she gasped before he slapped a hand over her mouth. Loosening his grip, he leaned forward until his lips brushed her ear. “Your front door is ajar. There’s a light bobbing around in there,” he whispered. “Someone with a flashlight.”
To his absolute amazement, she tore herself free and stormed toward her unlocked door, ripping it open and charging inside before he could stop her.
Raised voices reached him as he crossed the threshold in her wake.
A moment later, a gunshot thundered through the house.
Chapter Three
As the dark shape of a man charged toward her, Julia swung Leo’s stuffed elephant by its trunk. She felt the impact as she hit something. A male voice swore. She kicked what she hoped was a leg, kicked hard, aiming for the side of the kneecap where it would do the most damage. If she connected.
She hit something. Her foot throbbed as a gun fired and someone ran over the top of her.
“Get off me!” she screamed, kicking and throwing punches, driven now by fear as well as anger.
Will’s voice reached her. “Are you hurt?” he yelled, all but lifting her to her feet.
“Get him!” she cried, pointing at the sliding glass door that led to the backyard where the dark figure of her attacker, highlighted against the light coming through the glass, struggled with the latch.
Will darted toward the door. Julia heard it slide open and the dark shape disappeared into her yard, Will on his heels.
She staggered to the door, flipping on the yard light just in time to see Will leap over the low fence in the back, still in pursuit. Both men disappeared into the merciless shadows of the neighbor’s yard.
She found other light switches and flipped them all on, illuminating every dark corner.
The gunshot had taken off a corner of a plaster wall and shattered a mirror. But not before it had torn through the elephant, almost severing its neck, ripping its blue fur, blasting out an eyeball. Stuffing, piled like snow drifts, littered the floor along with shards of glass from the mirror. Julia dropped the elephant—it was beyond saving. She swept the glass and stuffing against the floorboards where it wouldn’t be a hazard.
She would have to get Leo a new stuffed animal. The thought brought more tears to her eyes.
Moving from room to room, she found a pillow case missing from one of the pillows on her bed. Besides that, only a couple of open drawers drew her attention until it dawned on her that the few nice things she owned were gone.
A locket belonging to her mother. A silver frame around a picture of her sister. Her father’s modest coin collection. Her whole family, gone, and now the precious few mementoes she’d managed to hold on to after years of turmoil gone as well.
As were a few pieces of costume jewelry and the silver-plated ladle she’d received as a Christmas gift. From Nicole.
Julia picked up the cordless phone to call 911. She paused on the last digit, clicking the phone off, re-settling it on the charger base, glancing toward the door through which Will had disappeared.
What in the hell was going on?
What kind of burglar robs a house in a neighborhood like this one, settling on a few ornaments when the computer and stereo were worth far more?
“Tweakers,” her boss, George Abbot, called them. His brother was a cop and George enjoyed throwing out the lingo. He was referring to meth addicts, people who stole just to finance their next high. Petty crime, as a rule of thumb, nonviolent. That kind of break-in was common around here.
But the gun—
Julia plopped down on the inexpensive over-stuffed red chair she’d bought on deferred payments just hours before news of Nicole’s death had reached her. Stilling her trembling hands by sitting on them, she looked at the few other pieces of furniture, each chosen to complement the sunny-yellow paint of the walls.
This house was her castle. In daylight, sun streamed through the windows and pooled on the floors. After dark, it became a sanctuary, a place in which to retreat from the world. It was the reason she’d marched through the front door without thinking and almost gotten herself shot dead.
She’d left that morning intending to share her home with a tiny boy who needed her. She’d come home empty-handed, the child’s whereabouts unknown, his future in jeopardy, her haven violated.
And now his father was here, a dead man, only not dead. Where was Will?
When the phone rang, Julia popped to her feet. Her heart rate doubled. The kidnappers! It had to be.
“Hello?” she said, listening for some sound, a clicking, a whir, that would indicate the police had activated the tracing device. Of course, advanced technology no doubt precluded telltale sounds—
“Miss Sheridan? This is Detective Morris.”
Taking a deep breath, she said, “Detective Morris.”
“Sorry to alarm you,” he said. “Just calling to see if you made it home okay.”
“Well—”
“I want you to know we’ll have a police car patrolling your neighborhood tonight, starting at midnight. There are no new developments at the airport. Any word from the kidnappers? Any new developments we should know about?”
She should tell him about her intruder…
Her gaze strayed to the glass door as Will Chastain made his way across her well-lit patio, a bag of some kind dangling from his right hand. Relieved to see him still in one piece, she took a deep breath. He looked up and their eyes met.
She said, “Nothing to report, Detective.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Did Monsieur Pepin return to Washington?”
“We let him go a couple of hours ago. We know where to find him. He was very upset. He feels responsible.”
Don’t we all? Julia thought.
“You call if you need anything. We’ll monitor all your incoming calls.”
“I understand,” she said, replacing the receiver as Will let himself in the sliding glass door.
“He got away,” he said, crossing the floor in his socks. He pointed at the phone and added, “You called the cops?”
“No. They called me.” As a flicker of hope ignited his eyes, she added, “It was a routine call, nothing more.”
“I see. Did you tell them about…this?”
Her knees wobbled. Julia sat down again. Some of it was the culmination of the day’s events, some of it was the profound relief that Will had returned unharmed.
If he was Will Chastain. But even that automatic mental disqualifier felt feeble now. She’d started accepting him as who he said he
