Tate shook his head. “That’s Shawn. I don’t remember his last name, but he lives one town over, in Luna, and has for at least four years. He comes into Desparre pretty regularly. He’s kind of antisocial, but there’s no way he was stalking you in New York two years ago.”
Her shoulders dropped. Was this all for nothing?
She flipped to the next photo, and her anxiety sparked again as she looked past herself, Lora and Adam talking, to a guy in the background watching them from near the gazebo. “What about this guy? I thought he might have taken a picture of me that day.”
Tate frowned at the photo, leaning closer and giving her a whiff of the same sandalwood scent she’d noticed the day he’d come to her house to stop her from leaving Desparre. It was a scent she’d started to associate entirely with him, a scent that made her want to breathe more deeply.
“I don’t know this guy.” He looked behind him. “Chief?”
Sabrina passed the picture over and then watched as the police chief studied it carefully and finally shook his head. “No. And it does look like he might be trying to hide. I’ll check with the other officers and see if anyone else recognizes him.”
Was this him? Hope started to build again, with whiplash intensity, and Sabrina met Tate’s gaze, knowing that hope was reflected in her eyes.
As he gazed back at her, the rest of the room, the chief, the pictures all seemed to fade into the background. All she could focus on was Tate, on the sharp angles of his face and the fullness of his lips. On the way his dark hair swept over his forehead and the hypnotizing deep brown of his eyes. Her breathing went shallow as a familiar spark ignited inside her, one she’d been feeling more and more often when she was around him. The way his gaze seemed to intensify on her said he felt it, too.
But if the man in the picture was her stalker and they could finally end this threat, she’d be leaving. Trying to begin a long-distance relationship all the way from New York while she was trying to reintegrate into her old life wasn’t practical, even if Tate was interested. If they finally found her stalker, she’d never get the chance to see if her growing interest in Tate could have become something.
* * *
“DOES ANYONE RECOGNIZE this man?” Tate asked, holding up the photo Sabrina had identified earlier. She’d gone home, and Tate had felt a sudden pull to go with her, to stay beside her, but he had hours of work left today.
The few other officers inside the police station stopped their work and came to look.
Veteran officer Charlie Quinn, a gruff guy who looked a lot older than his forty-two years, squinted at it for a long moment, then finally shook his head. “He looks vaguely familiar, but I don’t know him. If he’s a local, he must not come around town much.”
It was a problem they’d run into before in investigations. Desparre was a small town in terms of population, but large when it came to acreage. So, while locals tended to recognize each other, if someone wanted to hide, they definitely could. In fact, one of Tate’s earliest cases on the Desparre PD had involved a couple of kidnappers who’d hidden out in the mountains for years without anyone realizing.
Charlie’s partner, Max Becker, pushed his way through. “Let me see.”
Max was a few years older than Tate and had been on the force a few years longer. He was brash and seemed to think there was no space in a professional setting for friendships, but he got the job done.
He stared at the picture for less time than Charlie had, then shook his head, too. “Nah, I don’t know him.”
“Nate?” Tate called into the front of the station.
The youngest officer on the force, who’d recently turned twenty, hurried into the bullpen.
“You recognize this guy?” Tate asked hopefully. Nate might have been relatively new to the force, but he’d lived in Desparre all his life.
Nate’s lips pursed as he leaned close to the photo, making Max snicker. “Try not to go cross-eyed.”
Ignoring him, Nate hedged. “Maybe. He does look a little familiar, but I don’t think he’s local.” Straightening, he asked, “You think this is Sabrina’s stalker?”
“Maybe. Any idea when you might have first seen him?”
Nate frowned, creating lines across his pale, freckled forehead. “Not that long ago, actually. Maybe a month or two?”
“You ready to go?” Lorenzo Riera called to Nate as he came into the bullpen.
“Give me a few minutes,” Nate said. “I need to find Sam to cover the front desk.” He left the bullpen as Lorenzo strode quickly toward Tate.
“What are you all looking at?”
Tate showed Lorenzo the photo and pointed to the guy in the background, skulking near the gazebo. “You know him?”
“This guy?” Lorenzo snorted. “Yeah.”
Tate’s interest perked at the derision in Lorenzo’s voice. “How? Who is he?”
“I don’t know his name. But about a month and a half ago, I was at the park with my two youngest kids. You know Julie Waterman? Paul and Frannie’s oldest? She’s about to start her first year of college, I think.”
Tate nodded. The Watermans had moved to Desparre long before he’d arrived, looking for a different lifestyle than they’d had back in Tulsa.
“Well, like most of the locals, she knows I’m a cop. She came over and told me this guy was creeping her out. Said he’d been watching her all afternoon.”
Tate frowned. Was that why Sabrina hadn’t gotten a note until recently? Because her stalker had been busy fixating on someone else for a while? It seemed odd that he’d track her all the way to Alaska and then get distracted, but maybe a month and a half ago, he’d known Sabrina was in Desparre but hadn’t located her yet. Or maybe he was the kind of creep who always harassed women.
