Chapter Eight
Cara awoke to five young men dressed in an assortment of leather pants and jackets gazing down at her, each one smoldering harder than the next. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then rolled them as she recalled Wyatt’s smirk when he saw the old poster tacked to the wall of her childhood bedroom. Fixing her gaze on her longtime favorite, she whispered, “Don’t worry, guys. He’s jealous of our love.”
It was early. The light coming through the partially open blinds was the dusky rose of dawn. Reaching out, she switched on the milk glass lamp on her bedside table. Gold incandescent light flooded the room, and idly, Cara wondered when her parents changed the bulb. Probably not long after she’d stopped gazing longingly at her teenage crush each night before she drifted off to sleep, she figured.
Lifting her arms over her head, she indulged in an extravagant stretch. It felt so good, she laced her fingers together and pressed her open palms toward the ceiling. The next thing she knew, she’d fallen into a rhythmic four-count breathing pattern, her gaze fixed on the blooming sunrise.
She heard her parents moving around the house. The rumble of an ATV engine signaled her father’s imminent departure. When it faded into the distance, she closed her eyes and listened hard for any clue as to whether her mother had gone with him to the barn. The clank of cast iron against the stovetop grate rang out with the promise of breakfast.
Cara smiled as she sank into the moment, feeling more centered than she had in weeks. It always felt good to come home, even if she hated admitting it.
The sky morphed from peachy pink to pale violet. Memories of running through the back door of a simple clapboard farmhouse that used to stand less than a quarter mile up the lane came flooding back. The slap of the screen door. The scent of fresh-baked bread. Sheets snapping in the stiff breeze whistling around the tree-covered mountains and through the valley.
She loved her grandparents’ house. The old house, as it was called. There was always a pan of leftover biscuits on the stove. Whatever wasn’t eaten at breakfast would be gobbled up with whatever Grandma tossed together for lunch. Or dinner, as she’d called it.
After Granddad died, Grandma moved up to the new house with Cara’s parents. Her dad claimed the old house was falling down around her ears, but Cara didn’t see it. When you’re a kid, you don’t think about drafty windows, rotting floorboards on the porch or dripping pipes.
Grandma June brought little more than her cast-iron skillet and her love of all things Hollywood with her to the new house. She slept in the room Wyatt currently occupied until the day she passed. They watched old movies together well after her parents had turned in. When she was small, Grandma June happily paid a shiny quarter for a ticket to whatever living room production Cara cooked up in her head. She’d helped Cara run lines for every school play or drama club soliloquy.
Her grandmother was the one who’d dipped into her life savings to cover Cara’s airfare to California. Her gran was the first person she’d called when she’d thought she’d blown an audition or got a callback for a second look. When she passed, Cara’d spent the entire flight home sobbing into a wad of paper napkins a kindly flight attendant had provided while the businessman next to her pretended not to notice.
In her absence the old house had fallen into even more disrepair. Sitting empty, there was water damage. Rot. Termites. Black mold. When it was demolished, Cara was hurt beyond reason. She accused her parents of tearing down the best parts of her childhood. Trips home became less frequent. Phone calls were kept brief and perfunctory.
She opened her eyes, a fresh surge of anger and betrayal coursing through her veins. If they had only waited a few more years, she could have had the old house restored. But she knew such wishful thinking was fruitless. Her parents would still have been saddled with the upkeep on a house she’d visit once, maybe twice a year. She shook her head, dismissing the thought and the rush of emotion it rode in on.
Her father had done what he needed to do.
Resolved to make the most out of this unexpected time with her parents, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. The floorboards were cool underfoot. She reached for the hooded sweatshirt she’d hung on a bedpost and pulled it on over the T-shirt she’d slept in. By the time she shimmied into yoga pants and some socks, the tantalizing scent of bacon drifted down the hall.
She closed her eyes and drew from the well of inner strength, hoping it would allow her to withstand temptation. Of all the foods she’d eschewed when adopting a vegetarian diet, bacon had been the hardest habit to break. Turning the doorknob, she stepped into the hall, promising herself an enormous bowl of old-fashioned oatmeal topped with brown sugar and pecans.
The guest room door opened, and Wyatt poked his head into the corridor. She smiled when she saw one side of his hair was still artfully rumpled, while the other appeared to be suffering a near terminal case of bedhead.
“Do I smell bacon?” he asked, darting a hopeful look in her direction.
“Undoubtedly,” she replied. “Dad usually only has a cup of coffee first thing. He’ll come back in for breakfast once the cows are fed and turned out.”
He pointed to the bathroom door. “Do I have time to shower?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I’ll go help Mama and take mine after we eat.”
