Chapter One

“Ugh.” Lacie threw the dead daisies in the trash. The card was made out to “Yoga Girl”, so she knew it was from them, and it was more than creepy that they had shown up at work.

Staring at them, she felt nothing short of a foreboding at the image. It was still happening, and now it had invaded her school. Her guts twisted at the brownish flowers in the plastic liner of the can. Lacie sighed. She could ignore this all she wanted, but it wouldn’t stop.

The flash of a life lived in constant fear had her clutching her stomach just as she shoved the image to the back of her mind.

Her dad, or here, her boss, was ever vigilant. “Everything all right?” He poked his head out of the principal’s office with a questioning look on his already lined face.

She didn’t want to concern him with her own dramas. Lord knew he’d had enough of his own in his lifetime. She was grown and could take care of herself; she totally didn’t need to drag Dad into this.

“Um, yeah. Just a mistake with the florist, I guess. Who delivers dead flowers?” She laughed, trying to make a joke about it, but the truth was, it freaked her out.

Her kitchen was decorated with daisies. The live kind. The painted kind. The kind on her dishes and cup towels. The delivery, on top of the other two attacks in her home, was freaking her out a little.

Her dad mumbled something to Mr. Slovac and came into the office where she was signing out. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“You don’t have to. I’m fine.”

“Humor me.” He smiled at her softly, the fond smile of a doting father with his only daughter. His hand at her back was insistent, and she knew better than to argue with Daddy. With a sigh, they left the office and walked to the parking lot. “You okay? Any more surprises?”

She wouldn’t have even told her dad about this stuff, but the fact she’d had to call in late the second time she’d gone to the police station to file a report had alerted him. Papa Bear that he was, he protected her, even though neither of them understood the danger she was in.

Two separate attacks in her home, from two separate men. Both of them she’d fought off, screaming and raging in a total panic at finding them in her house while she was sleeping. They hadn’t expected her to fight back so defiantly, clearly. Both of them calling her Yoga Girl.

And now dead flowers had been delivered to Yoga Girl.

It wasn’t a coincidence, but she couldn’t tell her dad about it. He’d almost lost his mind when he’d found out about the others.

At her car, she let out a moan of disappointment at the flat front tires. Before she could ask for a ride home, a truck with tinted windows pulled up.

“Hey there. You need a ride?”

Too convenient. The smile too leery. The eyes too squinty.

It was too much.

Bunching her hands into fists, Lacie stormed over to the truck without a thought. “No, I don’t need a ride. Why can’t you people just leave me the frack alone? I can’t take any more of this bullhonky.” She tried to strike the man’s grinning face with her fist, just as he was licking his lip, but she missed, grazing it. The entire episode was embarrassing, but she couldn’t stop herself.

Strong arms wrapped around her from behind, and she panicked before realizing it was her dad. He pulled her back from further attacks on her part, which sort of pissed her off.

“Now, look here,” he began in his stern, former-principal-current- superintendent voice. It was the one he used at school board meetings and when she’d really been bad, but the man in the truck didn’t seem to care.

“See ya later, Yoga Girl.” He winked at her and sped off.

Dad pulled out his cell phone and made a note of the license plate before he spun around to face Lacie. “That’s it. You’re staying with me.”

This is exactly what she didn’t want. Whoever was behind this was taking away her independence and putting her right back in her daddy’s overprotective clutches. She loved her dad, she really did, but she was an adult. Lacie had been living alone for almost twenty years; going back to live with him was not an option.

“I can run by the police station on my way home, Dad. Please.”

“Something has to be done about this. If you’re not doing something for your safety, I have to think about my schools.” As the superintendent of the district where she worked, he had a responsibility—she understood that—but it wasn’t going to make her run and hide.

“I get it, Dad, but you were here, we scared him off. He won’t come back.” That seemed to be the deal. The men all had one chance, and when she’d foiled it, they had been upset. Nobody had come back for a repeat.

Yet. This guy had said “see ya later.” Like he was planning to.

“I don’t see how you’re dealing with all this, Lace.” Dad’s voice softened with sympathy. Or pity.

“What can I do?” The tears were falling freely now, and she couldn’t stop them if she tried. “Should I quit my job and hole up in my house behind steel doors, bulletproof glass? Never leave again? It’s not like I have much of a life anyway.” She finished with a final, self-pitying mutter, “Might as well.”

“I just don’t know how you manage. That’s all.” He pulled her into a comforting hug as she let the tears flow.

“I box them up in my head, like I do all the bad things. They’re in there with Mama, and I tell myself she’s giving them hell as long as I don’t think about them.”

He pulled back, holding her shoulders. “With that damn frying pan.” The words were spoken with humor, but it didn’t meet his eyes. Lacie hated bringing up Mama in front of him. He put his arm around her shoulders and tugged her to his car. “Tonight? Just spend tonight at home. For me? Consider it like a sleepover. I’ll get pizza and run by Redbox for some sappy romance flicks.”

Her heart was still pounding, the man’s leer still prominent in her head, so she said yes.

She wished her mother were still around to explain things to Dad, but she wasn’t. Lacie put that out of her head and nodded her defeat. Dad’s for the night it was.