Chapter Nine
Nick propped his head against his uninjured hand. He felt like he was still floating on the sedative, heavy and listless.
Sassy plonked a coffee mug on the table beneath his nose.
He grunted in gratitude.
“How’d you sleep, caveman?” she asked as her hand came to rest against his shoulder.
Was what he’d done last night in her guest bed sleeping? He’d had to climb and claw his way out of it. When he’d finally managed to open his eyes, it had felt like his eyelids were doing dead lifts. He’d half expected to find himself locked inside a coffin, six feet under.
Summoning the energy to answer her inquiry, he lifted his wrapped hand in an empty gesture and winced when the pain gnawed at him. The swelling had gone down somewhat, but the discomfort wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“You were pretty out of it last night.”
He dragged his gaze up to hers. She snatched her eyes away from his in a guilty motion that made no sense. Wetting his throat, he gripped the handle of the mug and noted the half-moon circles under her eyes. “What kept you awake?” he rasped.
She avoided looking at him again. “I don’t know,” she said, concentrating hard on the spoon she dragged through the coffee to mix in her go-to caramel creamer. “I just…couldn’t settle.”
He frowned. So not only was he burdening her with his presence, her worries over him were keeping her up at night. He scowled at the ACE wrap. Nice going, jackass.
“I think Riot had trouble staying asleep,” Sassy pointed out. “He started going crazy around two o’clock this morning.”
Nick shook his head and rubbed a hand over his face to chase the droopy feeling from the muscles there. He needed a cold shower and a sprint around the block to bring him to wakefulness. “I didn’t hear him.”
“Can he open doors?”
At first, the question didn’t make sense. He had to chew over it for a minute before the meaning came together. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“When I got to him, he was standing on the back deck,” she explained. “I’ve never heard him bark like that before. It took me a couple minutes to convince him to come back inside.”
Nick’s frown deepened. “The door was open?”
She nodded. “Wide-open. If he didn’t open it, then the wind must’ve done it?” she said in question, as if trying to riddle it out herself. A narrow divot of confusion dug between her eyebrows.
He set his teeth. “Do you not lock your door?”
She sighed at him. “Not this again.”
“Sassy,” he said, coming awake in increments. The incredulity helped. “After what happened at the gallery—”
“Nothing happened at the gallery. I showed you the video feed. You agreed there was nothing in the footage to suggest anyone had been there.”
The chair’s legs scraped across her new floors as he pushed it back and ducked through the archway.
He ran his hand along the wall to steady himself as his balance tipped slightly and righted slowly.
Part of his mind was still back in her guest bed under her grandmother’s quilt, wearing nothing but boxer briefs and drool on his face.
How he’d gotten there he had no idea. Had she put him to bed?
Was it her who stripped him of his shirt, slacks and shoes?
He could only hope he hadn’t said something dumb as she tucked him in like a toddler.
The door still wasn’t locked.
He cursed and twisted the knob. The hinges creaked noisily as he swung the door open.
At the sight of the deck, his blood froze. “Sassy.”
“Look, Nick,” she said as she approached. “I don’t need a lecture.”
He swung the door open wider, stepping aside for her to see the porch boards.
She stopped. “What the hell is that?”
“Those,” he said, bringing the words up from the base of his throat, “are footprints.”
She began to shake her head. Her mouth opened. He could see an explanation rising to the forefront of her mind and cut her off swiftly.
“Someone tried to break into your house last night.”
“No,” she said, her denial automatic. Her head shook listlessly. “Why would someone do that? There’s nothing here but secondhand furniture and my artwork. No one wants that. I don’t have anything that anyone would want.”
He ran his gaze over her frame. She wore fuzzy leopard--print pajama pants, the garden boots she’d walked Riot in before he rose from the guest room like Dracula on the backslide of a blood binge and a loose-fitting crop top with the year 1491 on full display.
It slacked over the point of one smooth, dusk-colored shoulder.
Her hair was loose. It splayed over both shoulders. The ends tickled her elbows.
She was fiercely independent. She liked living alone. She was also vibrant and capable and strong. Yet he knew he could wrap his thumb and forefinger around her wrist. He knew if someone had wanted to get into her house, they could have.
