Chapter Ten
ANNIE LOOKED DOWN the narrow trail, plotting the path of shallowest rain puddles, unsure about what had happened in the deer blind. A small breakthrough? That’d be nice.
Behind her, Cole thumped to the ground surprisingly quietly, considering his size. “So that counts as a session, right? We can cross another one off the list?”
Oh. She hid her face from him so he wouldn’t see that his question hurt. She’d thought they’d actually had a moment of connection up there.
Maybe she’d seen what she’d wanted to see. She knew he didn’t put much faith in ecotherapy, didn’t like the idea of needing help, yet the subtext of his comment was easy to read: I-hate-this-and-can’t-wait-till-our-sessions-are-over . . . She felt knocked back.
Don’t take it personally. He was the patient, and she was the therapist. Her feelings weren’t the primary consideration. So she turned toward him to say, “Nice try,” with as light an expression as she could manage. Then she walked out of the woods, waving at him when they parted at the trailhead without another word.
Thursday
As Annie slipped behind the wheel of her car the next day to go home for the noon feeding, she was still thinking about Cole. She only stopped when her phone rang.
“Want to come over for lunch?” Kelly asked.
“I can’t. But thank you. I have to run home, then I have to get back to the office to catch up on paperwork.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No. It’s just a stupid wall.”
“You do hold grudges.”
“I don’t!”
Kelly remained silent for a moment, and then she asked, “Then why are things always so strained between us? I hate it. I was so excited when you decided to move back.”
Annie wanted to deny the strain. She didn’t want to talk about the past.
Kelly said, “It’s not my fault that Gramps doted on my father while he kicked your mom out of the house. I hated it too. I lost my best friend.”
“He didn’t kick us out. We left because he made staying impossible. He couldn’t handle his daughter having a child without a father.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Annie closed her eyes. “I was just so damn jealous of you. And I was so mad at you. I was stupid. It’s not like you took something that was mine.”
“So you’re not mad anymore?”
“Of course not.”
“But you never want to do anything with me. Since you got back, you haven’t once said let’s get together. I always do, and you tell me why you can’t.”
Had she? Annie thought back. Yes, she had. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m going to call you next week, and we’ll grab lunch. I swear.”
By the time she finished talking with Kelly, Annie had a missed call. She called back the Broslin PD and asked for Harper Finnegan.
“I think he’s been trying to reach me,” she told Leila.
“I was,” Leila said. “We had some calls about a couple of llamas on Brandywine Road out by your place. Mike drove over to deal with traffic.”
“I’m on my way.”
Annie hung up and drove out of the parking lot, maybe faster than she should have, worry bubbling in her chest. Brandywine Road was two blocks from her house. She wanted to believe the llamas in trouble weren’t hers, but who else’s could they be?
She experienced the traffic jam first, though there was no reason for it at all now, she saw a few minutes later—nothing in the road, only people gawking. A police cruiser sat on the shoulder, and behind it, Officer Mike McMorris doing his best to keep three llamas and a one-eyed donkey in line.
How on earth?
Annie pulled up behind the cop car and jumped out. “I’m so sorry.”
Mike smiled at her, bright-eyed, freckled, and without a censuring glance. He was as easygoing as they came. “No problem, Annie.”
“I swear, we fixed the fence. I have no idea how they got out.”
“No harm done.” The guy didn’t have a frown setting.
Annie grabbed Esmeralda’s halter first, then Lucy’s, since Lucy was the alpha llama in her little herd. “I’m going to walk them home. The others should follow.”
But Mike already had them. “I’ll help. They did well so far. Let’s not get anyone hurt at this stage.”
So they walked together, Annie in the front, Mike following a few feet behind. Everything went well, except for the occasional drivers who for some reason felt the need to beep their horns at them. The sound startled the already-scared animals and made them jump and pull away.
Annie tried not to glare at the horn blowers. She focused on her animals instead and stayed calm, knowing being calm helped more than yelling at the beeping idiots that passed.
