IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON before Alex could swing by Jenna’s house. No one had asked questions when he’d checked out one of the high powered cameras. This wasn’t exactly by the book, but he didn’t care. It was Jenna, and she needed help. She was one of theirs—and the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about.
His stomach growled. He’d missed lunch because he couldn’t eat after seeing Jenna again and the way they’d left things. After so long spent wanting her and viewing her as out of his league was it possible things were different? She had kissed him. What if it wasn’t because of the immediate situation? What if she was attracted to him? He didn’t know what to think. She flirted with half the guys in their unit. Had she kissed them, too? That idea quickly went out the window. If Jenna were making the rounds, everyone would know. Someone would have bragged and it would have gone from there.
No, she’d kissed him.
Which made it harder to see where their future lay if they had one at all.
Alex stood inside Jenna’s front door, surveying her home in the light for the first time. His first impressions hadn’t been wrong last night. The space was comfortable, inviting. There weren’t many personal touches, like photographs or keepsakes, but it still had Jenna’s stamp on it everywhere. A splash of color here, some flowers there.
He could understand the allure of being in her home if he were a stalker. There was something about her home that made him feel closer to Jenna without her being in the same room. He’d walked a thousand people’s homes under hundreds of circumstances, and for the first time he got a skeevy vibe doing it. Probably because this was Jenna’s home and his intentions weren’t exactly pure where she was concerned.
She’d called him on his jealousy—and she’d been right. Of course, in the moment, he’d just wanted Trevor to stop talking to her, because it wasn’t Trevor she should be kissing. It was him. Alex.
He pushed the twisted mess of his personal life aside and focused on taking pictures. First, he took wide shots of the room to set the scene, then moved on to capturing the details, how books were arranged, the exact way she’d left things.
If he were following Jenna’s every move and wanted to feel closest to her, where would he spend time in the house?
Alex studied the living room. The way she’d organized the furniture. The little desk piled with mail was too cluttered to get much done while sitting there, which meant she checked it while standing and would toss the junk into the waste basket. His gloves squeaked as he made a fist. The stalker probably sifted through her mail.
He approached the desk and leafed through a couple envelopes and mailings sitting on top, but they told him nothing. A cordless phone sat in a cradle with an answering machine light flashing.
Messages were another way of burrowing into her life. What would a stalker learn listening to them? He pressed the play button and moved on rolling the questions around in his head while he snapped more shots of the kitchen and dining area. While it appeared the two areas were high traffic, he didn’t think either were what he was looking for.
The machine played several telemarketer messages, two more calls for phone services and one for cable. One message though, wasn’t a business at all. A woman’s voice spoke in a thick accent as she gave a rambling account of how her son was doing. Another patient checking in?
Damn, but she was something else.
“Hi, this is Kristen from Dr. Wier’s office. Per your HIPPA form, I’m allowed to leave medical information at this number. I’m calling to inform you that I have a copy of your last psych eval ready for pickup. Sorry about how long that took, Dr. Wier wanted to review the request first. I’ll have them at the front desk at the VA.”
VA? As in the Veterans offices? And why was Jenna looking at her psych eval? Was something wrong? She hadn’t had an injury on the job since...last year? He’d make a note of it and tell her at dinner.
Alex progressed into her office where another desk with her laptop was set up. He wouldn’t touch that, but it was worth getting her to comb through the history, see if anyone had been on the machine while she wasn’t here.
Why would she want to see her psych eval? Did it have to do with the stalker? Or was something else wrong?
I shouldn’t have pressed play on the machine.
Now he had questions he didn’t have any right to ask. He took a deep breath and tamped down on his curiosity. If he could bring it up later, he’d ask.
The office was where she’d fed Mittens, it was where she worked out and did her on-line activity. This was where she spent a good deal of her time. Just about every officer had connected with everyone else through some social media platform or another. Jenna was more active than most, which meant she spent considerable amounts of her off-the-clock time right here.
Alex stood at the desk and documented exactly what was around the laptop. The odds and ends lining the back edge of the desk. He’d have to make sure she looked at each one tonight.
He paused mid-photograph and stared at the green hexagon hiding behind a photograph of Jenna holding Mittens.
The coaster.
THE SUN WAS JUST above the horizon by the time Jenna walked out of the hospital. She was beyond ready to be on her own time. It had taken every bit of her focus to keep her head on the job today, which wasn’t typical of her. Before the stalker, before the chance of PTSD, before she’d kissed Alex—her patients were the most important thing to her. She hated being distracted. There was a much greater chance of making a mistake, and unlike another job where she could hit an undo button, people suffered if she didn’t do the right thing. She loved being a paramedic, but damn it made for some tough days.
It was a weight she usually managed well, but today it was too much. All she wanted was a cup of hot chocolate, a warm blanket and something on TV to take her mind away from it all.
Jenna glanced around the employee lot and frowned. She always parked on the third row from the end. It had a direct path to the door with clear sight lines. She counted the rows, and no, she was on the right one. That morning she remembered parking just south of the second light pole because it still had a big, red bow tied to it that someone had missed when the holiday decorations came down months ago.
She walked up and down the row, her anxiety rising.
Had she been wrong? Had she parked on another row? Was she remembering a different day? She’d been scatter-brained when she’d gotten to work after the near silent breakfast she’d shared with Alex. Her nerves had been so tied up in knots it had taken a jog to loosen her up enough to focus.
She walked up and down the row, but her car wasn’t there. If she’d driven and parked on auto-pilot, wouldn’t she have done exactly what she always did? But if she’d somehow checked out mentally on the drive, if she wasn’t herself, would she still have parked on this row?
Jenna took a deep breath.
Think, damn it.
Her keys. Duh! She had a key fob with an emergency button.
She held the keys up and pressed the red button. A car two rows over began to flash its headlights and honk. She blew out a breath—it was there—and clicked the button again. Had she parked it there?
Jenna crossed to her little hatchback car but stopped a few feet away.
This wasn’t right. It was parked nose-in. She always backed into a spot for a quick exit and to keep the afternoon sun off the dash.
This was wrong. Everything about it felt wrong. This wasn’t her. She was a creature of habit, maybe a little OCD at times, but she wouldn’t do something this abnormal. It wasn’t like her. It wasn’t right.
She backed away from the car, glancing up and down the row.
What if it was a stalker? What if he had access to her car?
Her skin crawled.
There were trees bordering the lot and people out on the little trail. Someone could be watching her right now and she’d never know it. The lot was open, too exposed. She needed some place to take cover, to hide even. Jenna bolted for the hospital, pulling out her cell phone as she went.
Before last night she hadn’t wanted to tell anyone. If she told a soul, it was a stalker, and it wound up being her instead, she’d lose everything. No one wanted to deal with a paramedic having issues assimilating into civilian life.
“Hello?” a gruff voice said.