CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MASSACHUSETTS, PRESENT DAY
“I guess I wasn't so lucky, huh?”
Luke's somber, melancholy voice woke me from an otherwise dreamless sleep that had been deeper than any I'd had in recent years. My eyes snapped open to stare at the wooden beams stretching the length of my living room, and I lifted my head to drop my bleary gaze to the sketch pad in my lap. Dingy bars of a blackened cell and an unintentional squiggled mark from my open pen looked back at me.
Disoriented, I tried to remember falling asleep, tried to remember when my lids had grown too heavy to keep open. But I shook my head, unable to piece together the last moments before my unintentional nap.
“Weird,” I grumbled to nobody before grabbing my phone from the table between the two wingback chairs.
Darkness had blanketed the sun, and it was almost time to open the gate for Stormy.
Stormy .
Luke's sad chuckle disappeared with my easy smile as I thought about her and her promise to return. I couldn't wait to see her again. Couldn't wait to get my arms around her and press my lips to hers, to crack my chest open and beg her to defrost the barely beating organ hidden inside its frozen cage. She had the power to do it—I knew she did—and the desperation to let her buzzed wildly through my veins like a separate lifeforce from my own.
Careful. You know what happens when you lose control too fast.
“But the right woman won't run away.”
My inner voice and Luke's warred for power, and I shook my head at them both. Neither was useful right now; neither mattered when I’d already made the decision to roll with whatever this was for now.
I capped my marker and laid it with the sketch pad on the table between my chairs. I left the house, locked the door behind me, and headed down to where I'd left the truck parked at the bottom of the hill. I dug the keys out of my pocket on the way, anticipation tingling in my fingertips as I imagined what it'd be like to have her things beside mine, even if temporary. Then, I turned out of the gate, keeping my eyes down as I shuffled through the key ring, only looking up when I approached the driver's door.
That was when I saw him.
The toe of my boot kicked my heel, and I stumbled forward, slamming hard against the side of the truck. But the pain in my knee was dulled by the sight of the man standing across the road, between a pair of headstones. He was only illuminated by the lamppost in front of the house, his back to me as he blew spiraling tendrils of smoke into the chilled night air.
The cigarette.
The flower on the grave.
The empty pack.
A scrapbook of imagery flashed before my mind's eye as I watched him from over the roof of the truck, my jaw shaking and my hands trembling.
Go after him! What the hell are you doing?!
“Hey!” I shouted, my voice slicing through the silent night.
He barely shot a glance at me over his shoulder, too quick for me to get a good look at him.
And then he ran.
“Son of a bitch,” I gritted through my teeth, taking off after him.
I pulled the box cutter from my jeans pocket, clenching the cool metal against my palm as I hurried over the asphalt road to race between the graves, following the sound of pounding footsteps against grassy hallowed ground. I didn't want to hurt someone, didn't want to do it again—but I would if I had to. I knew I had it in me for the right reasons, and the sporadic torment I'd been put under over these past several weeks was enough if he wouldn't talk to me.
The shadowed figures of bushes, monuments, trees, and headstones zipped by, blurring in my peripheral vision. I knew these grounds like the back of my hand, and he didn't, yet he hadn't slowed. He hadn't stopped, hadn’t tripped or faltered once.
What the fuck?
I slowed my gait to a halt in front of a towering Celtic cross, my lungs burning a hole through my chest as I struggled to force the air in and out. I doubled over, pressing my hands to my thighs.
“Fuck, fuck …” I chanted with every huff of labored breath. “Goddammit … where the fuck did you go?!”
I forced my burning lungs to quiet and held my breath, listening to the night around me. Silence. No footsteps. My back straightened, and I turned to my left to face an angel with a wide wingspan, spun to my right to glare into the face of the Madonna holding her newborn child. Searching the surrounding area for any sign at all that the intruder had been there. He could've been hiding, could've ducked behind any one of these holy monuments that I now saw as demons, and with my weapon held tight in my fist, I peeked behind every one, only to come up empty every time.
With my teeth clenched and bared, I spun in a circle, then shouted, “Where the fuck did you go, asshole?!”
Of course, I didn't receive a reply. He was hidden too well, maybe even gone, and I was alone.
But now, I knew for certain that he existed, and that put me one step closer to catching him and finding out what he wanted from me.
***
Stormy drove her black sedan through the open gate, and as soon as she cleared the driveway, I swung the gate shut once again, making sure to take a few quick glances over my shoulder while doing so.
