Chapter 3
The police stayed until they’d thoroughly searched her house and around her damaged car for any evidence they could find to identify the culprit.
They’d asked her to stand out of the way out on the porch.
Sachie frowned. “Okay, but first, I’d like to get dressed in something...more substantial. Could I go to my bedroom long enough to do that?”
Officer Layne nodded.
“I’m going with Ms. Moore,” Teller Osgood said and moved up to stand beside her.
Her cheeks heated. “I think I’m capable of finding my way to my own room.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “But I’d like to clear the room before you go in, just in case your attacker circled around and re-entered the house while no one was looking.”
Officer Layne snorted. “With police officers all over this property? He’d have to be insane.”
Osgood met and held the officer’s gaze, his jaw firm. “Either I clear the room, or one of you officers can.”
Layne shook his head. “Go ahead. Just don’t disturb any evidence.”
When Sachie stepped past the man, he caught her arm in a loose grip, his touch sending a surprise jolt of electricity through her.
She stared down at his hand on her arm, then up into moss-green eyes, a little dazed and confused. Probably from everything that had happened. “Right. You go first.”
He led the way into the cottage.
Sachie followed, studying the man while he wasn’t looking.
The man was tall, with a headful of dark brown hair and shoulders so broad he could be a weightlifter or a star in one of those superhero movies.
A trim waist led to firm buttocks encased in dark jeans.
As a protector, the man had missed his calling.
He definitely should have auditioned for a superhero movie.
He had the build and carried himself like one.
She stood outside her bedroom while he made a quick sweep of the closet, under the bed and behind the door. When he finished, he gave her a nod. “It’s all yours, ma’am.”
Sachie frowned. “Don’t call me, ma’am. It makes me feel old.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, stood back and waved her into the room.
“Sachie,” she corrected. “Call me Sachie.”
“Yes, ma’am?—”
She glared at him.
“Sachie,” he corrected, his lips twitching on the corners.
The hint of a smile made her heart race. To cover her reaction, she assumed her best formal voice, the one she reserved for reporters and society snobs. “Is my room cleared to your satisfaction, Mr. Osgood?”
“Teller,” he said. “And yes. You can go in. Just stay away from the windows.”
“Thank you, Mr. Osgood,” she said as she walked past him.
“Call me Teller,” he said. “Mr. Osgood was my father.”
Sachie hid a smile as she entered her room, and he left, pulling the door closed behind him.
Alone for the first time since she’d erupted from her closet, ready to stab her attacker with a butcher knife, she shivered, the events of the night rushing back at her like a tsunami of images in her mind, crushing the air from her lungs.
Her heart beat so fast it burned inside her chest, and she couldn’t breathe.
As a counselor, she knew she wasn’t suffocating.
If she passed out, her autonomic nervous system would kick in to keep her heart beating and restore her lungs to their usual efficiency.
It was just a panic attack, just like all the panic attacks she’d had since that horrible afternoon in her office back in Honolulu.
No matter how many times she’d told herself she wasn’t going to die, she couldn’t reason her way out of the rush of terror. She found that when she was afflicted with such an attack, if she got out of the room, house or building she was in, out into the open air, she could breathe better.
Sachie ran to her dresser and pulled out a bra.
As she hurried for the closet, she dragged off the T-shirt she usually slept in, put on her bra and grabbed a button-down blouse from a hanger.
She slipped her arms into the blouse and left it hanging open as she tugged a pair of jeans up over her hips, buttoned and zipped.
While she buttoned her blouse, she shoved her feet in a pair of running shoes and headed for the door, her chest tight, her head light as if she’d held her breath the entire two minutes she’d been in the room.
She flung open the door and raced into the hallway, slamming face-first into a solid wall.
Hands gripped her elbows, steadying her. “What’s wrong?” a deep voice asked.
Sachie looked up into Teller Osgood’s green eyes, unable to catch her breath. “Out,” she managed to push the word past constricted vocal cords.
“Are you okay?” Teller asked.
She shook her head, broke free of his grasp and ran for the front door.
Footsteps sounded behind her, but Sachie didn’t slow until she burst through the door into the front yard.
Teller came up behind her and rested a hand against her back. He leaned close and whispered, “Breathe.”
Outside in the cooler night air, with the wide-open sky full of stars shining down on her, Sachie drew a deep breath and let it out a little at a time.
