Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ava releases a shaky sigh as we pass through the cemetery gates. I slide my hand under hers and bring it to my lips. Her skin is cool and smooth and carries a hint of vanilla from her favorite lotion. She’s no longer shaking, but I can sense the fear still buzzing through her.
“Thank you for calling me.” I cradle her hand on my thigh. “For trusting me.”
Her lips tremble and she wipes the corner of her eye. “I wish I didn’t need it.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not tough, Greely. It takes a lot of courage to ask for help.”
“It was easy to ask you,” she says in a soft voice.
My throat tightens. I kiss the back of her hand again.
I turn down her street. In the late afternoon sunshine, it looks as peaceful and quiet as it usually does, but thanks to what I now know, I don’t see it that way.
“Would you be willing to stay with me tonight? Thea and Dylan are leaving in the morning and Beth got the night off so we can all have dinner together.”
She nods, but I’m not sure she’s really with me. What I want is to hold her and shut out the rest of the world until she feels better. But life doesn’t work like that.
The email message containing my orders flashes through my mind. How can I leave? Some creep is targeting Ava. It’s either a person with a grudge wanting to rattle her, or it’s worse than that. Scarier. Because this is looking an awful lot like Ava has a stalker, maybe someone who has been fixated on her. Who wants to manipulate and control her. Destabilize her confidence.
What if this sicko is the same person who murdered Marin?
I told Ava that there’s no way the perp who broke into her San Francisco apartment is here. But what if I’m wrong and he’s followed her to Finn River?
Zach’s we’re running out of time starts to loop through my brain.
If that’s true, then the killer could have Ava in his crosshairs.
How can this be happening?
When I pull into the driveway, everything looks as we left it this morning.
“I’ll go pack some things,” Ava says, slipping her hand free.
I jump out and hurry to open her side so I can help her down.
I don’t let go of her hand as we walk to her front door, the contact grounding me. My senses ramp up as we enter the house. Pausing, I scan the dimly lit rooms and listen, but there’s no indication anyone has been inside.
While Ava slips down the hallway, I check the kitchen and sliding glass door, the back yard, but nothing catches my eye. I peek in the bathroom, then Ava’s room. She glances up from the small duffel bag open on the edge of her bed, and our eyes lock.
“This doesn’t feel real.”
I hurry over and pull her into my arms. “I know. But it’ll be over soon.”
She wraps her arms around me and sighs into my chest. “I so want to believe that.”
A knock on the door sends a jolt through her body. “It’s probably Everett.” I kiss the top of her head and slip down the hallway. After making sure my hunch is correct with a glance through the window, I swing the door open.
“Hey, Hutch,” Everett says, his gray eyes serious. “I was going to start with checking the perimeter, then if she’s okay with it, have a look inside.”
“I’ll walk with you,” I say, and shut the door behind me.
“Zach filled me in,” Everett says. “I’m waiting on a call back from the San Francisco detective who worked her break in.”
“Good idea,” I say. “It would be good to know who else might know about the rose.”
“We also can’t rule out it was accidental. I mean, it’s a cemetery. People bring flowers. Someone could have left it there with good intentions.”
“How likely do you think that is?”
Everett squats down to get a closer look at the landscaping below Ava’s front window, using the butt of his flashlight to shift the branches of the hydrangea.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, that’s for sure,” he says, standing. We move to the side of the house.
“What if it’s the same creep that broke into her apartment?”
Everett squats down and runs his palm lightly over the ground, like he’s feeling for depressions. “That I have a harder time believing. If someone was stalking her then, where have they been since? That’s a big gap for a perp like that.”
“So it’s a copycat, trying to mess with her?”
“That’s my first instinct, but we don’t have enough to go on yet.”
We walk to Ava’s rock garden at the back corner of the house. The granite cobbles look like they came from the river, each one smoothed and rounded by the water. Hanging from the back eave are her two hummingbird feeders, newly replenished, both hosting a stream of visitors who chirp and bicker in between sips.
“She’s not using that fake rock anymore, right?” Everett asks from where he’s crouched at the edge of the rocks.