“So I went over to talk to him,” Lorenzo continued. “I wasn’t on duty, but I let him know I was a cop, tried to get his info. He acted like he didn’t have ID on him and gave me a name I looked up later, but it was fake. Claimed he wasn’t following anyone, but he was definitely aggravated. He left the park, but a few days later, I spotted him in his truck. I followed him just to see what he was up to, and he headed into the mountain. I lost him there, but I suspect he lives up that way.”
“We need to find this guy, see how long he’s been in town,” Tate said. “See if he’s ever lived in New York.”
“You really think he’s Sabrina’s stalker?”
“Maybe. You see him watching Sabrina in this picture. She thinks he took a picture of her, too.”
Lorenzo nodded, squinting at the picture again. “Could be he’s just a garden-variety jerk and he comes to the park to stare at the women.”
“Maybe,” Tate agreed. “But he’s the best lead we’ve got right now.”
Tate was always careful not to get too excited about leads that could be coincidence because they could blind you to other options. But something about the way the guy was looking at Sabrina made all of Tate’s protective instincts flare to life. His gut was telling him this was the guy.
Now they just needed to find him.
“Hey, Tate!” Nate said, rushing back into the room, wearing a big grin. “Guess what?”
Lorenzo smiled at his rookie partner, obviously amused at his enthusiasm.
“What?” Tate asked, a bad feeling forming that he couldn’t explain.
“You and Sitka are famous.”
The bad feeling turned into dread. “Why?”
Nate’s brow furrowed. “What, you don’t want to be famous? You’re the only one. Anyway, the local story that Ariel Clemson wrote got picked up by national news!”
From what seemed like far away, Tate heard Lorenzo asking, “You okay, man?”
He couldn’t seem to get it together enough to answer. Not only his first name but a picture of him was splashed across the national news.
He ne
eded to drive home, take off his uniform and leave town now.
As the thought formed, his cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen. Keara.
No doubt she’d seen the story, too. There shouldn’t be any hesitation now. He needed to go.
But he loved the life he’d built in Desparre. And even though the other officers were committed to Sabrina, he’d made her a promise. Besides, against all his instincts, he’d started to fall for her.
Tucking the phone back into his pocket and ignoring what he knew would be Keara’s advice to run, Tate prayed the wrong people wouldn’t see the story.
Because he needed to stay long enough to help Sabrina.
Chapter Eleven
It had been two days since the small heartwarming story Ariel Clemson had penned for the Desparre Daily had gone national. Two days without anyone showing up and trying to kill Tate. Two days without him receiving any death threats.
Maybe he’d gotten lucky.
The day after the story was picked up nationally, it was bumped out of the spotlight by a multistate manhunt for a group of escaped convicts. That story was still hogging the media’s attention, enough so that Ariel approached him as he and Sitka walked downtown.
She had a pout firmly in place as she said, “I thought that story was going to be my big break.”
“You’ll get there,” he assured her. He tried to appear sympathetic, though all he felt was relief that the story had been buried. Ariel didn’t seem to notice that his concern was fake. She also didn’t seem to notice that he couldn’t stop his gaze from wandering away from her to study everyone around them. To see if he recognized someone from his past.
She shrugged and muttered, “I hope so,” and then finally headed off, leaving him and Sitka alone.
With her gone, Tate gave in to his desire to scan his surroundings again. The woods up ahead, where Sabrina’s stalker might have disappeared after sending Talise’s car racing toward Sitka, in particular kept grabbing his attention. Probably because of the way he’d been ambushed on a trail near the woods back in Boston.
Escaping that attempt on his life had been a result of his quick thinking and quick action. But it had also been partly luck. He couldn’t help but wonder when his luck was going to run out.
In the news picture he was in the background, he reminded himself. Sabrina and Sitka had been the focus. Plus, the story didn’t have his real last name. Even if Kevin and Paul were searching for him, how likely was it that they’d have set up alerts for just his first name? And he doubted they regularly read feel-good stories.
Still, as his cell phone rang yet again, it amped up Tate’s anxiety even more. He felt guilty about not returning Keara’s calls, but he didn’t want to pick up while he was on patrol.
Sitka tilted her head, watching him as she strode alongside him. Her steady attention told him she knew something was wrong.
“It will all work out,” he told her, hoping he was right. Every time he thought about leaving Desparre, the same no-win choice kept haunting him: Did he bring Sitka or did he leave her behind?
As if she could read his thoughts, she whined, high-pitched and sustained, until he pet her.
“I’m just trying to do the best thing for you,” he said softly. Stroking her fur calmed his heart rate and seemed to relax her, too.
Ever since the incident with Talise’s truck, he’d stopped using a leash with her in town. She didn’t need one anyway, and if any locals had been wary of her before, Ariel’s story seemed to have given them all a soft spot for their new police K-9.
Straightening, he headed for the park. He was hoping his luck would hold and he’d see the guy who Sabrina had identified in the photo, since it seemed he liked to hang out there. So far, police hadn’t been able to positively identify him. Even quietly asking longtime locals hadn’t yielded any results beyond “He looks familiar” or “He might live up the mountain” or “I think he moved here in the past couple of months.”
