Seven
They’d only been sitting outside the Green Valley Apartments for three and a half minutes before Chloe exited and headed for the tenants’ parking lot, her distinctive blond braids bouncing against her back with each long stride.
Norah straightened in her seat, her heartbeat speeding up as she spotted her.
“I see her,” Dash said, and Norah realized she’d grabbed his arm in her excitement.
Clearing her throat, she released him and pulled her hand back into her lap. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
As Chloe opened the driver’s side door of an older white cargo van, the hinges squealed a protest loud enough for Norah to hear all the way across the lot to the service road where they’d parked for their stakeout.
“Um…grabbing you.” Now she was feeling even more awkward than if she’d just let go and not said anything.
“You can grab me anytime.” The corner of his mouth that she could see quirked up.
Norah stared at his too-perfect profile, marveling at his self-assurance. It was like he didn’t ever get anxious or feel awkward. She wondered what that would be like, to live without the two things that seemed to rule her existence.
“Ah…okay.” She had no idea how to respond to his invitation, so she just waved—awkwardly, of course—at Chloe’s van as it rolled out of the parking lot onto the main road. “Should we…follow?”
“Planning on it.” He waited until Chloe turned right at a cross street before heading toward the road she’d just left. He followed the van, leaving so much distance between them that Chloe’s vehicle was barely in sight…and sometimes not visible at all.
Every time the van disappeared, Norah resisted the urge to yell at Dash to go faster. Although she thought she was containing her feelings well, only squirming a little when they fell too far behind, Dash gave her a raised-eyebrow glance and the tiniest smirk.
“What?” she asked, the word coming out stiff despite her effort at nonchalance.
“We won’t lose her.” He slowed down as a box truck merged in front of them, cutting off any sight of Chloe’s van, and Norah clenched her teeth to hold back a frustrated exclamation. Dash made a sound low in his throat that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. “If we do, we’ll just wait for her to return. It’s not like she’s planning to murder someone.” He paused. “Probably.”
“But what if she’s going to meet up with Leifsen?” To Norah’s relief, the box truck merged into the turn lane, and the distant back doors of Chloe’s van were visible again.
“Doubt it.”
“Yeah.” As much as Norah hoped things would be that simple, she had to agree with Dash. “She didn’t look around at all or act nervous while she was walking to her van.”
He tipped his head in a slight nod.
“There!” Norah felt her heart accelerate again as the white van pulled into the parking lot next to a brown brick building. She recognized the place, since they’d adopted Warrant there. “Why is she at the animal shelter?” The chance of Chloe meeting up with Leifsen seemed even slimmer now, unless he’d gotten very creative in where he’d holed up.
Dash kindly didn’t state the obvious—that Chloe was probably there to adopt a pet—as he cruised past the shelter’s entrance and took the next turn into a strip mall parking lot. He parked around the side of an automotive supply store, angling them to face the shelter across the short span of green space.
They didn’t have to wait long before Chloe reemerged, holding the leashes of two large dogs. She turned away from the road toward a stand of trees.
“She’s walking shelter dogs.” Although it was obvious, Norah said it out loud, a little thrown by the additional evidence that Chloe Ballister, alleged friend of a creepy, felonious hacker/stalker/groper, seemed like such a nice person.
Dash gave one of his affirmative-sounding grunts.
“How is she friends with someone like Devon Leifsen ?” Norah asked with true curiosity, watching through the car windshield as Chloe’s canine companions towed her farther away from them. “She’s so much better than him.”
In her periphery, she saw Dash lift one shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe it was bad info?”
Pushing back her immediate offense that she’d pass along bad info , Norah attempted to consider his words objectively. “I suppose it’s possible.” The perfectionist in her hated to admit that. “Several people linked them together though, and he showed up at her gig.”
“Maybe he was just a bad decision on her part,” he suggested before turning on the car. “Gave him too much benefit of the doubt. Doesn’t seem like they’re good friends now, so she probably figured him out.”
Norah frowned. As nerve-racking as fieldwork could be, she was disappointed that her time with Dash was over already. She wouldn’t see him again until Tuesday, which suddenly—and ridiculously—felt like a long time away. “Are we done for the day?”
He shook his head, making her stomach give a little swoop of anticipation. “You have a dog, right?”
“Yes.” Norah cocked her head at him, wondering how he knew that. She didn’t think she’d mentioned Warrant to him during their training sessions.
In answer to her unspoken question, Dash reached over and plucked a single coarse white hair from her shirtsleeve, holding it up so she could see.
