If this didn’t beat everything. Here she was, shaken to her toes even if she had told Finn otherwise, and with a case on the man she’d been reacquainted with for less than twenty-four hours, not that she’d known him well when he left town as a teenager.
He’d flirted with her. More than flirted—he’d seriously come on to her. And he knew full well he shouldn’t have. Anymore than she should have encouraged him….
Emma finished putting up the dishes in the kitchen and considered eating the lone pastry she’d kept for herself but fought off temptation. She smiled again over Finn’s comment about her not broadening anywhere.
Scratching sounded at the back door, and she couldn’t make herself ignore Teddy, the white curly-haired, part Devon Rex cat who split her time between the garden shed that had a cat door with her name on it and the house. Emma let her in, quickly slammed and locked the door again, and crossed her arms while she watched Teddy stalk to her food and water bowls. Incongruously light, high cries followed. The cat had a habit of opening her mouth until the top of her head all but disappeared, then shocking you with her pathetic mewling.
Emma scurried around, filling the dishes. Teddy rolled over for a belly scratch, then nipped her benefactor before daintily picking at her food.
Dragging her feet, Emma went upstairs, pausing each two or three steps to listen. Logic said the house was silent, yet myriad creaks, taps, snaps and faint buzzings shouted in her ears. Almost at the top, she waited with eyes closed and strained to identify any distinct noise that didn’t belong.
The chorus stopped, and the lack of sound pressed in on her from all sides.
Her cotton T-shirt stuck to her skin as if she had sweated but turned cold again. Emma shivered. She knew the night was hot, but the air-conditioning should keep the inside temperature comfortable.
This cold came from her core, not the air around her.
Pushing ahead once more, Emma walked along the landing outside the bedrooms. The one she still thought of as her own faced the back of the house. She opened the door Finn had closed after checking for lurking maniacs.
Darn it, for as long as she remembered, joking to herself about things that frightened her had been automatic, a way to pretend she wasn’t anxious.
Emma folded her arms tightly as she entered the bedroom. Anxious? What a laugh. If she didn’t control herself, she could have hysterics. Or she might if she ever had and knew how.
She owned a gun, a tiny Beretta Bobcat. She’d learned how to use it but hadn’t taken it with her. Maybe she would in future.
A single thud on the landing whipped her around. Flattened again a wall, she worked her way toward the door, ready to fling it closed.
Teddy trotted into the room and disappeared under the bed. Emma hung her head while the pounding at her temples subsided. She climbed onto her mattress, sat cross-legged and allowed her muscles to relax.
The house had been locked up tightly, and it was hours past time for bed. A nightgown and robe hung in the closet—“just in case,” her mom said when asked why it was always there. Emma collected what she needed and went into the bathroom. She didn’t need another shower.
“That dump,” Orville had called her parents’ home. Doc and Miriam Balou would laugh at that, before Emma’s dad got really mad. He never had warmed up to Orville.
Leaning over the sink in the lemon-colored bathroom she still loved, Emma brushed her teeth until she remembered she needed toothpaste. She patted her chin with a towel and remedied the problem. Her hair did stand out in curls, but she liked it. Finn had liked it, too. Time to go back to curly hair. She groaned at her own behavior and brushed again.
The overhead light in the bedroom went out.
Emma remained bent forward but stared at the bedroom reflection in her wall mirror. The room wasn’t completely dark. It wouldn’t be, as long as the bathroom light was on. The stairwell light, too.
She couldn’t move. Big breaths through her mouth made her more light-headed and didn’t slow the beat of her heart.
A figure walked into her line of sight.
Clutching the edge of the counter, Emma stood where she was, her eyes straining. Her right knee shook so badly it gave out, but she locked the leg, and then she couldn’t move at all.
The man, average in height and not thin, wore a big white Stetson with a wide brim curled high at the sides, tipped way forward, to hide his face. He stopped at the foot of the bed and stared at her.
Emma didn’t take her eyes off him. She thought about the things close at hand, searching for anything she might be able to use to defend herself. A toothbrush wouldn’t cut it. Her scissors were in her toiletry case. Scissors with about one-inch blades—useless, even if she could get them and rush the man. Some hope. At last he moved again, raised a hand and offered her a sharp salute with a white-gloved hand. He put the same hand inside his jean jacket, and she braced, expecting a bullet.
He shook his head and produced a fat, doubled-over manilla envelope.
The creep was behaving like a sad mime. And any moment he would be playing to an empty auditorium, because his audience of one had passed out.
Slowly, moving with great care, Emma turned and faced the bedroom and the man. He was all cowboy, from the crown of his hat to the tips of his alligator boots. If he didn’t kill her, she would want to remember everything she could about him.
She couldn’t see his face except for a pointed chin. And she thought his mouth moved as if he were chewing. Could be tobacco.
He held the palm of a leather-gloved hand toward her. The message was clear; she was to stay where she was.
As if she could go anywhere…
He would kill her; she was sure of it.
This was the man who had killed Denise. Had to be, didn’t he? A scream rushed to Emma’s throat.
“Relax.” His croaking whisper shocked her. “I’m your friend. Nothing’s gonna happen to you. I’ll keep you safe. Stay away from the new man—he could be dangerous. I’ll deal with him if I have to.” He tossed the envelope on her bed. “Hide it. There’s plenty to keep you warm in there. I’m goin’ to help you get free of the mayor. Don’t tell anyone I was here.”