When Tate reached the park, a group of kids ran over from the swings and started petting Sitka. His dog promptly sat, wagged her tail and tipped her head back, tongue lolling.
Tate held in a smile and resisted the urge to explain to the kids that he and Sitka were on duty. His dog was wearing her thick collar that identified her as a police K-9, but she wasn’t wearing the dark vest that immediately screamed Dog at Work.
“How old is she?” one of the kids asked.
“Sitka is a year old,” he told them. “She’s an Alaskan Malamute. Did you know that this kind of dog got its start as an arctic sled dog?”
“Oh, cool,” one of the other kids said.
“And feel her fur,” he advised as Sitka’s tail thumped harder, making the youngest of the kids laugh. “It’s a double coat, and it’s actually waterproof.”
From the benches, several of their parents watched with amusement as Tate shared details about how Sitka worked as a police K-9.
“She can even find people who get lost,” Tate continued, “by tracking them with her nose. It—”
Movement at the edge of his line of vision caught his attention, and Tate did a double take as he spotted the man from the picture, back behind the gazebo. When his gaze met Tate’s, he slid his phone into his pocket and ran toward the street.
“Sitka, come on!” Tate called, as he pivoted and raced after the man.
Behind him, he could hear the parents calling their kids to get them out of Sitka’s way.
Tate didn’t wait for Sitka to break free of the kids. He just gritted his teeth and ran onto the street, determined not to let the guy escape.
Instead of taking a sharp turn into the woods as Tate had expected, the guy ran down a perpendicular street.
“Police!” Tate yelled after him. “Stop!”
The guy glanced back, giving Tate a better look at a scowling, scared expression and a lot more muscle than had been evident in the photo. Since that picture had been taken, the guy had grown a short beard, as if he knew someone was looking for him.
Instead of heeding the directive, he ran even faster, and Tate swore at the speed such a muscle-bound guy should have had trouble achieving.
Yanking his radio off his duty belt, Tate panted, “I spotted the guy from the photo. He just took off on foot down Fleming Street. I’m in pursuit.”
“Backup is on the way,” Officer Sam Jennings returned immediately.
Behind him, the familiar sound of Sitka’s footsteps were gaining, but Tate didn’t slow to wait for her.
Ahead of him, the guy made a quick turn around the corner onto a street that housed nothing but a big, deserted warehouse. It was an eyesore in Desparre’s otherwise nicely kept downtown, and it seemed like a strange spot to try and hide. Unless maybe he’d left a vehicle this way?
Tate pushed himself harder, pivoting onto the street fast.
He realized his mistake before he’d finished rounding the blind corner. But it was already too late.
The guy had stopped, hidden up against the massive warehouse. He stepped forward just as Tate turned into view, lifted a huge, tattooed arm and clotheslined Tate.
Tate’s feet went out from under him, and then he slammed into the dirt and pebbled ground. The impact stole his breath, and his vision went black.
Chapter Twelve
Tate fought his way out of the darkness, blinking his vision clear only to see the guy’s massive fist heading toward his face.
Swallowing back nausea, Tate tried to roll out of the way.
Before he could, Sitka flew around the corner and leaped on the guy at a speed that dropped him to the ground.
As he flailed, yelled and swung those fists at Sitka’s unprotected back, she bit down on his arm and shook her head.
He screamed louder and curled inward, then his feet rose like he was readying to kick her.
Shoving hi
mself to a partly raised position, Tate pivoted and then knelt on top of the guy’s legs, trapping them in place. “Let go, Sitka!” When Sitka dropped the guy’s arm, Tate fought to flip him to his stomach.
The guy bucked and yanked an arm free, raising it to take a swing.
Then Sitka stepped closer and let out a deep growl.
The guy froze, panic in his suddenly wide eyes, and Tate didn’t waste any time. He yanked the guy over until his face was pressed against the dirt road and wrenched his arms up behind him. As Tate snapped on the cuffs, he asked, “Sitka, you okay?”
Woof!
It was part of her training to take down a suspect this way, but until now, she’d only done it in practice. At the training facility, the trainers, wearing protective gear, had shaken their arms and lifted her off the ground, teaching her to hang on through anything. They made loud noises next to her ears, lightly hit her back, and still she’d held tight.
Even though Tate had been proud of her, he’d hated seeing her get yanked around. Today had been worse. But judging by the tail wagging as she stood beside him, alert and ready to jump in again, she really was okay.
As his adrenaline calmed, Tate heard pounding feet heading toward them. “Back here!” he called.
“You good?” Officer Riera yelled back.
“All good!”
Lorenzo and Nate rounded the corner. The veteran was breathing hard as he leaned over and asked the guy, “You have anything on you that can stick me? Any needles or a knife?”
The guy on the ground forced his head to the side so he could look up at the five-foot-six Latino with muscles that rivaled his. He scowled, then shook his head.
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