“Hey, you know what’s more amazing than a talking llama?” Mike asked from the back.
“No idea.”
“A spelling bee.”
Annie shook her head, but she was smiling.
Then they finally turned down her quiet street, and things went smoothly from there. When they were about two hundred feet from her house, she could see the problem. Her gate stood open.
She led her animals through, Mike behind her. The remaining two llamas were in the far corner of the yard. Dorothy the pig lay in a patch of mud nearby. Thankfully, she’d never been a runner. Annie and Mike set the escapist llamas and the donkey free, and then she walked back to the gate, Mike following once again.
The gate had a good, heavy latch that could not be opened by accident. She pointed it out to Mike. “I didn’t leave it open. I’m pretty obsessive about the animals not getting out. I rarely open the gate anyway, only when I’m mowing the lawn outside the fence. I haven’t mowed since last week.”
“Don’t touch the latch,” Mike said. He could have asked, Are you sure? But he didn’t, and Annie appreciated that.
He added, “I’ll be back in a sec.” And he walked back in the direction they came from, only to return in the cruiser a few minutes later.
He got out, popped the trunk, and came back carrying a little kit. “Harper mentioned your problems yesterday. Let’s see if I can lift a print or two from the metal.”
She watched as he carefully dusted for fingerprints.
“Two good ones.” He gave a pleased grunt when he finished. “You need to come down to the station for fingerprinting when you get a chance, so we can rule your prints out.”
“No problem. I can definitely do that.”
He put his kit back into the cruiser, but he didn’t get behind the wheel. He looked toward her garage and house. “Let me walk around before I go. I want to make sure nothing else is off. I’d feel better.”
She let him through the gate, then latched it behind him.
He looked into the garage first, but found nothing out of place. Then he walked through the house, a low whistle escaping him when he reached her bathroom. “Looks as bad as it did on TV.”
“You caught the morning show?”
“Saw it on YouTube.”
She groaned.
“Hey. You could become a celebrity.”
“Not on the top of my wish list,” she said as they cleared the house.
He cocked his head, his eyes sparkling. “So you know what happens when you get stuck between two llamas?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“You get llamanated.” Mike grinned.
She couldn’t help smiling back at him. The joke was so bad, it was almost good.
“You want a ride back to your car?” he asked when they finished checking out the house and found nothing out of place.
“I’ll get it later. I need to feed the babies.”
Thank God nobody had gotten into her garage. The tiny skunk kittens still needed milk. If they got out and got lost, they would starve.
Annie gave them all extra scratches and snuggles and even extra milk. She was grateful that they were safe, and that no cars had hit one of the llamas or Esmeralda today.
She was also grateful for the time she’d gotten to spend with Cole in the deer blind the day before. He had opened up and gone along with her guided meditation. Her heart warmed at the idea of him accepting help. He needed it, but he was like a fortress. For him, admitting that he needed help was the same as admitting weakness. She understood why he’d pulled back at the end—fortresses did not advertise cracks in their walls—so she was able to set aside her hurt feelings.
She focused on the fact that he had relaxed with her. He had fallen asleep again.
Under other circumstances, if she was just a woman and he was just a man, the fact that he kept falling asleep on her might hurt her vanity. But considering her occupation, she knew the times that he could relax with her and trust her were a compliment.
He’d pulled her against him. She wasn’t sure about that, about why she’d let him. She shouldn’t get that close to him again, even if she didn’t think he meant the embrace in any sexual way. He’d acted as if he simply needed that touch. Like he had needed his hand touching her knee at the meadow.
She even understood why. Because he couldn’t hear her breathe, and with his eyes closed, he wouldn’t be able to tell if she was still there. Did he need her to be there in order to be able to relax deeply enough to sleep? Was her presence like a changing of the guard? She was with him, she was on duty, so he could take a break?
