedrooms off the living room, checking closets, the en suite bathrooms and even under the bed, before moving on. The book she’d mentioned—what looked like a travel guide on her nightstand—was there and Troy eyed it but didn’t touch it. He’d ask her about that after he cleared the rest of her home.
He glanced at her briefly as he moved back through the living room. Evangeline was still huddled on the same chair where he’d left her, the blanket wrapped around her. The haunted look still rode her dark gaze but he could see some color returning, erasing the pallor of her skin. Satisfied she was warming up, the fear of an intruder fading, Troy headed for the kitchen and then on down the small hallway to her back door.
That door wasn’t as formal as her front entrance, but its thick wood was serviceable. He’d gotten a good sense of the layout of the condo complex, with front doors facing the parking lot and any back entrances to the homes facing a common area. He opened the door now, bending to search the locks and the area beyond. The dead bolt seemed sturdy enough and he saw no sign of scratches when he looked at it. Still, he’d like to check it in the light, as well, to look for anything that might be out of place.
Stepping through the door, he kept his gaze on the small spread of poured stone that made up her back patio, two overstuffed chairs set up around a wrought iron coffee table. The area was pretty, he noted. Simple but cozy, with the inviting chairs giving a place to curl up and enjoy a book on a summer afternoon. The nearby firepit ensured she could use the space well into the fall, even as the Michigan nights grew crisp.
Executing a full turn, Troy surveyed the space. Looking to his left and right, he could see matched patios spreading down in both directions, Evangeline’s neighbors having various furniture setups of their own. Everyone had managed a sense of privacy, even without formal fencing separating each home. It was only as he gazed on past the patios to the shared lawn beyond that Troy recognized how easy it would be to sneak around behind her building.
The furniture did provide a layer of cover and if no one was in the yard—or the reverse, if there were a lot of people milling around and enjoying the day—it wouldn’t take much to walk up to the back entryway of any of the first-floor homes.
He headed back into the house, closing up and locking the door. He saw nothing to indicate an intruder had been in her condo or had used aggressive means to gain entry. A flag that was too close for comfort to the incident earlier in the alley.
A frantic call with no body.
Now a frantic call without any evidence of a break-in.
Troy stared down the hallway toward the living room.
It was time to talk to Evangeline.
* * *
Evangeline finally felt the warmth return to her limbs, the achy trembling that had suffused her body fading. Although the blanket had seemed silly overkill for June, she was grateful for Troy’s quick thinking.
And his even quicker arrival.
She’d been tempted to follow him as he searched the house, but he seemed insistent that she wait in the living room. And the few quiet minutes gave her a chance to gather her thoughts.
What was someone doing in her home?
Over and over, she’d sought some sort of explanation but had none. That book wasn’t hers. And even more jarring, other than going out this evening for a bit of a walk, she’d been home nearly nonstop for two weeks. She had gone out the day before to get some groceries while the cleaning woman was in, doing the house, but Kathy hadn’t reported anything odd when Evangeline had returned home.
Although she hadn’t made much of a mess over the past few weeks, tidying to keep herself busy, Evangeline didn’t have the heart to call Kathy off and not pay her for a service. Because the house was spotless, she had finished earlier than usual, heading out a few minutes after Evangeline had unpacked her groceries. They’d exchanged a few pleasantries before Kathy headed off to her next job.
No mention of anyone even knocking on the door. No delivery of a package. And while Kathy was an avid reader and could have left something behind as a pass along, her tastes trended toward popular fiction, not travel guides to the state where she had already lived a lifetime.
The book made no sense. And certainly not perched on her nightstand, the cover facing out.
“I’ve checked everything,” Troy said, his large, competent form seeming to fill the living room by his very presence. “The house is secure and I can’t find anything out of place.”
The house is secure.
Not “no one is here,” Evangeline thought.
Just a quick, clinical The house is secure.
Secure implied safe. And she felt neither.
“Thank you for checking. And for coming back.”
Troy took a seat on the couch, facing her. “Why don’t you take me through it? From the point I left until the point I got back here.”
