Chapter 11
“I-I-I…this can’t be.” Prudence shook her head, trying to find some way to clear out the fog and remember.
The look of betrayal in Adam’s eyes nearly gutted her.
“I promise I didn’t know that I wrote the note,” she defended. Asking him to believe her when evidence said otherwise would take a leap of faith on his part. She could only hope he’d gotten to know her enough in the past twenty-four hours to realize she wouldn’t try to pull the wool over his eyes.
But she did have a severe memory lapse. For three days, in fact.
“I need to find my cell,” she said into the otherwise quiet room. She handed over the baby and dashed over to her laptop. “I should be able to find my cell using an app.”
She broke the silence with the click-clack-clack of her fingers on the keyboard. How could she have written that note and not remembered?
The screen came to life and her work calendar immediately popped up.
“Oh no,” she said. “I never leave this open.”
“The perp might have checked to see where you would be next since you weren’t home,” Lawler offered.
“I thought I was off for a while but according to my schedule, I took a job starting tomorrow. I have to call my clients. There’s no way I can work right now. Not with everything going on,” she said.
“I’ll send someone over to explain the situation,” Lawler said.
Adam’s silence was deafening.
“I need to call them personally.” She realized that would be impossible without her phone. The walls suddenly felt like they were closing in around her and she couldn’t breathe. Anxiety pressed against her chest like a boulder. She couldn’t allow it to win.
Breathe, she reminded.
Slowly, she took in a deep breath and then exhaled for the same length of time. She could do this. She could get through this. This seemed like a good time to remind herself how far she’d come. She’d been through so much worse and survived.
“Don’t you have a password to protect your laptop?” Adam finally asked, his voice a study in calm.
“Do you leave your keys in your truck when you run into the feed store?” she countered.
“Good point,” he admitted.
“I live alone. Didn’t think I’d need one,” she said by way of explanation. “I need to send the Ramseys an e-mail. I’ll let them know that I’m okay but a deputy will be stopping by. I don’t want them to have something like this dropped on them out of the blue.”
Lawler nodded as Adam walked into the adjacent living room. What? Now he couldn’t be in the same room with her?
As damning as the handwriting situation was, she had no doubt about her innocence. Didn’t mean she could explain any of this, but she knew in her heart she could never hurt another person.
Did he doubt her?
Fingers dancing across the keyboard, she took in another deep breath. At least the computer located her cell.
“Here, we go,” she said. “I found it.”
She blew up the map and pinpointed the location.
“That’s my address. But there’s no way it’s here.
” Wouldn’t she have seen it by now? Plus, her car wasn’t parked out front and her purse was nowhere to be found.
” She glanced at the sheriff and then Adam.
“Quick. Someone call me.” She rattled off her number as the sheriff obliged.
Walking from room to room, she listened for her ringtones.
Nothing.
“Well, we know it has to be around here somewhere.” Panic squeezed her chest. How could this be? How could her phone be right under their noses? “This won’t help finding my car.”
“I can help with that,” Lawler said. “What’s the make and model and license plate?”
She rattled them off and he immediately spelled them out on his radio along with a few acronyms she didn’t understand.
“We’ll see if anything turns up,” Lawler said.
He had resources around the county. If her vehicle was ditched somewhere, maybe they could find it and that could give them another hint as to where she’d been.
Something had to have happened in the three lost days that would connect the dots. There had to be an explanation. Would she ever regain those memories and be able to explain? Having information locked inside her brain, inaccessible, was one of the most frustrating things she’d ever experienced.
“Maybe it’s outside somewhere,” Adam finally piped in. “The perp might have ditched it on his way out when we surprised him.”
“You two check the perimeter. I’ll nose around in here if it’s okay with you, Prudence,” Lawler said.
“Be my guest.” She couldn’t imagine he’d find anything inside her place. She’d already gone room to room, and nothing looked out of place. Another shiver raced down her back at the thought of someone being inside her home.
She followed Adam outside but headed in the opposite direction as him.
“Hey.” He seemed to notice she wasn’t behind him based on his hushed, irritated tone.
She rounded the corner to where he was standing, looking at her like she’d just stole the keys to his truck.
“You’ve been with me for the past eighteen hours, Adam,” she said, not bothering to hide her frustration.
His expression was unreadable as he studied her.
“Have you made up your mind about my character yet?” She couldn’t help but let off some steam with her comment.
A growing part of her was proud of the bravado.
The old Prudence would never have confronted anyone or demanded to know what they thought of her.
The new one wanted to know where she stood.
“I’m doing my best here,” he said by way of defense.
“Yeah? So am I. And, by the way, your best isn’t good enough for me.” There. She’d said it. She deserved to be around someone who believed in her.
Rather than stand there while moisture formed in her eyes, giving away just how emotional saying that to him was, she tucked her chin to her chest and circled back.
There were no footsteps behind her like her foolish heart wanted there to be.
His loss, she decided. She might not know why she’d scribbled his name on a piece of paper or tucked it inside the baby’s blanket.
Hell, she still didn’t know why she had the child in the first place.
But she knew herself, which was far more important at the moment.
She would never harm another person. It just wasn’t in her DNA.
She could barely be rude to someone who cut her off in traffic.
And no matter how forthright she seemed to be becoming with her emotions, she didn’t have a mean bone in her body. No one could tell her different. She wouldn’t conspire against anyone or take a child away from her mother.
Prudence dropped onto her hands and knees to search inside the shrubbery. She poked around in bushes. Although, she should probably be searching the back of the house where the perp had come from when he left her house.