“Another,” Teller urged.
She inhaled again, her heartbeat already slowing.
Officer Layne looked over from where he stood beside her damaged car. “Everything all right, Ms. Moore?”
Sachie nodded, unable to respond in words. She raised her arms and laced her hands behind her head as if that would help her to better fill her lungs.
“Panic attack?” Teller asked softly.
She nodded, hating to admit to her weakness. She was a counselor, for heaven’s sake. Her arms fell to her sides. Would she ever get past this? Would her life ever return to normal?
“Walk it off,” Teller said.
When she didn’t move, he took her hand. “It’s okay. I’ll be with you.” In silence, he led her across the short distance of her front yard and back for several laps.
By the time Officer Layne approached her, Sachie’s pulse and breathing had returned to normal.
When she tried to pull her hand out of Teller’s, his fingers tightened slightly, not enough she couldn’t free it, but enough to make her realize she didn’t want to let go.
For whatever reason, this stranger grounded her when her mind spiraled uncontrollably.
“Ms. Moore, I can take your statement now, or you can come by the station later in the morning and give it,” Layne said.
“I’d rather get it over with now,” she said.
He nodded and pulled a pen and pad from his pocket. “You said you saw a face of a person in your window. Could you describe that face?”
The panic she’d felt moments before swelled inside her.
Teller’s hand tightened around hers, and the swelling subsided.
Sachie drew a deep breath, closed her eyes and forced her mind to review the memory.
“It was dark,” she said. “I only got an impression of dark hair and a thin face.” She shrugged, unwilling to tell them what had been nagging at her since the face had appeared.
The face had been familiar, but she couldn’t quite put a finger on who it reminded her of.
Or her mind didn’t want her to figure it out.
Layne asked her a barrage of other questions that all seemed to run together in her exhausted brain.
She answered as best she could. She hadn’t seen the man in the window bust her car windshield, and she’d been hiding in her closet when he’d broken through her front door and the door to her bedroom. “I’m not much help, am I?”
“You did the right thing by hiding and calling for help,” Officer Layne said and turned to Teller with some of the same questions.
Sachie listened to the deep, smooth tone of his voice as he described the assailant.
“I didn’t get a look at his face as he was running away from me. He was tallish, lanky and his hair was a little shaggy, not too long, but like he’d missed a haircut or two.”
Officer Layne wrote down Sachie’s and Teller’s contact information. “We’ll be in touch with whatever information we discover about this case. In the meantime, you’ll need to get that doorframe repaired, and you might consider installing a security system.”
The gray light of dawn crept across the sky as the Hawaii Police officers drove away from Sachie’s cottage, leaving her standing on the front porch with Teller and no idea what to do next.
Teller turned to her. “If you want to sleep, I can stand watch.”
She laughed, the sound a bit on the hysterical side. “I’m tired, but I couldn’t sleep if I tried.”
“How about I make you a cup of coffee?” he said. “I could use one.”
“Why don’t I make you a cup of coffee?” she said, leading the way back into the cottage. “That way, I can stay busy.”
“Sounds good,” he said as he followed her to the kitchen at the back of the house. “And maybe we can figure out who followed you here.”
She stopped so suddenly he ran into her.
Her cheeks heated, and her hands clenched at her sides, her body tensing. “What do you know?”
“Only that you moved to the Big Island to get away from a stalker on Oahu after suffering from a traumatic incident.” He touched her arm.
“Look, you can tell me as much or as little as you feel comfortable with. The more I know, the better I can anticipate trouble. But I get it. I’m a stranger.
It’s hard to spill your guts with someone you’ve just met.
” He nudged her elbow. “Let’s start with coffee.
If all we talk about is what’s the best brand of coffee, that’s enough.
I’m here until you don’t need me anymore. Now. Breathe.”
Sachie drew in a deep breath and continued into the kitchen.
After cleaning up the broken glass and spilled juice, she went through the routine of filling the coffeemaker with water, scooping the dark crystals into a filter and turning the machine on.
As the air filled with the rich aroma, she set two mugs on the counter, finally turning to face the stranger leaning against the counter in her kitchen. “Cream and sugar?”
He shook his head. “Black.” His green eyes studied her as if he could see every thought flitting through her head.