“No. Not since I put in the deadbolt. ”
“Good.” We climb onto the deck, and Everett does a scan of the glass panes. He leans down for a closer look at the slider door latch. “Does she use this door a lot?”
“Not recently.”
He peers at the latch from the side. “I might come back to that.”
“You see something?”
“No, but it’s a likely place to grab a print.”
“Ava will need to give hers to compare with, won’t she?”
“Yeah.” He gives me a quick glance. “Yours too.”
I grimace. Is this the kind of thing stalkers get off on? Inconveniencing and scaring their victims? How is that enjoyable for them? It’s fucking sick.
We move to the back corner, where sections of river rocks are interspersed with landscaping bark, and a giant hydrangea, the leaves a vibrant green.
“This her bedroom?” Everett asks, nodding at the big window that overlooks the backyard. Unlike the others, the blinds are drawn.
“Yeah. Her room, then the bathroom, then a laundry area.”
“Got it.” Everett eyes the ground, then squats, his eyes narrowing.
“What?”
He rocks to one side, and points. “See how the rocks are uneven there?”
I lower down and brace off my fingertips as I try to see what he’s noticed. “Rocks are always uneven, aren’t they?”
He slips his phone from a breast pocket and takes several shots of the area below Ava’s window. “If you were to walk on the rocks here, they’d shift under your weight. That depression could be where someone likes to stand.”
Anger flares inside my chest. “Likes…as in present tense?”
Everett’s face tenses in a grimace. “Appears like that to me.”
I close my eyes, trying to retrieve whatever I heard last night. Could it have been the tap of river rocks shifting outside Ava’s window? Maybe .
“There’s also a bent branch there,” he says, pointing at the base of the hydrangea. I wouldn’t have seen it unless I was looking, but it still makes me feel stupid. Why didn’t I go outside and check the house last night and tear this fucker’s throat out?
I want to punch the wall. Hard.
Everett removes a small plastic bag from his back pocket and slides on a pair of blue latex gloves, then teases something out of the hydrangea.
“What the fuck is that?”
Everett slips a black wispy thread into the small bag and zips it shut, then whips out a pen and labels it. He holds the specimen up, in the fading light. “Some kind of fiber. Could be from a coat, or even a glove.”
“Not a hair, though.”
He shakes his head. “Unfortunately, no.”
I put my hands on my hips and scan the yard. Has someone been peeping in Ava’s window? For how long?
“Does she have a gardener? Or a landlord who does his own landscaping?” Everett asks.
“No to the gardener. Not sure about the landlord.”
Everett straightens but keeps his gloves on.
“What makes someone do this kind of thing?” I ask.
“It depends on their goal. Stalkers who seek intimacy on some level are different than say, someone who has been rejected or feels wronged and wants to even the score.”
“Is there any way to know what type we’re dealing with here?”
“Not until we gather more information.”
“Do we at least know if it’s someone, like, close to her versus a stranger?”
“Not yet. Though I’ll tell you that most stalkers know their victims. And in a small town like Finn River, the odds are even higher that Ava knows this person, maybe had a relationship with them. Even a close friendship.”
“None of her close friends would do something like this. ”
“Then maybe a former boyfriend?”
The thought might as well eat me alive. “You’ll have to ask her about that.”
Everett gives me a thoughtful glance. “How long have you two been together?”
“You remember how tight we were in high school.”
His eyebrow twitches, like he’s amused. “I’m surprised she put up with you back then.”
I rub the back of my neck. “She’s always been more than I deserve.”
Everett seems content to wait for me to finish, so I heave a sigh. “We’re seeing each other, but that’s…new.”
He nods. “How about enemies?”
I scoff. “Like who? She’s a doctor. Who would have a reason to hate her?”
“You’d be surprised.”
Everett continues along the other side of the house. The space is narrow here between Ava’s place and the neighbor’s, with a thick hedge separating them. The walkway is made of concrete pavers, with pea gravel lining the edge of the house. Besides a hose and spigot and the bathroom window up high, there is nothing else of interest here.