“Oh. That’s very Sherlock-y of you.”
His mouth twitched up as he put the SUV in reverse and pulled out of their parking place. “We’ll go pick him up and come back here.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Give you a reason to be out walking.” When she stared at him, her stomach dropping to her toes, he continued. “Plus he’ll give you a topic of conversation.”
“Wait.” She held up a hand, clutching her stomach with her other one as if she could hold it in place. “Wait. You want me to… talk to her?”
He glanced at her quickly before returning his attention to traffic. “Yes?” It was the first time she’d ever heard him sound even a tiny bit uncertain.
“Yeah, no. I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” He sounded more curious than annoyed. “You’ve already met her.”
Norah realized she was shaking her head and forced herself to stop. All she had to do was explain reasonably why what he was asking her to do was impossible, and he’d drop it. “Just the once, so she’s still pretty much a stranger…so no. I don’t…I mean…especially Chloe. She’s so… She’s confident and in a band , with tattoos, and she walks shelter dogs in her free time, with that great hair… I. Can’t. No. Just can’t. Impossible.”
His lips tightened in an obvious attempt to hold back a smile at her horrified ramblings, but Norah didn’t care. As long as he didn’t make her strike up a conversation with someone who seemed infinitely too badass and awesome and girl-crush-worthy as Chloe Ballister, he could laugh all he wanted.
“Why don’t you approach her?” Norah asked, even as her stomach twisted at the thought of dangling Dash in front of Chloe like delicious, delicious bait. “You can borrow my dog.”
She didn’t realize it was possible to scoff with a grunt, but somehow Dash managed. “She wouldn’t talk to me .”
It was Norah’s turn to give him a disbelieving look. “Of course she would. A hot guy with a cute dog? She’d be much more likely to talk to you than me.”
He paused, and she had a hard time reading his expression as he flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You think I’m hot?”
For some reason, her face was heating up, and she knew she was blushing. Unwilling to meet his gaze if he glanced at her, she stared through the windshield, her back poker straight. “Of course I do. I mean, you’re objectively attractive. I’m not giving you an emotion-based compliment. It’s just a fact.” As hard as she tried to keep her voice steady and her words clinically cool, she felt herself growing more and more flustered until she finally shut her mouth.
Dash seemed to take pity on her and resumed the less-embarrassing portion of their conversation. “If I approach Chloe, she’s going to be either annoyed or scared.”
“What?” The absurdity of that made her forget her earlier awkwardness and turn her head to face him again. “First of all, Chloe doesn’t get scared.”
He actually laughed—if you could call the rusty coughing sound he made a laugh. “How do you know? Of course she gets scared. Everyone does. And I’m a scary guy.”
“Not Chloe.” Norah set her chin in a stubborn tilt. “She sat next to a stranger at Chico’s . She sang in front of a huge crowd at Dutch’s . There’s no way she’d be scared, especially of you.” She wasn’t sure why he’d called himself scary. Even the first time she’d met him, she hadn’t been afraid of him, and she was the biggest scaredy-cat she knew. The only thing she’d felt when she’d first seen Dash was reassurance and safety.
“Fine.” She was pretty sure he would’ve rolled his eyes if he did that sort of thing. “Let’s say she wouldn’t be scared. She’d definitely be annoyed .”
“Why?” Norah couldn’t fathom being annoyed if Dash approached her, especially if he had Warrant, the most adorable dog in the universe, in tow.
“Weren’t you annoyed when Tucker approached you at the gym?”
“Tucker?” She drew a blank. The only person besides Dash she knew from the gym was Davies, and she only knew his name because Dash had shouted it.
“The ‘objectively attractive’ man who hit on you after your session last week until I sent him to work on his side kicks.” His description held more than a hint of sarcasm.
“Oh!” That last part rang a bell. “The obstacle.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” She definitely didn’t want to explain that the only way she was able to walk through the crowded gym was to pretend all the other people were obstacles on her hunt for her Dash-shaped prize.
“My point is that you thought he was annoying, right?”
“Well, yes,” she had to admit. “But he wasn’t you .”
His huff of laughter sounded like he couldn’t decide whether to be exasperated or amused. “Very few people share your reaction to me.”
She twitched her shoulders in a shrug. “You’re just trying to get out of talking to Chloe.”
“So are you.”
“Well, yes.” When he laughed again, she gave a reluctant smile. “Why don’t we see if one of my sisters will talk to Chloe? They’re both good at chatting with strangers.”