The adrenaline from the chase had dissipated quickly once I got back to the truck, and I spent the drive to the gate anxious and wide-eyed. Just waiting for him to jump out from his hiding spot and show his face. But it never happened, and by the time I reached the gate, where I'd kept Stormy waiting for a few minutes longer than intended, I had finally drawn the conclusion that the guy had gotten back to the stone wall and made his way over. But that didn't make my spine any less rigid or my shoulders any less tense, and I hurried to Stormy's car with hastened purpose, eager to get to my next stop—the security guard's office.
“Hey,” she greeted with a smile as she climbed out of her car, and for just a second, I forgot all about the intruder.
She approached and slipped her hand into mine, gripping softly as she stood on her toes and pressed a gentle kiss to my lips. I closed my eyes, aware of my nerves unraveling just a little, and my lungs released a sigh.
Stormy took a step back, her hand still in mine. I opened my eyes to see hers narrowed, studying my face with concern.
“You okay?”
A twig cracked somewhere to my left, and my heart leaped into my throat as my eyes darted in that direction, but still, I replied, “Yeah, I'm good.”
“You sure? Because I'm not gonna lie—you don't seem good. Like, at all. What’s wrong?”
My hand squeezed around hers in forced reassurance while I kept my stare on that spot for two beats of my heart until I realized it was likely nothing but an animal. My lungs deflated, the gust of air passing through my nose, and I looked to Stormy's backseat. There were several large bags stuffed in there and another couple in the front passenger seat.
“Is there anything in the trunk?” I asked, intentionally avoiding her question.
To acknowledge that I wasn't okay only made it that much more not okay .
Her dubious gaze remained on my face for a moment before she slowly turned away to acknowledge her things. “No, this is it.”
“All right.”
It took only a few minutes to get everything loaded into the bed of the truck, and I tried to not concern her with my paranoia. But it was difficult to not spin around at every abrupt noise, and after the third snap of my head in the direction of a hooting owl, Stormy had decided definitively that she was not convinced by my feeble attempt at a tough-guy act.
“Okay, listen.” She held her hands up, palms out, after we put the last bag into the truck bed. “You are seriously not helping me to feel good about sleeping in a fucking graveyard, even if I do really like you and I've spent all day looking forward to playing house for a little while. So, can you please just tell me what the hell is going on before I throw all this shit back in my car and check back in to that hotel?”
For good measure, I glanced behind me once more before nudging my chin toward the cab.
“Get in, and I'll tell you.”
So, I told her about the man across the path from my truck. About how he'd taken off the second I apprehended him and how I'd lost him in the darkness of the graveyard. I chose not to divulge the details that I believed he could've also been the one leaving me personal, sacred mementos scattered around the vicinity of my house, only to avoid rattling my bones even further when I'd been shaken enough.
When I was finished, I glanced sidelong at Stormy as we neared the security guard's office, expecting her to look as terrified as I felt. But instead, she only wore the look of understanding and sympathy.
“Do kids break in here often?” she asked quietly.
I furrowed my brow, eyeing the door to the structure no bigger than a large storage shed. “It happens sometimes, but this guy wasn't a kid .” I shook my head, allowing his image to fill my mind. His leather jacket and hood. “This was a full-grown adult.”
“Okay. But … is it at all possible that he could've been homeless?” she offered, her green eyes taking on the serenity of a spring breeze. “Or I don't know … a junkie maybe? I mean, I didn’t see him, so I couldn't say for sure, and I'm not trying to defend him for breaking in. But … when I was younger, and I …” She rolled her lips between her teeth, hesitating with a deep, hard swallow. “We used to find secluded places to do shit, you know? So, what's more secluded than a cemetery after hours?”
There was a sympathetic glint in her eye that begged to reach out and touch my heart, and I almost allowed it. I almost brushed the incident off. But her experiences must've been a lot different than mine because what I knew of breaking and entering was pain, terror, and too much fucking blood. This place was meant to be sacred; it was meant to be safe. Was I really doing my job if I allowed anybody to jump the fence and take up residence? No. And nothing was going to change my mind about that … not even the way her tongue poked out to touch the hoop hugging the center of her bottom lip.
“I hear what you're saying,” I finally replied after a few seconds went by, my tone soft but firm. “But I'm paid to care for this place, not some random guy who's probably out there, leaving his cigarette butts all over the place.”
Stormy sucked in a deep breath, her gaze holding mine. An unspoken argument heated her irises, and I thought she might fire back at me. I hated confrontation. I hated fighting. And what did it say about us and whatever future we might have if we were incapable of getting through a few days without throwing verbal bombs at each other?
But then she exhaled and nodded, her anger defusing. “No, you're right,” she said, no amount of reluctance or resentment in her voice, and I nodded in reply.