The creep must have been watching from somewhere in front of the house. She glanced up at the windows that looked onto the street. Again, the thought of someone setting up inside her house ready and waiting caused painful stabs in her chest.
A few rogue tears spilled out of her eyes, dropping onto the hard dirt.
Hurt filled her chest at the thought of Adam distrusting her so much, especially after feeling like he’d been her lifeline. Running her hand along the parched earth, she felt around.
When she found nothing, she sat back on her heels.
“Hey,” Adam’s voice startled her.
She gasped before bringing her hands up to take off her glasses and then wipe her eyes. No way was she going to let anyone see that she’d been crying. Technically, only a handful of drops fell but they were a few too many.
“Did you find anything?” she asked, not bothering to turn to look at him. She needed a minute to remember her frustration because making eye contact with him when she felt so vulnerable would be a mistake.
“No. I couldn’t concentrate with you up here looking around on your own, so I thought I’d join you if that’s okay with you.
” There was an emotion present in his voice that she recognized as guilt.
He’d stopped short of apologizing, not that it would matter.
If he didn’t believe in her there was no use in being around each other.
“You can look anywhere you want. No one is going to stop you.” The words came out a little sharper than she intended.
She had no plans to take them back, though.
Adam didn’t know what to think. His heart wanted to believe she had nothing to do with the case beyond showing up on his family’s land with the baby. A Good Samaritan who’d stepped in to help a child in need.
How na?ve would he be to go down that road again?
One that led with feelings instead of logic.
He’d been burned once and still felt the sting almost a year later.
The baby, if she belonged to him, was a stark reminder of how quickly a relationship could go south and how much collateral damage could be done.
But, man, his heart wanted to go hook, line, and sinker into believing in Prudence.
He was so angry at hearing about Libby’s senseless murder and the fact this child would be forced to grow up without her mother that he couldn’t think straight. The whole situation was unfair to an innocent child.
Even if Angel wasn’t his, he had half a mind to file a petition to adopt her. Libby couldn’t possibly have believed in the father or she would have sent the child to him.
Those last words stuck in his thoughts. Maybe she had been.
Either way, he didn’t like Prudence being out here exposed with no protection. The sheriff’s SUV parked in front of the home might not detour the sonsofbitches who’d orchestrated a break-in. Don’t even get him started on what they must’ve planned to do with her once she came home.
These creeps must have known she had the baby. It was the only explanation that made sense. Were they coming for Angel? What would they have done to Prudence? The same thing they’d done to Libby?
Didn’t that thought send a shot of adrenaline racing through him?
More anger ping-ponged through him, seeking an outlet. Normally, a long day at the ranch worked out any and all frustrations. If a day of setting posts and repairing fences didn’t knock the wind out of him, a good workout would.
Considering he had to help take care of Angel, those options weren’t exactly on the table. Figuring out a non-physical way to deal with his emotions was about as fun as licking a bowl of toothpaste.
After searching for half an hour, Prudence stood up and announced, “I’m going around back now.”
Since Adam had searched his side of the front yard with a fine-toothed comb, he joined her. Maybe he should just retrace the perp’s footsteps. Adam imagined bolting out of the back door. The perp had to have seen Adam or been alerted by some person or persons parked out front.
The guy had been in a hurry. So, he’d bolted out the backdoor and cut east. Adam followed the trail. Prudence seemed to catch on when she joined him.
At the chain-link fence where the perp jumped over, metal glinted in the sunlight.
Prudence must have seen it around the same time because she made a beeline in the direction Adam was about to head. She dropped down and then came right back up with a cell phone in her hand.
“This is mine,” she said, pressing her thumb onto the pad to bring the device to life.
It was too late to remind her the sheriff might have been able to lift a print and he couldn’t blame her for going for it. He’d caught it himself too late to warn her.
“Is there anything out of the ordinary?” he asked as she studied the screen.
“No, but this makes me think they have my purse as well as access to my car.” She issued a sharp sigh.
“Your wallet would have ID in it. Your address would be easy enough to lift from there,” he said, grateful she was talking to him again.
“Did you find something?” Lawler came out the backdoor.
“Her cell,” Adam supplied.
“Nothing looks off. I have security on my phone, so I doubt they got anything from it,” she said.
“Most folks know we can track a cell phone down nowadays,” Lawler said.
“Common knowledge,” Adam agreed. “So, the perp was trying to bring law enforcement to Prudence’s house? Why would they do that?”
Lawler studied the back door for a long moment. His gaze unfocused, like he went inside his head to find an answer or recall information. Maybe he was trying to put himself inside the perp’s head.
He walked to the door and then did an about-face. He jogged over to the side of the house, mimicked seeing the two of them rounding the corner. Then, he raced over to the fence and faked a jump. He reached for the top of the fence and the cell tumbled out of his hand.
“Could have been an accident that he lost her phone,” Lawler said after careful consideration.
“In the heat of the moment, the perp could have realized he dropped it but knew there was no time to hop back over the fence to retrieve it,” Adam added.
“Could be.” Prudence, who had been quiet up until then, made the same walk as Lawler. “Or, he could have ditched the phone because he realized we would be onto him now.”
“Yep,” Lawler confirmed. “That is certainly the next possibility I was going to focus on.”
“Either way, it’s still not safe for you to stay here tonight.” Adam wasn’t sure why he felt the need to remind her. “The offer to come to the main house still stands.”
Whether he was ready to admit it or not, he needed her in so many more ways than one.