couldn’t put his finger on what. Then it hit him.
Claire’s Christmas lights hadn’t been on. In fact, the entire building had been dark, unlike the other shops downtown, most of which had at least a dim light on inside to discourage break-ins. The lights being off in the middle of the night wasn’t necessarily reason enough to get concerned...but this wasn’t his first late-night walk around the center of town, and he was almost certain that she’d had Christmas lights on then, hadn’t she? Surely he would have noticed if there was just one shop that stayed completely dark.
Nate couldn’t shake the worries that the darkness meant someone had flipped a breaker to cut her power. Something that would make it easier for someone to break into her apartment and catch her off guard.
His stomach churned. Gut instinct swirled against self-doubt, but instincts won and Nate turned around, walked to the front of the shop, tried the door.
Locked. Good, that was smart of her. Now was the part where he should turn back around and return to his hotel room. But he couldn’t. Instead he found himself walking around the back of the building in search of a staircase. Many old downtown buildings had exterior fire escapes running down the back of the structure, supplying direct access into the living spaces above through a window or a sliding door. Surely if she’d been conscientious enough to lock the shop door, Claire had locked the door or window that opened out onto the fire escape. He’d check it and if it was locked, he’d head back to the hotel and laugh at his paranoia. If it wasn’t secure...
Nate found the stairs, which appeared to lead up to a small deck, decorated with a patio table and a pair of chairs. Was the sliding door cracked open? Maybe. He couldn’t be sure.
He took the steps up two at a time as the urgency to make sure she was safe built inside him. He made a quick scan of the deck. Nothing seemed off or out of place there. Nate made his way across the deck, straight to the door.
It stood open about an inch. She might have left it open like that herself...but when Nate pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket and shone it on the knob, signs of forced entry were evident.
It was too much like the situation with Jenni earlier. Too similar. His stomach sank as he thought of the time he’d wasted, second-guessing his decision to come and check on Claire. Was he about to discover that he had arrived too late yet again?
Nate swallowed hard as he pushed the door the rest of the way open. He’d never been in Claire’s apartment, so he wasn’t sure where he was going, but he felt along the wall on the right-hand side for a light switch. There. He flipped it on.
Nothing. Solid darkness everywhere.
Nate’s suspicions were confirmed. Someone had flipped the breakers.
And chances were good that the attacker was in Claire’s house or had been. “Claire!” he yelled.
A muffled scream came from one of the rooms further back. He started forward, pulling out a small flashlight from his pocket and shining it in front of him. The living room seemed to be empty. He kept running, past the kitchen, back to what he assumed were bedrooms.
He lifted his flashlight. It didn’t do much to light up the entire room, but right now he didn’t need it to. It shone directly onto a large figure that wasn’t Claire.
And that was all Nate needed to see.
“Let her go!” he yelled as he moved forward, trying to catch sight of Claire. She must be on the other side of the intruder.
She was. Huddled on the bed against the wall, with a lamp lifted up. As soon as the intruder turned toward Nate, she took a swing, hard, and connected with his head. The assailant stumbled back, looked from Claire to Nate, and then shoved past Nate and ran out the door.
Nate hesitated. Stay with Claire or run? It was déjà vu from earlier in the evening.
“Go. I’m fine.”
It was all he needed to hear. This time he ran, but catching up with the attacker wasn’t as easy as he’d expected. The other man threw things in his path as he ran past them. Nate kept his footing but wasn’t fast enough to close the distance between them. Just as the intruder was about to get away, Nate lunged, grabbed at him. His hand latched on to something the man was wearing, but Nate tripped and fell on the ground, straight onto his knee. Nate’s hand came away with only some kind of utility pouch that had been Velcroed onto the other man’s belt as the intruder darted away. Nate opened it up. Just some tools, nothing incriminating, nothing that helped identify him. He’d give them to Shiloh to see if she could run them for prints, but with as much evidence as this case was giving her to process, he knew it would certainly take a few days, maybe even a few weeks.
He made a fist and hit the floor. Maybe if he’d acted sooner he could have avoided this altogether, kept the man from getting in.
For now, he’d done all he could. He staggered to his feet, wincing at the pain in his knee but relieved that it seemed only bruised, not sprained or torn. And at least Claire was safe. “He got away. I’m sorry,” he called to her as he walked back in her direction, intentionally making as much noise as possible so that he wouldn’t startle her. There was no telling how she’d be handling this...
He made his way back to her room, found her in the same place where he’d left her.
“Claire.” He stopped in the doorway, watched her for some acknowledgment of his presence, but she said nothing, just sat there. “Claire, he’s gone. You’re okay.”
Still nothing.
“All right, get up. You need to call the police.”
At that, her gaze finally shot to him. The stunned look on her face, the vulnerable one that had started to rip his heart out, was replaced by sheer indignation.
Good. He’d made her mad, stopped her from panicking. It was what he’d been aiming for, even if it meant she thought he was a jerk now because of it.
She reached for a cell phone on the bedside table. Nate noted her hands were shaking. That would likely continue for the next little while.
“Hi, this is Claire Phillips. Someone broke into my apartment.”
Claire stood frozen in her living room, eyes glued to the view outside her window. It had seemed the only safe spot to look at, since her home was in shambles. The police were on their way, so for now all there was to do was wait.
She didn’t know which was scarier—the fact that there had been an intruder in her home, or the fact that he had wreaked all this destruction while she’d been asleep and unaware, only waking up moments before the man actually entered her bedroom. The thought of someone going through her paint supplies, rifling through her stack of finished paintings...it was worse than just an invasion of privacy, more than vandalism.
“Are you okay?”
The solid but quiet voice of her rescuer was familiar, and not just from tonight. Claire’s frowned as she looked up at him. Was it possible she knew him from somewhere other than the coffee shop?
To answer his question, she shook her head. No. She wasn’t okay. But she didn’t