We exited the truck to knock on the security guard's door. I had met Max a small handful of times during my years here, but for the most part, we were ships in the night. His shift began when I was typically winding down for the day, and he kept watch as I slept. Never had I been given a reason to come to him, nor had he had one to bother me. But now, here I was, knocking on his door and anxiously awaiting his answer.
It swung open, and there he stood, a man of about my age and height but with the build of a wrestler who'd started to let himself go and a crew cut that did a sufficient job of not drawing attention to his receding hairline.
“What can I do for you, Chuck?” he greeted, all business from the start. His gaze swung to Stormy, huddled at my side, and he nodded a silent hello.
I resisted the urge to despise Ivan for doing the introductions years ago.
“Hey, Max. I was just wondering if you took care of the guy who was in here after hours.”
Max narrowed one eye at me and crossed his arms over a barreled chest. “What guy?”
“I came out of my house about an hour ago and saw a man across the road from my truck,” I explained. “I tried to chase after him, but he got away. I assumed you had seen him on the surveillance footage.”
Max rolled his lips beneath his teeth and took a moment to think. “No, man. I've been watching the cameras all night. I haven't seen anyone.”
I held my head higher and straightened my spine with an urgent need to defend myself. I knew what I had seen. I'd seen him. I'd heard him.
“Are you sure? He was at my house at about eight forty-five.”
His deep brown eyes dipped to stare into the cold, dark night behind me and shrugged as he shook his head. “I could look at the footage, but—”
“I'd appreciate it.”
He nodded slowly and swept a beefy hand inside his office. “Then, make yourselves at home.”
***
Stormy and I stood behind Max's high-backed office chair, arms crossed and eyes pinned to the computer screen. Max clicked his mouse repeatedly, flipping through the two dozen cameras set up over the grounds.
“Normally, if someone trespasses, I get an alert,” he explained almost absentmindedly. “But every now and then, someone comes in before the gates are closed, and I don't catch on until—” He cut himself off as a dark, moonlit image of my cottage filled the screen. “All right. Here we are. What time did you say this was at?”
I frowned. “I don't know that he was actually at my house,” I said while thinking about the paraphernalia left on my doormat and Luke's bike.
“Hmm.” Max barely nodded.
“It was at about a quarter to nine,” I answered still, and he gave another little nod as he clicked a few times and began to scroll through the footage.
Trees swayed. A spider skittered backward over the lens, and I noted the way Max flinched at the close-up underside of its abdomen. Moments passed before my truck drove backward and stalled beside my gate.
“Okay.” I held a hand over his shoulder. “It was around here that I came back from chasing him.”
Max nodded, continuing to the point where I had come out of the house. Then, he played the footage.
The three of us watched my preoccupied walk from the house to the truck. We watched as I flipped through the keys on the ring in my pocket. And we watched as I looked up, an expression of wide-eyed alarm blanketing my face.
“See, that's where I saw him,” I said, pointing at the screen.
Max nodded slowly, still watching intently, his hands folded on the desk.
But then the image scrambled, and a cloud of static covered the footage for a second before it cut to me running back to the truck.
“What the fuck?” I muttered breathlessly, my hand dropping to the back of Max's chair.
“Shit,” Max grumbled, leaning forward and clicking around. “Sometimes, it does this. Hold on.”
But no amount of clicking could recover the missing segment of film. There was no fall against the truck. No shouting. No break into a run. It was as if it’d all never happened, apart from the sore spot on my knee from where it had made impact.
“There's no other camera?” I asked, my blood boiling to the temperature of lava.
Max's exhalation was long as he began clicking around the screen. “I could check a few others, but this is the only one pointed directly at the house.”
“Maybe he ran past another one,” Stormy offered, speaking for the first time since we'd gotten out of the truck.
“Honestly, I doubt it,” Max admitted with a helpless shrug. “For a property this large, you'd expect more cameras around the place, but I guess they never saw a reason for—”
“What's that?” I pointed at a blur on one of the tiled screens laid out across his monitor.
Max scratched at the scruff on his chin as he clicked, enlarging the camera feed. He scrolled through as we watched a fuzzy figure of a person dash across the screen in backward slow motion.
“That must be him,” I murmured, my voice low, my anger bubbling.
Max hummed a short sound of contemplation. “Could be. This camera is right by the southern corner of the fence too. He probably ran by and hopped over. It's pretty dark and secluded back there.”
“So, he's gone?” Stormy chimed in, hope lilting her tone.
“I'd say most likely,” Max replied with a nod, pausing the feed to the point where the blur was in the center of the screen.
He enlarged the image, trying to get a clearer shot of the intruder's head and face. But it was too washed out from a nearby lamppost, and all any of us could see was a general silhouette.