He’d smelled like man, and sweat, and rain. She’d been filled with a completely inappropriate yearning to move her head to his chest and listen to the steady beat of his heart. Except . . .
Cole Makani Hunter was her patient.
He was a patient who needed her. And it looked like she might be able to help him. She could not mess that up under any circumstances. And she wouldn’t. So Annie put him out of her mind.
After she finished with her animals, she decided to toss in a load of laundry. She put the clothes in the machine and turned it on, then straightened the laundry room. In a house full of chaos, this small act of control made her feel better.
That good feeling lasted until she glimpsed a shadow cross in front of the laundry-room window. Annie jumped, her heart beating wildly in her chest. Every word Cole had said about escalation rushed back.
Here comes the attack.
She should have taken Cole more seriously. She should have prepared.
She eased out into the kitchen and picked up the nearest weapon, a chunk of two-by-four from the rubble on the floor.
She gripped the chunk of wood as she listened to the footsteps on the other side of the tarp, barely audible above the sound of the blood rushing loudly in her ears.
Someone was definitely out there.
And he was looking for a way in.
Cole needed to take a step back from Annie and focus on his own problems. He went to his afternoon session with the shrink, then two hours of PT. After that, the rest of his day was open. Time to get to work.
He glanced at his cell and brought up the schedule he’d put together from observation, a list of who would be in what therapy at this time. He had patient rooms to search. He couldn’t do that at night. Night was for searching the empty staff offices.
He went straight to Shane’s room down the hallway from his own. The Texan’s comment—Love my country, hate the damn government—had stuck in Cole’s brain. Exactly how much did Shane hate the government? His mother had some complicated version of bone cancer. That had to cost a boatload of money, and it could be a motive for selling secrets to the enemy.
Cole popped the lock with the pick on his slightly modified Swiss Army Knife.
Room empty. Clothes tossed all over the place. While Shane probably wouldn’t notice if someone turned his room upside down, not in this chaos, Cole was careful anyway.
Aware that since he could not hear anyone coming, he wouldn’t have any notice, he searched for a burner phone as fast as he could. He checked under the mattress, behind the headboard, in and under the desk, the dresser, the closet, the bathroom.
He found nothing interesting other than Shane’s stash of comic books about immortal warriors, the Harreda. Finished with their earthly wars, the warriors couldn’t die since neither heaven nor hell would take them. They were tasked by the gods with guarding the border between heaven and hell, doomed to never find rest.
Cole could relate. He certainly felt stuck on the border of hell at times.
He hurried to the door, ready to be out of there. But as he pulled the door open, he came face-to-face with Shane. The Texan was coming back early. He had his key in his hand and a surprised look on his face.
“What are you doing here?”
“Who is it?” Annie’s voice shook as she called out, reaching for her cell phone with her free hand. Her heart pounded. Sweat beaded on her upper lip.
“David,” an unfamiliar voice said.
“David who?”
“The producer. From the TV station.” Brief pause. “I’ll come around to the front.”
He did, and Annie checked him out through the window, recognized him. Kelly’s producer.
Limp with relief, Annie leaned the two-by-four against the wall out of sight and wiped her sweaty palms on her pants before opening the door.
“Sorry if I scared you.” He was only an inch or two taller than Annie, blond hair long enough to curl on his collar, green-eyed, handsome in a hot-artist kind of way.
During the TV shoot, Annie had been too nervous to truly notice him, but now she noted his sexy, shy smile. The guy was seriously good-looking. If he ever wanted to give up life behind the cameras, he could go in front of them.
Yet she felt none of the awareness that she did every time she was around Cole. She shoved that thought aside. So not going there. Ever.
David said, “I knocked earlier.”
“The washing machine is going. I didn’t hear you.”
“I went around to see how bad the damage was. I’m sorry.”
She waited for him to get to the reason for his visit.
He did, after a sincerely apologetic smile. “I came by to see if I could help with anything.”
Nice of him.
