The next day, an unseasonably warm spell brought hordes of people out of hibernation and directly to The Coffee Spot. It was late afternoon before the shop emptied, and Lou finally had the chance to pull out her laptop and log onto the Internet.
But before she had time to do anything else, the sleigh bells from hell jangled, announcing the entrance of yet another customer. Biting back the curses that wanted to escape, she closed her laptop and plastered on a smile.
“What can I get…oh, Cal!” Her fake smile morphed into a real one. “Thank God. I’ve been dying to talk with you. My brain wouldn’t turn off last night. I just kept thinking about everything Belly told us, so now I have a gazillion questions.”
Although he wasn’t smiling, his expression was slightly more pleasant than his usual dark scowl. He held out his travel mug, and Lou filled it while still talking.
“We now know a lot more. I mean, HDG had—”
“H-what?” he interrupted.
Flushing a little, she explained, “HDG, as in Headless Dead Guy. Sorry, I know that’s insensitive, but I had to call him something, so I’ve been referring to him as HDG in my head, and it just slipped out.”
Callum looked more amused than offended. “The job—the dive team, not the coffee job—tends to make all of us more callous. Just watch how you talk around civilians.”
“That’s what the initials are for. So I don’t actually say the words ‘headless’ or ‘dead.’” She grinned. “Anyway, now we know he’d been in the Army, had diabetes, and was missing two toes. So I’m wondering if we should check out the nearest veterans’ hospital? Or maybe a VFW or something?”
He sipped his coffee, considering.
“I like your idea about the VA hospital, but how are you planning on getting any information? With HIPA, they won’t give out patient information to random people.”
Making a face, she admitted, “You’re right. I hadn’t thought it out that far.” She rested her chin on her cupped hand, her elbow propped on the counter, and thought. “So we probably won’t get any information from the staff, but what about the other patients?”
He nodded slowly. “The VA hospital in Denver is probably too large for that to work, but the closest VA outpatient clinic is in Connor Springs, just about twenty miles from here. Want to take a field trip?”
“Yes!” Bouncing up onto her toes, she restrained the urge to flip the sign in the window to “Closed,” lock the coffee shop door, and head to Connor Springs that very moment. Reality intruded, and she sighed, lowering back down to her heels. “I’m off tomorrow—would you be able to get away from work?” As the team leader, Callum was the only paid staff member on the dive team. From what Lou saw, he earned every penny of his paycheck, often working twelve-hour days dealing with local board members and still taking calls at night.
“Yes. Board meeting’s tomorrow evening, so my morning will be free. I’ll pick you up at eight.”
Wiggling around in a tight circle, she did a little dance of excitement. “Field trip!”
When she finished her final rotation, Lou realized that Callum was watching her, frozen with his travel mug halfway to his mouth. With a shake of his head, he pushed off of his stool and headed out the door.
“Don’t you want me to top off your coffee for you?” she called after him, but the only answer she received was the wordless clang of the bells against the door.
* * *
She stared at the green leaf lettuce as if it had done something to offend her.
“Six dollars,” she muttered under her breath, eyeing the wilting tips of the leaves balefully. “Not worth it.”
With a sigh, she poked around in the stack of lettuce bunches before giving up on greens. As she walked to the measly display of apples, she knew she had no one to blame for her lack of fresh produce except herself. If she had sucked it up and gone to Denver that morning, she wouldn’t be poking through expensive and unappealing vegetables and fruit at the local grocery store.
She hated driving to Denver with a passion, though. Too many people, too much traffic, too…everything. Plus, if the weather took a turn for the worse, she could get stuck there overnight, which meant her woodstove would go out, and her pipes could freeze. Lou found she could get away with ordering almost everything she needed online, but fresh food remained a challenge. When she’d lived in Connecticut, she’d never considered fresh vegetables a luxury. The difference between her former life and current existence boggled her mind sometimes. She couldn’t believe it’d only been seven months since she’d escaped to the mountains.
Roaming the aisles with little enthusiasm, she was examining an on-sale jar of bread-and-butter pickles when her nose twitched. There was a nasty smell floating her way—body odor and pot, mostly, mixed with patchouli. She turned her head and immediately identified the source. Smelly Jim. Of course. The bearded man was an occasional coffee shop visitor, requiring a cappuccino and, once he left, half a spray bottle of cinnamon air freshener and the windows open for as long as possible before the customers started complaining about the cold.
“Hey, Jim.” Lou took a casual step back, as if to get a wide-angle look at the pickle selection.