He gave a quick nod then ducked back into the bedroom. Shoving her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt, she shuffled through the house, her shoulders hunched against the autumn chill.
Cara found her mother fishing strips of crisp bacon from Grandma June’s skillet and smiled as she listened to her hum an old Beatles song. Not for the first time, Cara thanked the heavens she’d inherited her father’s ear for music. Her mother couldn’t carry a tune in a paper bag.
“Mornin’, Mama,” she said, falling back into the easy vernacular of her youth. “Can I help?”
“Morning, Sweets,” her mother said, turning from the stove with a wide, guileless smile. “I’ve got bacon, eggs and toast.” Her smile faded and she cast a worried glance in the direction of the bedrooms. “I hope that’ll be okay with Wyatt.”
“I’m sure it will be,” Cara assured her. She moved to the cupboard where the coffee cups were kept and pulled down the biggest one she could find. “He smelled the bacon.”
Her mother wiped her hand on the crumpled dishcloth beside the stove and nodded. “I won’t start the eggs until your daddy comes in, but what am I gonna feed you?”
Cara bit her bottom lip and refrained from shaking her head. Every meal, the same despairing question. “I was hoping for some oatmeal,” she said as she poured the rich, black coffee into her mug. “And maybe a handful of pecans if you have some stashed somewhere?”
Her mother gave an indelicate little snort. “You can have more than a handful. Those trees your granddad planted dropped enough to feed an army of squirrels this winter.”
“Then I definitely won’t starve.” Cara cradled the mug in both hands and took a cautious sip of the steaming brew.
Thirty minutes later, the sun was up, Wyatt had emerged fully dressed, her father had returned from the first of his morning chores and Cara was doctoring a steaming bowl of cereal. She could feel her father’s gaze on her as she swirled a liberal sprinkling of brown sugar and cinnamon into the oats before dropping chopped nuts into the mixture.
“Would you like some of my oatmeal, Daddy?” she asked without looking up. Her father hated hot cereal. Always had, always would, he’d proclaimed on more than one occasion.
He picked a strip of bacon cooked shy of burnt off his plate and held it out to her. “Wanna bite, baby girl?” he taunted, his voice morning gruff.
Cara smiled. “No, thank you,” she replied sweetly, looking up in time to see a puzzled expression cross Wyatt’s face. “It’s a thing we do,” she explained.
Their customary exchange complete, her father pierced the orange-yellow yolk of his perfectly fried egg with the corner of a piece of toast, then pinned Wyatt with a stare. “So tell me, what is it you do exactly?”
She wanted to object to the blunt question, but Wyatt’s quiet chuckle assured her there was no offense taken. On the contrary, he seemed bemused.
“Do you want the big picture version or the dreary details?”
Her father took his time chewing his toast before answering. “I want to know how whatever it is you’re doing applies to keeping my daughter safe. I want to know how you’re going to catch whoever’s doing this to her.”
Wyatt paused, giving the question serious consideration. Idly, he broke off the end of a strip of bacon, popped it into his mouth and chewed, his gaze never leaving her father’s face. “Do you remember me telling you the tracing technology had far exceeded what you see on the television police procedurals?”
“Yessir,” her father replied, sopping up some more of the runny yolk with his toast. “Why I’m askin’. It seems like you should be getting more answers than you have.”
“We do have answers. We simply don’t know how they fit together yet. We know what’s happening. We know how they’re surveilling her. We know what’s being said online and by whom in many cases. We even know where some of the communications have originated.”
Her mother spoke up. “If you know who and where they are, why aren’t you going after them?”
“Because most people don’t use landlines anymore. We can ping whichever towers a cellular call is coming from, or trace the IP address of a message, but the technology is mobile now.” He shrugged. “And even if whoever is posting these things is sitting in the parking lot of a police station, the most we can do is question them. What they say is protected under their First Amendment rights.”
Wyatt said the last with an edge of rancor, but her parents responded with true outrage.
“People can’t go around publicly threatening people,” Betsy argued. “Isn’t it some form of terrorism?”
Her father dropped his fork with a clatter. “What if there’s evidence those threats are credible? Someone abducted her at gunpoint.”
“We have no evidence connecting Gerald Griffin to any of the threats against Cara. From everything we’ve uncovered, he was hired help.”
“Hired help,” her mother repeated. “What a world we’re living in.”
Cara reached over and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “The world is wonderful. There are some bad people in it, but there always have been.” She gave them a sad smile. “The only difference is, now they have more ways to spread ugliness.”
“Exactly,” Wyatt said with a decisive nod. “Most online chatter is nothing more than someone using a keyboard to make themselves feel heard. They can say whatever they like about somebody, and no one can stop them. Makes the powerless feel powerful.”
