gain wasn’t the reason most men stalked their exes. It was blind, irrational rage that motivated such behaviour. Lacey had seen that all too often on the job. Women who were stalked, terrified, beaten. Killed for the crime of leaving. For an instant Dan’s face flashed up, those nights when she’d shoved a dresser across her bedroom door in case he tried to get into the house while she was asleep, before she had the locks changed. Why did Dee blithely assume Neil was any safer? Lacey took a breath and a sip of milky tea, refocusing. Go back to the evidence. See what was there.
“Okay, you’re sure someone has been here some nights. You’ve heard footsteps when there shouldn’t be any. Has there been any concrete evidence afterward?”
“The first time I heard them, a few months ago, there were boot prints in the snow the next morning. Down from the path in back, past the dog run to the porch, and out the same way. I hadn’t looked the day before, so I don’t know if it was a neighbour walking by that way to see if I was home, or if it happened that night.” Dee lowered the napkin. “But I heard someone.”
“I’ll accept your word on that. And the next time?”
“Another time there was dried mud on the deck when I woke up one morning. I hadn’t come in that way, so it might have been done the day before.” Dee’s eyes, red-rimmed and etched around with fine lines, flickered over each of the tightly curtained windows. “Not conclusive, I know. But another time I very distinctly heard footsteps right on the porch. I wasn’t even asleep yet, just lying in bed in the dark, watching the moon over the snowcaps down south. I lay there wondering if I’d heard what I thought I heard. Then they started up again. I ran to the window first, didn’t see anyone, so I ran downstairs. Whoever it was had gone by the time I got the lights on. Or they were hiding in the trees, watching me.” Dee shuddered. “I went out for a good look around at first light, but I couldn’t see anything unusual. No mud, no snow to leave footprints in.
“Now I stay awake night after night listening for them to come back. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone from window to window, like you did tonight, looking out, always afraid I’d see someone looking back. I telecommute as much as possible rather than come home to an empty house. Especially after dark.” Her voice rose. “I’ve been getting away with it because the museum opening is so close, and it’s my job to make sure our corporate sponsorship is well managed. But that excuse is going to run out in another week, and then my real job will be on the line. If I lose my salary over this, I’ll lose the house, too. Everything.” She clutched Lacey’s hand. “I need to know, 100 percent, if it’s in my mind or if there really is, or has been, a prowler. Please say you’ll stay with me. At least until the Centre’s big opening gala.”
“I’ll stay,” said Lacey without hesitation, “until we’ve sorted this out one way or another. Now, drink your tea. If there was someone out there tonight, they will have realized that you’re not alone, and they won’t come back. In the morning I’ll have a good look around, and we’ll talk over everything, identify anybody who might think they have a reason to creep around here at night. The lights can stay on for tonight, and tomorrow I’ll see if Wayne has any spare motion sensors he can loan me.”
“You won’t tell him why? I can’t have people at the museum site talking about me. I can’t look weak right before the opening.”
“I’ll tell him there’s a bear or something bugging the dogs at night. Okay?” Lacey lifted her mug and paused. “You do have bears out here, right?”
“Bears, cougars, other predators.”
Including humans, Lacey thought, but she didn’t say that. Neither did she say just how disturbed she was by Dee’s near-hysterical fear of a possible prowler. Either Neil had left her more afraid of him than she was willing to admit, or she was utterly overwhelmed by her job, her divorce, her injury, and now the crush of the museum’s grand opening. The stress of any two of those might bring on some paranoid imaginings to a woman living alone in the forest. Dee was never one to be crushed that easily, but she’d carried this terror alone since there was snow on the ground. If she cracked now, it wouldn’t be surprising at all. That wouldn’t happen, though. Lacey would be here to keep her fear at bay until the museum was successfully opened for tourists.
As she followed Dee up the stairs a few minutes later, having very visibly rechecked every door and window, she thought that Dee might never sleep again if she ever shared the third possibility that sprang to mind: that someone might be prowling out there, careful not to leave evidence, not trying to enter or to do obvious harm, but deliberately playing on the frayed nerves of an isolated woman recovering from an injury. But gaslighting someone needed a motive. Who stood to gain if Dee fled back to the city and sold her log McMansion at a loss?
That was more like the old Dee: action plans at an hour when other people were barely able to open both eyes at the same time. Lacey accepted the offered mug. “And your plan is?”
“First, I’m going to refill my prescription for anti-anxiety meds. I was taking them for a bit after the accident but they ran out months ago. Second, you’re going to — if you will, that is — help me get my bike down from the garage rafters. I always used to go running or biking to burn off the stress, but I’ve gotten away from the habit. My physiotherapist even suggested I try biking again, but I was busy and just put it off. Now I know I need that stress busting, and after yesterday I realize running is still a long way off. So biking it is.”
“Those ideas both sound sensible. Er, do you still want me to stay for a few days?”
“God yes! You’re the first breath of sane air in this house for months. Do you have a mountain bike? If not, I can borrow one for you.”
“Mine’s at Tom’s. I can bring it out tonight when I fetch more clothes.”
“Great.” Dee slapped the top on a travel mug. “I’m off to the office. But I’ll be back by eleven for a press conference at the museum. See you then.” She headed for the back door, then paused to un-clip a secondary ring from her car keys. “You’d better have a door key. I’ll get my spare back from the neighbour if I get home before you. House is the maple leaf one and the square, plain one is for the garage. Mi casa, su casa. Just like old times.” She flashed a smile so confident, so at odds with last night’s fright, that Lacey couldn’t quite stifle the idea that Dee had been a bit too deep into the prescription pills already.
Chapter Three
They were working inside the loading bay, stringing camera cable up above the ceiling tiles, when Lacey got around to asking her boss about loaner lights.
“And who is your roommate that I’d trust them with my equipment?” Wayne’s voice was dry in the way that every sergeant’s voice Lacey had ever heard was dry, like he couldn’t quite believe a rookie was asking such a stupid question, but then, what better could be expected of a rookie? She flushed without meaning to and found she was standing at parade rest without having consciously shifted position. Working for another ex-RCMP officer was supposed to ease her transition back to civilian life, but it reminded her every day that she hadn’t been strong enough, in the end, to cope with the strains of a cop’s life. Quitting on