His head whipped around, and he glared at her suspiciously for a long moment before his expression finally cleared. “Lou. Hey.”
“How’re things?” she asked.
He paused again, although not quite as long this time. “Bad.”
“Oh. Sorry about that.”
“Yeah.” Without saying anything else, he stalked to the end of the aisle and disappeared in the frozen-foods section. Unfortunately, his smell lingered.
Dropping the jar of pickles into her handbasket, she darted for the cashier and, hopefully, fresher air. But as she whipped around the hot-chocolate display at the end of the aisle, she almost ran headlong into someone.
“Rob!” She backpedaled a couple of steps and lowered her voice. “Sorry about that. Smelly Jim was just in that aisle, so a quick exit was necessary—for my lung health, I mean.”
A quick smile touched his mouth. “Understandable. You should smell the inside of his trailer home.”
“No. Thanks, but I’ll pass.” She glanced at the teenager leaning against the handle of Rob’s shopping cart. The kid was a shorter, skinnier carbon copy of the sheriff. “Hi.”
The boy flipped his bangs out of his eyes and gave her a grunt.
“Tyler.” The sheriff’s voice was quiet, but his son must have heard the warning, because he straightened from his slouch and even met her eyes.
“Hey.” It still sounded sulky, but at least it was an actual word.
“I’m Lou.” She grinned at him, amused by his angst. The poor sheriff had his hands full with this one. “Nice to meet you.”
“You just move here?”
With a shrug, she said, “Sort of. Depends how you define ‘just.’ It’s been about seven months, but some of the old-timers think people who moved here twenty years ago are newcomers.”
Rob gave a snort that Lou took as agreement.
“I’m on the rescue dive team,” she told Tyler. “That’s how I met your dad.”
“Oh!” Recognition made his face light. “You found that dead guy in the reservoir. The headless one.”
Rob gave his son a sharp look. “I didn’t tell you that.”
“School, Dad,” Tyler muttered. Lou had to hide a grin at how the kid patronized his intimidating father. “It’s, like, gossip central there. We probably hear stuff before you do.”
Lou’s ears perked up at that. “Anyone at school have a guess who it is?”
“Well, Braden Saltzman’s uncle is one of those militia guys, and Braden thinks it’s them. Because of the no-head thing. Like, he talked when he shouldn’t have, and so they cut his head off as a warning. Braden said that head is probably mounted on the wall in their compound—”
“I think that’s enough.” The sheriff didn’t raise his voice, but it still cut through Tyler’s macabre theory with the sharpness of a blade.
The kid dropped his head, glower firmly back in place.
“We’d better go. Good to see you, Lou.” He headed toward the dairy section, one hand pushing the cart and the other on his son’s shoulder.
“Bye,” Lou called after them, a little disappointed not to hear any more of the high school set’s theories. She could have used Tyler and his friends for a brainstorming session.
Swinging her almost-empty basket, she headed for the cashier, grabbing a couple of candy bars on the way. She had to make her trip to the store worth it, after all.
“Hey, Doris,” she greeted the cashier.
“Hi, Lou.” As she started scanning the items, Doris asked, “You hear about the dead guy in the reservoir?”
“Yeah.”
“Sad.” Doris tried three times to scan the pickle jar, and ended up just punching the code in by hand. “Everyone’s trying to figure out who the poor guy could be.”
“Any ideas?” Lou figured that the more people she asked, the greater the chance of finding someone who actually had valuable information.
“Could be anyone.” She punched the button to total the amount and watched as Lou ran her debit card through the scanner. “That wind around here just drives people nuts. When Helen Napping lost it and killed her husband that really nasty winter about twenty years or so ago, I think the wind made her do it. Why, all that blowing and blowing could make someone just”—she clicked her fingers together—“snap.”
Lou stared, resisting the urge to step back from the sweetly smiling woman. “Uh…okay.” She took her receipt and single bag of groceries. “Thanks, Doris.”
“No problem, sweetie. Have a nice day!”
Lou forced a smile and hurried away.
* * *
“I’ve been thinking about one of our theories today,” Lou announced as soon as Callum answered the phone with a terse greeting. “A kid reminded me of it, but I think it still might have some validity.”
“Sparks?”
“Who else calls you with random theories?”
“Why are you calling me with random theories?”
“Because you’re my research partner.”
“I’m going to pick you up in less than twelve hours,” he said. “This couldn’t wait until then?”
Lou tucked her blanket around her toes. “I suppose. It’s just that all the information we’ve discovered is circling around in my head. I figured it would help to write down everything. Then I started thinking that we really need a murder board.”
