She wasn’t sure what she thought of him yet.
But at least he wouldn’t think she was an alarmist.
He answered on the second ring.
“There’s someone outside,” she whispered. “Sammy’s going crazy.”
“I’m on my way. Stay back from the windows. Don’t let yourself be seen. Don’t open a door until you hear my voice!”
“Okay.”
She hung up, wondering how long it would take him to get there. She stood at the top of the landing and saw the knob on the front door turn. Someone outside was obviously trying it.
Sammy’s barking escalated and he threw himself at the heavy wooden door.
The doorknob stopped moving. Barely daring to breathe, she stared down at her cell and watched painfully as time seemed to stand still. Then she dropped the phone in her pocket and hurried to the kitchen, where she shoved the knives below the counter to make them harder to find and, without turning on a light, scrabbled around until she came up with her weapon of choice.
The waffle maker. The handle was just long enough for her to get a good grip and the body was hard. It would make a great weapon for a surprise attack-and-run should she need it.
5
Dustin’s phone had rung at exactly 4:32 a.m.
It took him until 4:34 a.m. to throw on some clothes, his holster and gun, jacket and shoes and to sling his backpack over his shoulder. He was out the back door in ten seconds, in his car in another twenty and speeding down the road. Thankfully, walking distance to her place from Willis House was less than fifteen minutes at a brisk pace and driving there—even with the winding Tennessee country road—was about six minutes.
His eyes were on the house as he pulled into her driveway. But there was just one car there and no sign of anyone. Jerking to a halt, he leaped out of the car, still surveying his surroundings, and raced to the front door. He could hear the dog barking inside. “Olivia, it’s Dustin.”
The door flew open. “Sammy, it’s all good. It’s Dustin, a friend.”
She had evidently been waiting for him; she was wrapped in a long velvet robe. Her hair was mussed but she was as striking as a lingerie ad.
Her features were tense; her whole body was tense. She gripped the handle of a good-size waffle maker.
“You all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “But someone was here, Dustin. I saw the front door being tried. The knob was moving. And Sammy...well, Sammy knows when someone’s there.”
“But you’re certain no one got in.”
She shook her head. “Sammy would know.”
“Stay here. I’m going to take a look around.”
“Oh, no, no. I’m not staying alone,” she said. “Sammy and I are coming with you.”
She might be frightened, but there was determination in her eyes.
“Get the keys. If we’re both going out, we’ll lock the front,” he said.
She picked up the keys sitting on the buffet near the front door and frowned. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at his backpack.
“Supplies,” he said.
She arched her brows.
“You’ll see.”
She followed him out. A look at the front door yielded nothing, of course. Digging into the backpack, he came out with his fingerprinting kit, quickly dusted the door and searched for prints.
“Well?” she asked him.
“Smudges.”
“What does that mean?”
“There should’ve been prints. Your prints and other prints, all on top of one another. I think someone had gloves on and made a point of smudging the surface, as well.”
Resealing the container of fingerprint powder, he searched the porch. There’d been no dust on it and no snow, and there wasn’t the faintest sign of a footprint. As he walked slowly down the porch steps, he continued to search, playing his flashlight over the dark grass and nearby shrubs.
He wondered if his movements were being observed.
He paused when he reached the ground.
Olivia Gordon plowed into his back, she was so close behind him. She still held the waffle iron in a death grip.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s all right.”
And it was. He’d rather liked the feel of her—vividly warm, sweet-smelling, seductively shaped—crushed momentarily against him.
Suddenly aware of what he was doing—and feeling—he stepped forward. An expanse of clear rolling ground lay to the front, rear and sides of her house. The front yard stretched out to the road, and there was forest on either side of the cleared land. He could see trails, some more established than others, leading through the trees. He made a mental picture of the area; he already knew the way to Willis House through the woods. If he moved to the rear, he could take the trail that led over the hills to the pastureland and then on to more trees, more rolling hills and the Horse Farm. The stream that went through the area for several miles could probably be reached through the rear of the property, as well. Anyone who’d been here could have gone anywhere, in any direction. Her nearest neighbor was down the hill a few acres away; trees separated them.