“I'm sorry I can't do better,” Max muttered, disappointed and as aggravated as I felt.
“Not your fault,” I replied, blowing my anger out through my nose in a feeble attempt to slow my heart rate.
“I can try and look through—”
“No, it's all right,” I muttered, straightening my back and smoothing my hands over the crown of my head.
“I'll keep a better watch on the gates.” He nodded to himself, rubbing a hand over his chin. “And maybe I'll talk to the powers that be about getting some better alarms. This”—he tapped the frozen image of our intruder—“should've been enough. They're supposed to go off if someone goes over the fence—”
“So, he could still be in here?” Stormy's voice rose with worry.
Max glanced over his shoulder to offer her the first smile I'd ever seen on his face. “I highly doubt it. He was spotted, so he’d be more paranoid about hanging around. But just to be on the safe side, I'll keep watch over the house. Keep the doors locked and the alarm on. Give me a call if anything else happens.”
I nodded, keeping my eyes on the floor and crossing my arms tightly over my chest, as if that alone could seal me off from the outside world and bring that ignorant sense of security back to my life.
But that ignorance had been a blindness to the truth, one that I hadn't wanted to acknowledge. It was no different than my unrequited feelings for the women of my past, just a blanket to cover my eyes from what was right in front of me.
I had never been safe here. But I saw that now, and this time, I wasn't going to be driven from my home.
***
We managed to carry everything into the house in one trip, and after crossing the threshold, I made sure the lock and dead bolt were both secured. Then, I set the alarm, and even though I knew damn well that a villain with enough motive could get past any obstacle, I felt better with these things in place than I would without.
Behind me, Stormy was assessing the pile of her belongings, her hands on her hips and her teeth gnawing at her bottom lip. Overwhelmed, she blew out a deep breath and lifted her shoulders to her ears.
“I don't even know where to begin with all of this shit,” she admitted.
I walked past her toward the kitchen, my mind elsewhere. “You don't have to worry about it now.”
“I know, but I don't want to feel like I'm imposing. Or taking up too much of your space. This is a lot of stuff. I—”
I turned and walked backward, lifting the side of my mouth in a strained smile. “The least of my concerns right now is your stuff taking over, believe me.”
Her lips pressed tight, and she offered a soft nod before saying, “If it makes you feel any better, you have no idea that this guy will even come back. Or that he even cares about you in the first place.”
I had to admit, she was right. I could've mentioned the random findings around the house, but to assume it had been him to leave them was just that—an assumption. And a completely unfounded one at that, apart from the cigarette he'd held in his hand.
The cigarette …
Lifting my hand and rubbing at my brow, I focused every last ounce of my attention on that tiny glimpse of memory.
The way he hung his hand limply at his side as he sent a stream of smoke into the air, illuminated only by the glow of the lamppost …
It was a trigger, one that left my stomach feeling hollow and strange. But it was one that meant nothing—I was sure of it—and I had to let it go.
“So, um …” I wiped the back of my hand beneath my nose as I remembered I'd been on my way to the kitchen for something. “Anyway, are you hungry? I haven’t eaten dinner yet.”
“I could eat,” Stormy said, following me into the kitchen slowly, almost cautiously.
I opened a cabinet and pulled out a box of rice. “I'm about due to run to the grocery store, so the cupboards are a little bare,” I explained apologetically. “But I think I still have a bag of vegetables in the freezer, if you're okay with some stir-fry.”
“That's fine with me.”
I dropped the box on the counter and headed for the freezer as Stormy came to stand at the island. Her stare heated my back as I pulled out the bag of mixed vegetables, and when I turned, I found the intensity in her eyes too much to look into directly. So, I diverted my gaze to grab my wok from the pot rack hanging above the countertop and headed for the stove.
“Is this weird?” she finally asked quietly when my back was once again to her.
I poured a bit of oil into the pan and replied, “You being here?”
“Yeah.”
“I don't think so. Is it weird to you?”
Her nails tapped softly against the counter. “I didn't think so, but Blake thought it was, um … sudden.”
“It is,” I agreed.
“That's what I said. But Blake worries about me, so he tried to talk me out of coming.”
The oil sizzled and spat as one side of my mouth lifted in a reluctant smile. “But you came anyway.”
“I told you I wanted to tell you a story,” she said, as if that were the only reason for her return.
Tiny bubbles scattered along the bottom of the pan, bursting before they had the chance to grow, and I kept my focus on them as I said, “Well, I'm listening.”
Something told me I'd be okay to listen to her forever, if forever could ever be in the cards for me. And as she began to talk, somehow, I also began to forget all about the man across the road.