“A murder board?”
“Like in the crime shows. A big whiteboard that shows how all the clues are connected. You don’t happen to have a big whiteboard, do you?”
There was a pause. “Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“Why would I joke about having a whiteboard?”
“I just… Why?”
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not. We have our murder board then—or we will, once we get wild with the dry-erase markers.”
Another pause. “So, are you coming over then?”
“Now?”
“You’re the one who wanted to do this tonight.”
“Right.” She frowned at her blanket-wrapped legs. “I’m in my pajamas.”
“So change. Or don’t change, and just throw a coat over the top. My house is heated, you know.”
“Okay.” Eyeing the light layer of snow clinging to the outside ledge of her window, Lou suggested, “Or you could come to my house.”
“Whiteboard, remember? I’m not dragging that big-ass thing to your house.”
It was her turn to sigh before she began untangling herself from the blanket. “Right. Okay, give me a half hour.”
She ended the call, took a step toward the door, and then froze.
“Frick. I’m going to Callum’s house.” Her stomach started rolling with nerves and something she tried very hard to pretend wasn’t excitement. “Stop it,” she told herself. “It’s not a date.”
Despite repeating those words to herself, she couldn’t stop herself from hurrying to the bathroom to check the state of her hair.
* * *
Thanks to her uncontrollable need to primp, it was closer to forty-five minutes when she pulled up to Callum’s house on the edge of Simpson and parked in the driveway. His home was a tidy two-story with cedar siding that blended well with the scattering of pine trees backing his property. Since she didn’t see his truck, she assumed he’d parked in the garage. Either that, or he had bailed and was at the Simpson Bar, hiding out until she gave up and went home.
Although the snow was light—just flurries, really—the wind had a snap to it that made her hurry up the steps to his wraparound porch. Callum opened the door before she had a chance to knock.
“Oh, good,” she sighed as she slipped by him into the warmth, unzipping her coat. “It’s freezing out there.”
His gaze ran from her booted feet up to her stocking hat. He didn’t mention the yellow flannel pj’s with their pattern of white ducks, but his expression said plenty.
“I took your advice and kept on my pajamas,” she stated the obvious, before toeing off her boots and placing them on a mat next to the door. Lou didn’t tell him that she’d been tempted to change into nonpajamas, but she didn’t want him to think she’d made an effort, since an effort would mean that she thought of this visit as a date, which she most assuredly did not. Pulling off her gloves and jamming them into her coat pockets, she then wiggled out of her thick coat. Her hat joined the gloves in one of her coat pockets. When she didn’t see a hook or coatrack, she offered the coat to him with a quizzical tilt to her head.
“Let me take that,” he said with heavy sarcasm, but he accepted the coat and turned to hang it in a nearby closet. While he was arranging it to fall just so on the hanger, Lou took the opportunity to look around his house.
They were in the living room that, thanks to the open floor plan, was also the kitchen and dining room. Everything was perfectly neat, and she was once again relieved that they hadn’t met at her place after all, cold drive or no. Her messy house would have given Callum a stroke. Plus, the promised whiteboard was arranged in the middle of the living area, at just the right distance from the couch.
“It’s perfect,” she breathed, admiring the professional-looking board, complete with wheels and a box of markers in a full spectrum of colors. “I couldn’t have special-ordered a better murder board.”
“I aim to please.” His sarcasm was still firmly in place as he ushered her closer to the couch, with a hand on her back. It felt warm and uncomfortably good.
“Your house is nice,” she said, sitting down on the sofa and tilting her head back to admire the lofted ceiling. “I’ve never been in here before.”
“I don’t invite many people here,” he admitted. “Want something to drink?”
“No, thank you.” She felt a sudden awkwardness, as if the research session really was morphing into something closer to a…well, a date. Fumbling for the small notebook she’d tucked into her pajama pants’ pocket, she asked, “Um…did you want to see my notes?”
Sitting next to her on the couch—although not close enough to make her brain shut down—he held out his hand in a silent request. She passed him the notebook. While he flipped through the pages, she nibbled on the inside of her cheek, suddenly embarrassed by her amateur sleuthing. More than anything, she wanted him to be impressed by her, for him to think she was intelligent.
Shutting down those thoughts firmly, she reminded herself that turning herself inside out to gain people’s respect was a slippery downward slope. Twenty-six years with her parents had taught her that.
“What’s this?” he asked, jerking her out of her darkening thoughts.