“Fine.” He pulled his SUV up to the curb in front of her house. “But I think you’re wrong about her not wanting to talk to you. I bet you could be friends.”
Just like the first time he’d suggested it, the thought of initiating a conversation with the extremely awesome-seeming—despite her potentially terrible taste in past friends—Chloe made Norah’s brain freeze with panic. All she could manage to stumble out was, “No, I…she…no.”
The mortifying thought of approaching Chloe kept her locked in her thoughts until her door opened and Dash’s smug expression unfroze her.
“If you want to be protective,” she said, getting out of the SUV, “you’d protect me from terrifying hypothetical encounters with almost strangers I’m supposed to somehow befriend.”
He coughed another rusty laugh before escorting her toward her front door with his hand on her back. “She’d love you. I don’t know how you don’t see it.”
“She’d love you ,” Norah countered, raising an eyebrow at his doubtful expression.
He opened his mouth to respond but then frowned, staring at the front door. Following his gaze, Norah saw that the inner door was ajar. The sight made her stomach tighten. She told herself it was probably nothing, that it was a beautiful Sunday morning and one of her sisters had likely just left the door open a bit to air out the house, but that logic didn’t track. Her sisters were just as paranoid as Norah, and she couldn’t see any of them being relaxed enough to leave the door not only unlocked but open. Not anymore.
Molly and Cara. Her stomach twisted with fear as she started to rush up the porch steps, only to be caught and pulled back by Dash. He tucked her behind him and moved to the front door, surprisingly silent for such a big guy, his feet not making any noise on the normally creaky wooden porch. She found herself grasping the back of his belt like she had in the club, trying to move as quietly as Dash. She was fine with him going first. His fists were much bigger than hers, and he had a lot more experience using them.
The screen door squealed as Dash opened it, and Norah could see his back muscles stiffen at the loud sound. She grimaced. They’d been trying to fix the squeaky hinges ever since Norah could remember, but they refused to be silenced—even under the intimidating glare of the sneaky ninja man in front of her.
With Norah close behind, still clinging to his belt, Dash stepped inside. As he paused, taking in the empty living room, her gaze flew to the alarm system. The steady innocuous green light next to the display showed that the alarm had been deactivated. Her sisters wouldn’t leave it unarmed—not after everything they’d been through.
Dash prowled forward, yanking her attention off the alarm display. She peered around the room, looking for anything out of place, but the comfortably worn furniture looked as it always did. Squares of sunlight lit up the rug, the bright cheerfulness of the house working overtime as if to make her worries about her sisters and a possible intruder seem silly.
A thump from upstairs set her heart racing. She was tempted to call out, to see if one of her sisters had made that sound, but common sense and Dash’s tense posture kept her silent. He moved quickly yet stealthily across the living room to the stairs, shooting up them at a pace that left Norah panting with adrenaline and physical effort, a slight wheeze underlying each breath. Still, she kept up with him, trying to quiet her breathing, not wanting to be left downstairs while Dash checked out what had made the sound on the second level.
She realized that Warrant hadn’t shown his fuzzy face. He wasn’t the most energetic dog by any means, but he normally stirred himself to greet his people and any visitors. His absence added to the churning in her gut, and her fingers tightened around Dash’s belt. It was one thing to mess with their house or even one of her adult sisters, but if someone had hurt their innocent dog… A flash of rage jolted through her, burning up her fear and filling her with determination to find the intruder and make them regret breaking into her house.
As Dash turned left at the top of the stairs, Norah released her grip on his belt and turned right, still fueled by fury for anyone who might harm her sisters or her dog. Whipping his head around to glare at her, Dash gestured for her to return to her spot behind him, but she shook her head and darted into the twins’ room, knowing he wouldn’t call out for her and give their position away.
Although she moved quickly into the room, intent on not letting Dash stop her from helping to search for the possible intruder, she came to an abrupt halt just inside the doorway. Like the living room, Cara and Charlie’s bedroom was filled with cheery sunlight, making it seem impossible that the bright room could hide someone with nefarious intentions. Still, she moved carefully around the space, checking under the beds and holding her breath as she reached for the closet door. Her fear had crept back in, shoving over her righteous rage to make space, and her fingers shook as she slid the wooden panel to the side.
The door slid silently on its track, exposing some of Cara’s pastel tops. A relieved exhale escaped as Norah pushed it open farther—only to reveal the hulking form of a man.