Evangeline considered the best way to start. The slamming of the door? The book? Or maybe she should just start by pleading with him to believe that she had her sanity firmly intact.
In the end, she did as he requested—at the beginning—and went straight through to the end. Troy never interrupted, but a whirl of emotions crossed his face, from anger to grim resolve, with a stop at fury along the way.
“Have you had any issues with your back door before? Anyone unwanted?”
“My neighbor made a mistake the first week she lived here. She’d gone down to sit out in the common area and tried the wrong door when she came back up, confusing which condo was hers. It was totally innocent and she apologized profusely. It also gave us a chance to meet each other.”
“You’ve had no other problems since?”
“Troy, it was hardly a problem.” She sat up, pushing the blanket off her shoulders. “That was a mistake.”
“And I’m trying to understand if it was possible it could happen again.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“How was it different?”
Just like the series of questions earlier, she recognized his patience and appreciated it. Yet even as she knew his questions were fair, Evangeline couldn’t fully fight the tense knot of embarrassment that kept screaming he didn’t believe her.
“It was—” She hesitated, well aware how the next words would make her sound. She told herself to hold it back, but something pushed her forward. “It was different tonight. There was a sinister quality to it I can’t explain. Just like I haven’t been able to explain why I feel like I’ve been watched for the past few weeks, even though it’s been there all the same.”
“You what?” Troy leaned forward, his forearms perching on the edge of his knees. “You’ve been watched?”
“I feel like I’ve been watched. I can’t prove it.”
Troy had been on high alert since racing up to her front door, but at the admission she’d felt watched, his entire demeanor changed. “Watched? Where?”
“Everywhere. It’s been going on for a few weeks now. I felt it a few times before I went on leave from my job and now that I’ve been home it’s happened more frequently. Even sometimes when I’m in the house.”
That sense of someone looking at her through the window. Or the feeling of a presence on the few occasions she’d gone to sit on the back porch, trying to divert her mind with a book or magazine.
“When was the last time it happened?”
“Earlier. Tonight.” The same fury she’d sensed earlier was back in full force, darkening his hazel eyes to a fiery amber. “When I was walking around downtown.”
“And you didn’t think to mention it?”
&nbs
p; “I forgot. And when I thought about it again it didn’t seem relevant to what I saw in the alley.”
“It’s all relevant, Evangeline. And when you add on that we’ve got a serial killer on the loose, ignoring your instincts is the worst thing you can do.”
Without warning, a long-forgotten memory rose up to the forefront of her thoughts. It had been one of her biggest cases to date at the DA’s office and she’d had to depose darn near half of the county in the process. A beloved, well-respected teacher had been embezzling from the district, siphoning money off over a span of nearly two decades. Administrators, fellow teachers and the PTA were all up in arms that they’d had no idea what had been happening just under their noses. But it was an older woman who worked in the administration office whose testimony about the guilty teacher had resonated.
Something was off from the day she started. I couldn’t put my finger on it and I’d never have guessed she was doing this, but I knew something wasn’t right with her.
That testimony had stuck with Evangeline through the years. The woman’s absolute conviction something was wrong. And the reality that she’d been right all that time.
It felt stupid to say it out loud, with no obvious evidence to back her up, but she had felt off. The world around her had felt off. And her instincts had been clamoring at her for weeks now.
Maybe it was time to start paying attention. Real attention. The sort that caught criminals.
“I wasn’t ignoring anything. Or more to the point, I wasn’t trying to,” Evangeline added. “It felt silly to admit it. To say it out loud.”
“It’s not silly and it’s something you should be admitting. It’s one more piece I need to look for. Anyone lurking around here that doesn’t belong is a good place to start.”
“Troy, you don’t need to make this your problem. The GGPD is dealing with a whole lot worse right now.”
“You are my problem. The moment I took the call to come help you tonight, you became my problem. You’re also the prosecuting attorney directly tied to Len Davison’s freedom. Which only further reinforces my point.”
Harlequin Romantic Suspense July 2021 Box Set Page 24