Before she could say so, another pickup pulled up behind his. This one was white, with Ed’s construction company’s red-house logo on the side. Two twentysomething guys, all steel-toed boots and tool belts, got out, introducing themselves as Bobby and Billy. They didn’t look bad either in their manly blue overalls. Apparently, Hurricane Rupert was raining hunks.
“Brought plywood,” Billy said. “We’re gonna replace the tarp. Plywood’s more secure.”
“I can help,” David volunteered.
Annie thanked them all and left the men to their work. She stole one last glance at them through the window as she headed to make herself a cup of tea. Could probably sell tickets.
Annie decided to stay. She could catch up on paperwork another time.
While the dream team worked, she played with her animals. She hadn’t spent enough time with them in the past couple of days. Before Bobby and Billy left, they promised that a small cleanup crew would come the following day to deal with her kitchen.
David lingered. “I have to go pick up Tyler from his friend’s house. Single dad,” he added. “And I’m sorry I can’t come tomorrow. I have to work at the station.”
“That’s OK. I didn’t expect you today. Ed’s guys will take care of it.”
“I was involved. I feel responsible.” He looked at his feet, then looked up at Annie. “So does Kelly come over often?”
Annie did an admirable job biting back a smile. But she was screaming Aha! inside. Kelly had a secret admirer.
“Not that much.” Her heart nearly broke at David’s crestfallen expression, so she added, “Kelly works a lot. And she’s an exercise nut. She’s at the gym every night.”
David cheered up. He was a smart guy. He was probably heading to the gym next. “Anyway”—he pulled a business card from his pocket—“here is my number. Call me if you need an extra pair of hands.”
The way he’d had the card ready, Annie thought he’d meant to give it to her regardless of how the Kelly thing panned out. David was pretty nice. She could only hope Kelly had the sense to see that, if they managed to run into each other. Time for one of the Murray women to break the curse and fall for one of the good guys.
After David left, Annie ambled back into the kitchen, taking the two-by-four with her.
Oh God, the kitchen.
She itched to have her kitchen back.
What if Ed’s guys couldn’t make it tomorrow? He’d said they were super busy. She did have the dumpster. She had time. She was on a break from work. Keeping busy was better than obsessing over her problems. Especially when the mess in her kitchen was a problem she could fix, or at least start fixing.
Annie grabbed a bucket and shovel from the garage and began clearing out the rubble. And then she sent a silent request to the universe to let her have a quiet evening, preferably without Joey popping in.
The man checked Annie’s office, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t in her room either. He even loped around the walking trail—in vain.
He liked to keep track of her.
She liked to play hard to get.
He let her for now. He wasn’t a monster. But he was in control, whether she knew it or not. Whenever he felt the need to know where she was and what she was doing, he tracked her down and watched her. He controlled the game.
Someday soon, he was going to teach her to check in with him regularly throughout the day. Once she understood that the continued survival of her animals depended on her obedience, she would toe the line nicely.
As he headed out to the parking lot, he caught sight of Cole walking between two buildings. Good. At least he wasn’t with Annie.
Annie was home. Probably alone. Was she moving back to her house? Was she going to sleep at her house tonight?
The man smiled, thinking how much he’d missed that these last two nights. He liked watching her around town, or at work, or with her animals. But he loved watching her sleep.
He made a point to stop by at least two or three times a week. They’d spent many nights together. She just didn’t know it.
Darkness fell by the time Annie ran out of steam, with every muscle in her body aching and shouting a protest, begging her to quit the heavy lifting. Her kitchen was in better shape, but by no means clean. She decided to listen to her body and moved on to her regular chores.
She led the grazing animals into the garage. Fed the babies again. Thought about walking out to where she’d left her car earlier and driving to Hope Hill, but she’d just have to drive back again at midnight. She didn’t have it in her. Staying required a lot less effort.