He knew that if they’d wanted to catch her unawares, they could have. If it hadn’t been for Riot…
Nick felt sick. His stomach roiled. He planted a hand against the doorjamb and fought a hard wave of nausea.
He spotted Riot on the floor at his feet, nose busily sniffing the threshold. He made a growling noise.
Fear dripped like ice down Nick’s spine. He’d been passed out. He hadn’t even heard Riot bark or Sassy investigating the disturbance. If the intruder had gotten past the dog and taken Sassy by surprise…attacked her…would Nick have slept through it?
The sick feeling doubled. He drew in an unsteady breath.
“Nick?” Sassy sounded scared now, as if despite her protests her thoughts had aligned with his.
“Call the police,” he said as he traced the path of the mud-caked footprints over the porch boards, down the steps and into her yard.
* * *
Riot’s appearance at River House had been canceled while Sassy and Nick dealt with the police. They took photographs of the boot prints outside her back door, fingerprinted her doorknobs and canvassed her neighbors for Ring camera footage.
None of them had it, she knew, because her neighborhood was supposed to be safe. The safest one in Dark Canyon. It was why she’d chosen the fixer-upper in the first place. When she felt like running or walking or biking, she could do so without worrying about her personal safety.
She wasn’t stupid. She was a single female living alone. She slept with an aluminum baseball bat beside her bed. And normally, yes, she did lock the doors.
She’d forgotten to lock the back one after taking Riot out for a potty break before she turned in. There had been too much going through her mind. Too many what-ifs and what-to-dos and how-do-I-make-this-betters?
When she thought of someone trying to make entry into her home…a burglar…a predator…her mind automatically went into denial, because some part of her still believed that Dark Canyon was the safe place she’d grown up knowing it was.
If Riot hadn’t woken her…
She shut down that train of thought as swiftly as it had come, making the turn for the reservation. “You didn’t have to come with me. I’m fine.”
Nick, in the passenger seat of his truck, didn’t answer. There had been no answer from the mechanic when she’d called about her Bronco this morning. Nick had offered her the use of his truck when she’d told him about her afternoon plan to visit the Navajo Nation.
He’d been brooding. She pursed her lips, hating to think about his ashen face when he’d realized that someone had nearly gotten to her the night before.
She could practically hear the wheels of his mind spinning. He’d refused to take another sedative. All day, he’d sat in his pain, stewing in his thoughts.
The silence was an itch across her back. It was driving her crazy. She took a long breath, straightening in her seat. “Are you sure you’re up for this? I’ll be visiting at least four different houses.”
“I’m sure,” he grunted.
She tucked her tongue in her cheek. Caveman, she thought. Was this what he would do while he was off work—follow her around town, playing bodyguard, waiting to beat away the bad guys with one arm tied behind his back?
She reached for the radio dial. His preferred ’80s station pumped the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” through the speakers. It sounded much better than his overthinking.
Tapping her fingers on top of the steering wheel, she bopped to the beat and eyed the side mirror. She got an eyeful of Riot’s lolling tongue and flapping gums as he hung his head out the back window. One of us is having fun, she observed, unable to fight a grin.
The song changed into something slower and suggestive. Sassy stopped bopping because it made her think of man nipples and soft black boxer briefs and Nick curled up on her guest bed, happy in repose.
She hadn’t thought about that…him…her reaction to him since breakfast. All the disturbingly good feelings she’d drowned in the night before had sunk to the back of her mind when she’d seen those footprints and accepted what they meant.
Unwilling to dwell on those things, she studied the terrain. “River’s up,” she noted.
“Mmm.”
Behind her sunglasses, she rolled her eyes. She tried again for conversation. “Must be all the snowmelt north of here. Did you notice it on your hike?”
He cleared his throat. “Closer to the canyons. Not so much on the south side.”
Where he’d faced dehydration, she remembered.
When another love song started to play, he leaned over to flip the music off.
She sighed. “Nick, do we need to talk about this?”
“What?”
“You’re not going to spend the next few weeks following me around everywhere, are you?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Look at me,” she demanded.
He turned his head. He’d left his sunglasses at the fire station and squinted against the light. A muscle in his jaw torqued as he ran his eyes across her face. The fear loosened from them, replaced by that impossible softness she’d seen last night.