“You probably can’t answer this, but…” As we round the house, I glance at Ava’s front door to make sure she’s not standing there waiting for me “…is it possible whoever killed Marin is the same creep harassing Ava?”
His lips press together as he quickly shakes his head. “Not much I can say about that, other than we’re taking this very seriously.”
“Understood.” Another question rises through my thoughts, and I can’t bite it back. “Was someone stalking Marin?”
Everett’s eyes flash and his body stills. “Hutch, I appreciate what you’ve done to help, but I can’t share details of an active murder investigation with you.”
“Fuck. You’re right,” I say quickly. “Forgive me. ”
“I’m going to dust for prints and get a closer look at that area beneath her window.”
“You want us to stick around, so you can talk to her?”
“Why don’t I call you when I wrap things here, and we’ll make a plan? I don’t want to disrupt her evening any more than this asshole already has.”
I want to hug him. “Okay.”
“Stay safe,” he says.
“You too,” I reply, and head for the front door.
When I get inside, Ava is in her kitchen, gazing through her window at the hummingbirds dive-bombing her feeders.
“They’ll survive a night without you,” I say, and slide my arm around her shoulders.
“Right,” she says with a heavy sigh.
I lift her bag from her hand and steer her toward the door. When we get inside the truck, Ava’s phone chirps.
“It’s Zach,” she says to me before putting the call on speaker.
“You can come get your car,” Zach says.
“Did you find anything?” Ava asks, her eyes hard.
“No prints, no sign of a break-in.”
Ava crosses her arms. “Well, I guess that’s good and bad.”
“Do you need me stay until you get here?” Zach asks.
Ava tugs on her seatbelt. “No, thank you.”
“We’re on our way.” I start the truck while Ava ends the call.
“What did Everett find?” she asks as I back out of her driveway.
I glance her way, trying to read her.
Her nostrils flare and her eyes tense. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Keep things from me.”
I pause at the end of the street and reach for her hand. Reluctantly, she lets me pry it from where it’s wrapped around her middle. “Okay. It’s possible someone’s been visiting your place.”
“Visiting…what’s that supposed to mean? ”
“There’s an indentation outside your bedroom window. Like someone has been standing there.”
Ava slumps into the seat. “Like…watching me?”
“We don’t know.” I accelerate toward town, then turn toward the cemetery.
“I’m never going to sleep again,” she says, glancing out the window.
I press a soft kiss to the back of her hand. “We’re going to find whoever’s doing this and put a stop to it.”
“And until then, you’re my bodyguard?”
My hackles jump to life. “Why is that so bad?”
“Because I take care of myself. I always have, and I always will.”
I turn into the cemetery. “Maybe it’s time to let someone else share the load.”
Ava closes her eyes, her face tense with grief. “Hutch.”
When I park the truck, she jumps down before I can get to her side. As she slips past me, I grab her hand, jerking her to a stop. “Talk to me.”
She inhales a shaky breath, keeping her back to me. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”
Gently, I pull her to me. “You like a plan, I get it.”
“I won’t let anyone control my life.”
I kiss the top of her head. She’s such a fighter. So strong and courageous and determined. “Did sharing what happened with me today feel like losing that control?”
With a giant sigh, she rests her cheek against my shoulder. “No.”
“You’re in charge, Greely, okay? I’ll take whatever you want me to carry.”
“I don’t mean to be snappy. I’m just…frustrated.”
I grin. “Give me your snappy any day.”
To my relief, she gives a soft sigh.
I caress down her back, savoring the way she’s trusting me, maybe more than she wants to. It’s a gift I won’t take for granted. “I’ll follow you home. ”
She steps back and gives me a fleeting smile. “Okay.”
At the farm, Dylan’s SUV and Beth’s little Honda are parked in the driveway. The fields I abandoned this afternoon are bathed in the final glow from the sunset. It reminds me of Kirilee’s visit and her words.
What if you replaced the word “trouble” with “love”?
I park the truck and turn off the engine, a heavy weight sinking through me.
Can both be true?
Because loving Ava doesn’t give me any answers.