She took Cole’s warnings about stalkers and escalation seriously, especially after the David scare. So she lined a large basket with towels and brought the dozen skunk babies inside the house. Now she wouldn’t have to go out again in the middle of the night.
She settled the little ones in her bedroom, then ate a tuna sandwich for dinner. Her stomach full, she collapsed on her bed, fully clothed. Her shower didn’t work, but sleeping dirty one night wasn’t going to kill her. She could pretend she was camping. She could clean up at Hope Hill in the morning.
The house was locked up tight, and the hole in the bathroom was sealed. Spending a night here should be perfectly fine.
She was so certain of that thought that she fell fast asleep. So certain that, hours later, when a noise woke her, she put it down to the house settling. The structure had lost two walls recently: one internal, one external. Any house would creak in protest.
She didn’t think anything of the noise until she blinked her eyes open. Through the bedroom door, she saw movement in her kitchen—a large, looming man. Definitely not David this time. This guy was bigger.
Thud, thud, thud. Her heart was all clear on the danger, while her brain still tried to catch up.
Who?
How?
She’d locked up. Only her cousin, Kelly, had an extra key, and the large shape out there definitely wasn’t Kelly.
The man in her kitchen had broken in. Annie was pretty sure he wasn’t here with good intentions.
Even in her sleepy state, two things became immediately clear.
One: The man wasn’t Joey. Joey she could have reasoned with, but the guy in her kitchen had a different shape. Thicker body. No baseball hat. Joey never went anywhere without his.
Two: The bedside clock showed five minutes to midnight. In five minutes, the alarm would go off to wake her for the midnight feeding. And the sound would draw the intruder’s attention to the bedroom, to Annie.
If she turned off the alarm, the clock would beep. It beeped for any push of any button.
Four minutes.
Oh God.
Panic choked her for a couple of seconds before her brain woke up enough to find a solution. Inch by minuscule inch, she reached behind her nightstand and unplugged the clock. The clock face went dark without a sound.
The guy walked toward the guest bedroom, disappearing out of sight. For a second or two, Annie could almost breathe. But he came back into view a moment later. Did he mean to go through the whole place? If he did, in a few minutes, he would be entering the master bedroom, alarm or no alarm.
Annie eased off the far side of the bed, taking her cell phone with her. Once she moved, she could no longer see the intruder, which also meant he wouldn’t be able to see her as she ever-so-slowly crept toward her half-open closet.
On second thought, she grabbed the basket of skunk kits on her way. The guy in her kitchen had to be the same guy who’d crashed her fence yesterday and opened her gate today. No way could she have more than one psycho after her.
And, if he was the same idiot, he’d already proven that he didn’t care if her animals got hurt. The llamas and the donkey could have been easily hit in the road. Annie wasn’t going to leave the kits to him.
She pulled into the back of the closet, put the basket down, and eased the door closed as far as she could without making it click into place.
She muted her phone, then dialed 911. And when she didn’t speak after Leila picked up, the dispatcher said, “Are you all right, Annie?”
Because, thank God, Annie had her cell phone number registered in the local 911 database, so they had her address even when not calling from a landline. The PD began providing that service once half the town gave up their landlines in favor of their cell phones.
“If you can’t speak, press one.”
Annie did.
“If you can’t speak because you’re hurt, press one. If you can’t speak because there’s an intruder in your home, press two.”
Annie pressed two.
“Sending a car right now. You hang in there, Annie honey, all right? Stay on the line. Harper’s on duty. He’s near you, and he’s heading right over. He’ll be there in five minutes.”
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
Oh God.
Her bedroom door was opening. The next second, shoes scraped on the wood floor. Annie’s chest was so tight, she couldn’t breathe.
No matter how much Harper hurried, he wasn’t going to reach her in time.
The intruder was only a handful of steps away from her. She thought about the one good self-defense move she knew, but then, through the crack in the door, she caught something black and metallic in the man’s hand.
A gun?
Sooo not good.
All she had was a basket of skunk babies.