They fell silent for a moment, their cutlery still as they digested this unsavory bit of reality.
“I don’t know about y’all, but I’m feeling pretty powerless right about now,” Betsy admitted.
“Me too, Mama,” Cara said softly. Then she thought about those desperate people sitting at their keyboards grasping for any opportunity to feel heard. She looked from her father to her mother, then across at Wyatt, then she smiled. “But at least we aren’t alone.”
C ARA WAS PARKED at the dining room table pretending to write scripts for upcoming recordings, but it was hard to come across as calm and centered when her life was skidding out of control. Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she stole another glance at Wyatt. He’d been alternating between feverish typing, glaring at his screen and muttering soft oaths under his breath for the past hour. She’d tried to engage him in conversation a couple times, but his curt answers and unwillingness to look up for more than a second telegraphed his unwillingness to engage in her procrastination efforts.
Thankfully, her phone rang.
Wyatt frowned at the name on the screen, then slid it across the table to her. “Zarah.”
“Hey, Z,” she said into the phone. “Hang on, let me go in the other room.”
She slipped from her seat to move to the other room, but Wyatt caught her wrist as she passed, shaking his head and mouthing, “Stay.”
Everything in her rebelled against his high-handed order. But the man was here because of her. He’d packed a bag, picked her up and taken up residence in her parents’ house all to keep her safe. She needed to stop fighting for control. The sooner she gave herself over to the situation she was in, the sooner she’d find her way through it. Struck by her own moment of clarity, she moved back to her notebook, anxious to capture the thought. She scribbled the words “give over to get through” on the paper, then reclaimed her seat with a grin.
“What’s up? Aside from you,” she added, glancing at her watch. It wasn’t even seven Pacific time. “You’re usually still unconscious until at least nine.”
“I got a call from the short-term-rental company,” her assistant began, and Cara sucked in a sharp breath.
She’d completely forgotten to text Zarah to let her know she’d left the condo. “Oh! The condo.” Her gaze flew to Wyatt. He widened his eyes, then grimaced. He’d clearly forgotten about checking out of the place too.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Zarah demanded. “Where are you?”
The level of panic in the younger woman’s voice set alarm bells off in her head. Cara pulled the phone away from her ear, pressed a finger to her lips to indicate Wyatt should keep quiet, then put the call on speaker. “What’s going on?”
“You tell me,” Zarah demanded. “They called this morning saying the place was torn up and informing me they were charging the entire security deposit. Not the unit owner, but the actual company. The app,” she babbled. “Little Rock police got a noise complaint. Neighbors said it sounded like there was a big fight going on. Anyway, they called the owner, but they live in Oregon. They asked the cops to check it out, and when they did, they found the door wide open and no one there. It was trashed.”
She and Wyatt exchanged wide-eyed stares. Cara wet her lips, then forced a word past her suddenly dry throat. “Trashed?”
“The police sent pictures. The unit looks like someone was totally raging.”
Without a word, Wyatt reached for his own phone and started typing a text.
“I left early yesterday morning and everything was fine,” Cara said in a rush. “I meant to text you so you could check out, but I forgot. I’m so sorry. I didn’t trash the place. You know I would never. But I packed up my stuff and left. I’m sure I locked the door after me.” She darted a glance at Wyatt for confirmation. He thought for a moment, then nodded his agreement. “When did they get the noise complaint?”
“They said yesterday morning,” Zarah replied. “I guess it took some time for it to get from the police back to the owner to the rental company. I freaked when I heard. I thought maybe the kidnapper was coming after you again.”
“No. No one came after me,” Cara said, her mind awhirl.
“Where are you?” Zarah asked again.
She opened her mouth to speak, but clamped it shut again when she caught sight of Wyatt wagging his head hard. “I, uh, I’m staying with a friend. I didn’t like being alone after, um, what happened.”
“What friend? Where?”
“Listen, Z, I want you to go ahead and reach out to the company and the owner and assure them I did not do this. Also let them know I’m happy to cover any damages, though. I should have let them know I was out of the unit. You have access to my cards and accounts. Do what you need to do to make this right.”
“But you’re okay? You’re safe?” the other woman prodded.
“I’m safe.”
“When are you coming home? Do you need me to book a flight for you?” Zarah persisted.
“Not yet. I’m still...decompressing. Catching up with my friend. But I’ll call you as soon as I’m ready,” she promised. “Would you please take care of the condo for me? I feel horrible. Maybe I didn’t lock the door properly after all. Either way, at the very least, I should have let them know I was out so they could set the alarm.” Wyatt made a motion for her to wrap it up. “I’ll call you back later, I promise.”