He’d need an army to find someone out there.
He walked around the house with Olivia at his heels. Sammy trailed along, wagging his tail. The dog was a perfect monitor, and his actions certainly didn’t signal that anyone else was present. Whoever had been there was definitely gone.
There was no indication that anyone had tried to break window locks, although he could well imagine the route someone might have taken to do so.
When he’d completed a circuit around the house, Dustin inspected the ground as best he could in the dark, with only his flashlight to provide illumination. He headed toward the trail that wound through the trees and led to Willis House, but there was no sign that someone had come through. It might not have meant much in any case, since there was national parkland that wove in and out around them. People could easily wander off government land and onto private property without ever knowing it.
At last, he stopped and turned to look at her.
“I’m sorry. There’s no way for me to find anything now.”
“That’s okay,” Olivia said. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“It’s what I do, ma’am,” he said lightly.
She turned and walked back to the house. He followed her thoughtfully.
“We’ll have coffee,” she said. Then she stopped and looked back at him. “Well, I guess that was presumptuous. I’m going to make coffee. It’s past five and I don’t see any reason to go back to sleep. But, of course, you might want to. Anyway, Sammy and I are fine now. Really.”
He could tell that she wasn’t fine; she was afraid. But she was going to try hard not to show it.
“Coffee would be great, and you’re right. It’s morning. It’ll be light soon. No sense going back to bed.”
She unlocked the door and walked inside, flipping on lights. She paused for a minute, as if trying to sense something.
“He isn’t here, is he?” Dustin asked.
“Marcus, you mean?”
“Right.”
“The bastard said he was coming back. To watch over me. He didn’t.”
“In all seriousness—although I suppose he could warn you if there’s trouble—I’m not sure what he could do. You made the right call. The pun’s accidental, but it’s still true.”
“You’re better than 9-1-1?”
“You tell me.”
She didn’t answer, but moved on into the kitchen. There were old attractively refurbished stable stools in front of the counter. Dustin sat on one of them, watching as she returned the waffle iron to a lower cabinet and set about making coffee.
“I don’t understand,” she mused. “Why would someone come to my house like that? It would be hard to break in during the middle of the night and make it look as if I had a terrible accident.”
“When someone with the right agenda wants in, they’ll get in,” Dustin said. “But no one tried to break a window or shoot up a door. My guess is that this was just a trial run, a way of testing the waters.”
“So someone’s out to get me—because of what I’ve been saying?” she asked.
Sammy whined and settled at his feet. Dustin leaned down for a moment to pat the dog. When he looked up, she was at the counter, waiting for him to face her, waiting for his reply.
“I would guess that’s it, yes,” he told her. “Here’s the good thing. Whoever’s doing this hasn’t gotten to a point where they’re desperate. This person is just...researching the situation right now.”
“What should I do?”
“Tell everyone you’re getting an alarm system.”
“And then?”
“Get an alarm system.”
“Oh!”
“Listen, no one else believes that Marcus met with foul play. Well, other people might suspect it, but the police found nothing that would lend to more of an investigation than the one that’s been done. You can’t blame them. They found you with a man who was already dead. Thankfully, he’d been dead for hours, or you might’ve ended up as a suspect. But they found a man who’d been an addict dead with heroin in his system. There was no one around and no sign that anyone had been. There were no obvious marks on his body, other than those attributed to the fall.”
“There were also no needles or drug paraphernalia,” she reminded him sharply.
“True, but no addict keeps his stash where it can easily be discovered.”
The coffee gurgled its last and she poured them both cups.
“The attorney’s coming to the Horse Farm today to explain the will and dole out the individual bequests Marcus left.”
“Just go, listen, watch other people. And as soon as possible, call an alarm system company.”
“You don’t think that’s kind of paranoid?”
“Paranoid is better than—” He broke off. He’d been about to say dead. “You’ve heard the old adage a thousand times. Better safe than sorry.”