Scooting closer so she could see her writing, she read out loud, “‘Tyler Coughlin arrow Braden Saltzman, militia, lesson.’ That’s not perfectly clear?” She laughed when he gave her a look. “I ran into Rob and his son at the grocery store this afternoon. Braden’s a kid at Tyler’s school who had a theory that our guy’s headlessness was a lesson for the other militia members. Apparently, Braden’s uncle is one of the top militia dogs, so Tyler considers him a local authority on the subject. He also mentioned the possibility of the victim’s head being mounted on the wall in the compound as a reminder not to speak out of turn. Although I’m paraphrasing here.”
“Hmm.” Callum turned back to her notes.
“I wish Tyler would’ve shared more high school rumors, but Rob shut him down pretty quickly. I know it’s a crazy theory, but there might be a hint of truth in gossip.”
Closing the notebook, Callum tapped it against his thigh, looking at the blank whiteboard thoughtfully. “I think we should focus first on what we know about the victim. If we start considering possible scenarios too early, we might try to make them fit, rather than looking at where the facts lead us.”
“Good idea.” Excited, Lou bounced to her feet and grabbed the whiteboard markers. “Can we start listing known facts?”
Callum grinned, softening the harsh lines of his face and making him so beautiful that it temporarily erased every thought in Lou’s brain. The iceman actually had dimples! “You’re just dying to dirty up that clean surface, aren’t you?”
It took Lou a moment to recover from the force of his full-wattage smile. Clearing her throat, she forced herself to grin back at him. “You know it. Now let’s get started before I just start drawing random rainbows and stick people.” Pulling out a green marker, she tapped it against her mouth, thinking, before yanking off the cap and drawing a straight line across the top of the board.
Even before she added any notes, he guessed her intention. “Timeline. Good idea.”
She couldn’t stop the pleased smile that crept over her face. Turning more fully toward the board to hide her happy expression, she made a vertical mark close to the right side of the timeline and scribbled “HDG Found in Reservoir” with the date the body was recovered.
“When did the coroner think he was dumped?” Callum asked, flipping through her notes again.
“October through January, I think.” She drew a bracket below the timeline in red, writing “October 1” on the left side of the bracket and “January 31” on the other. Along the bottom of the bracket, she wrote “HDG Dumped in Mission Reservoir” and added out loud, “Although Chris mentioned checking disappearances as early as August.” She smudged out “October” with her finger and wrote “August” instead.
Clearing his throat, Callum said, “There’s an eraser next to the markers.” When she just looked at him, he changed the subject. “It was a fairly warm fall. I can’t imagine the body would’ve stayed submerged so long if it were in the reservoir in August.”
She shrugged. “True, but better to make the box too big than too small, right?” When he agreed, she kept the first of August as the initial date on her bracket. “Is that all we have so far for the timeline?”
“What about the amputation of his toes?”
“Yes!” Using a purple marker, she created another bracket. Labeling it “HDG: Two Toes Amputated,” she put the initial date as April and the final date as December. “Think that’s a wide enough spread? Belly mentioned it was probably done a few months before he died.”
Callum said, “I think that’s good. We already know that he was most likely killed closer to October than August, so there’s plenty of cushion in there if Belly was off in her estimation.”
“Okay, so let’s list what we know about our HDG.” She grabbed the blue marker and wrote as she talked. “Male, Caucasian, gray hair, approximately sixty-five years old, five-ten, one hundred and fifty pounds, U.S. Army tattoo on his chest, old shrapnel scars on his back, two toes amputated from his right foot, diabetic. Anything else?”
“Bel thought he’d been in Vietnam, but that was an educated guess, based on his age and the age of the scarring.”
“I think we should include it.” Lou put it on the board, although she added a question mark behind it.
“There’s the obvious, too.” When Lou just looked at him, he elaborated, “The missing hands and head.”
“Right!” She scribbled that down as well. Gazing at the spotless two-thirds of the whiteboard, she asked longingly, “Can we write out just a few theories on that side?”
“Nope. Only the facts, ma’am.”
“Fine,” she sighed. “Throw some more facts at me, then.”
By the time they’d wrapped things up for the night, there was still a tempting amount of empty space on the whiteboard. With great self-restraint, Lou capped her marker and handed it to Callum, who put it with the others in perfect spectrum order.
“Hopefully, we’ll have more to add after our field trip tomorrow,” she said, before glancing at her watch. It was already after eleven. “Speaking of that, I’d better get home, or you’ll have to drag me out of bed tomorrow morning.”
“You could stay here,” Callum offered.