She ended the call before Zarah could wedge another question in and looked up at Wyatt aghast. “Someone broke in yesterday. It must have been right after we left.”
His mouth pulled into a grim line. He nodded as he raised his phone to his ear. “I have a friend with the LRPD. I’m going to see what I can find out from them.”
“Do you think it was this Griffin guy? I mean, could it have been?” She moved her chair a few inches closer to his, shaken and needing to feel his proximity.
“It could have,” he murmured. “Need to see if the timeline fits.” He held up a finger for her to hold the thought. “Yeah, this is Wyatt Dawson from the state police. Is Mark Jones in, please?” He must have been put on hold because he lowered his finger and resumed their conversation without missing a beat. “Does he return the car, gas up his truck, then go looking for you? No.” He shook his head, dismissing the chain of events. “He’d go looking for you in the rental. Wouldn’t want to risk anyone ID’ing his vehi—Hey, Mark,” he said, his tone shifting from speculative to professional in the space of a syllable. “Wyatt Dawson. How are things?”
He listened for a minute, nodding. “I hear you. Yeah, we’ll have to do that. Listen, I won’t keep you, but do you think you can find out who’s handling a break-in and property damage case for me? I think it’s connected to an active investigation.” He rattled off the address of the condo, tapping his pen against the side of his laptop. “Yeah, give them my number. Appreciate you.”
Cara couldn’t suppress her bemused smile.
When he looked over at her, the crease between his brows deepened. “What?”
She shook her head and wiped the smile from her face. “Nothing. I was—It’s funny, is all.”
“What is?”
“The weird kind of conversational shorthand guys have. If I’m interpreting your two-minute conversation correctly, you commiserated about the job, asked for what you needed, confirmed the urgency and need for response, and made some vague plan to get together—”
“Which we never will,” he interrupted.
“Exactly. All wrapped up in a neat little package.” She skimmed her palms together as if drying them off. “I wasn’t criticizing. In fact, I was admiring your skill.”
He dropped the pen to the table and leaned in to look at her. “It would have to be a wildly tight timeline for it to be Griffin,” he mumbled.
She watched as he snatched up his phone and started to fire off another text.
Narrowing her eyes, she asked, “How do you know your messages are safe?” His head popped up, and for a moment he looked affronted. “I’m only asking. I mean, are they regular texts or do you have some sort of secure channel like on TV?”
“We have an encrypted network, but it’s not foolproof. Some people love to crack codes,” he muttered, finishing his message.
She inclined her head. “People like you and Agent Parker,” she said quietly.
He studied his screen, a smile tugging at his lips as he jabbed at the trackpad. “Exactly.” Then he scowled at his laptop. “I don’t know how your folks can stand service this slow. Thank goodness they weren’t trying to use a computer while watching CineFlix—it would crash the bandwidth. It’d get hung up right in the middle of the big forensics reveal.”
His phone dinged and he glanced down at it. “Eight fifty-three a.m.,” he reported. “If he trashed the place, he wouldn’t have been too far behind us.”
“What time did we leave?”
“Somewhere around there. I got the package with your stuff and came right to you.”
“So he was doing all this in broad daylight,” she murmured.
“Sometimes it’s easier. People notice a commotion in the night. We’re actually pretty lucky someone was home to hear it. Most people would have left for work already.”
“Yeah, we’re so lucky,” she said with an edge of sarcasm.
He fixed her with a stern stare. “We are. We were already gone. Now, Emma’s emailing a copy of the receipt for the file.” He checked his computer, then grabbed his phone. “I’m going to switch to my phone’s cellular hot spot. This is driving me crazy.”
A few seconds later the email with the scanned transaction from the gas station came through. He sent off two more emails before switching off his hotspot and settling back in his chair, fingers poised over the keys. “You up for running through this all again?”
Cara nodded, sitting up straighter in her chair. She spoke low and steady, keeping her breathing even as he typed a bullet-point timeline of events starting with the day she noticed an uptick in hostile messages and brought them to the attention of her partners. When they got to the attack on her neighbor Nancy and her decision to fly home to Arkansas, he slowed her down, asking her to get more granular as he added incident after incident. Her voice cracked when she recounted her decision to jump from the car, still not quite able to believe she’d done it. She hadn’t realized how high and tight her voice had become until Wyatt stopped typing and reached over to cover her hand with his.
“Breathe,” he encouraged. “It’s okay. I’ve got the rest.”
She nodded, dragging in a deep but shaky breath. “Okay. Okay.”
“I’ve got you,” he assured her, giving her hand a quick squeeze before releasing it to resume his typing.
Cara sagged in her seat, exhaling slow and low and feeling more confident than she had in weeks. “Yeah. We’ve got this,” she whispered.