She whipped her head around before she could temper her response. “Um…stay?” she repeated.
His cheeks darkened as she stared at him. “I’d sleep on the couch. I mean, you could have my bed. If you didn’t want to drive home tonight.” He suddenly looked irritated. “Never mind. I’ll pick you up at your place tomorrow at eight.”
“I…well, thanks. My woodstove needs to be stoked, but I appreciate the offer.” Wincing inwardly at her stiffly formal tone, she tried to relax and speak normally. “Besides, you know I’d be waking you at two a.m. to discuss some new, wild theory my sleeping brain conjured up.”
Although he nodded, he still looked uncomfortable. She moved toward the door, pulling her coat out of the closet and jamming her feet into her boots. Once she had her coat zipped and was wearing her hat and gloves, she didn’t have any excuse not to look at him, so she met his eyes.
“Thanks. For letting me come over and use your whiteboard and everything.” Why he always reduced her to sounding like a stammering seventh-grader on her first date, she didn’t know. She did know that right now everything was awkward and uncomfortable, and she wanted to leave. “Okay. Um…bye.”
Callum held the door for her. “Bye. Drive safely.”
“Will do.” She saluted him and hurried down the steps, tripping on the last one. Although she stayed upright, she had to pinwheel her arms to catch her balance. Apparently, she was incapable of being anything but a walking disaster in Callum’s presence.
“Careful,” he warned, his voice sharp.
She waved, her attention on the ground in front of her feet as she walked the rest of the way to her truck without any more mishaps. She started the engine and rolled down the window. “See you tomorrow,” she said, waving as she backed out of his driveway.
He raised a hand, his figure silhouetted in the doorway. He looked so solitary standing there that she felt a twinge of guilt for not accepting his invitation to stay.
Her truck tires slipped sideways as she went around a turn. They caught the surface of the road when she straightened the wheel, but the slide had brought her back to the present. After that, she concentrated on driving, pushing Callum into a dark corner of her mind.
Later. She’d think about all that later.
* * *
How long had he been sitting there? How many minutes or even hours had passed since she’d disappeared into that house? He wasn’t sure, but it had been long enough to knot his hands into fists and sour his stomach.
When he’d watched her leave her cabin and hurry to her truck earlier, disappointment had swamped him, knowing that his favorite part of the day—watching her sleep—would be delayed. Curiosity had crept in as he ran to his own car before her taillights could disappear completely. She never went anywhere in the evenings. Where was she going?
He’d managed to catch up to her. That was one good thing about this forsaken place—tailing her was easy with so few vehicles on the roads. As she’d pulled up to a house, he’d cut his headlights and rolled to a stop in the shadows a half block away. Even from a distance, though, he’d recognized the same guy who’d helped her with her tire.
“Boy Scout,” he’d muttered, as the door swung shut behind the pair. “What’s she doing there?”
Whatever it was, it was taking a long time—at least, it felt like eons had passed since she’d stepped through the doorway into the warmly lit house. He knew she wouldn’t be doing anything…wrong. She wasn’t like that. She was faithful.
But…what were they doing in there?
Although it wasn’t as cold as the forest, he realized he was shaking. Keeping the lights off, he cranked the engine of his car to warm the interior. The front door of the house swung open, making him jump and bang his knee on the underside of the instrument panel. He scrambled to turn off the motor, worried that they’d hear it.
He almost couldn’t watch them. What if they kissed good-bye? Rage bubbled from where he’d held it to a simmer. If he touched her—if she touched him—then he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself. When she trotted toward her truck without either of them making contact, all the air in his lungs exited in a whoosh. There’d been no touching. Good. That was good.
As she started up the truck, he watched the man framed in the doorway. He could be a problem. Not a huge one, but it wasn’t good for her to be distracted right now. It might delay the plan, and he didn’t know how much longer he could be without her.
He followed her home, careful not to be obvious. It would be a bad time for her to get suspicious. Maybe that was the solution, though. Maybe she was too comfortable in her miserable little life. Maybe he needed to give her a little nudge, just hard enough to send her running into his arms.
Smiling, he waited for her to duck back into her cabin. It bothered him to miss watching her sleep, but this was better. If he was lucky, too, he could get a glimpse of her without that obtrusive pane of glass between them. Maybe, if he dared, he could even touch her, just the lightest brush of fingers against her skin.
It seemed to take forever for the cabin to go dark, but that could just be his impatience warping time. He forced himself to wait an endless amount of time past when the last light was extinguished before slipping out of his car.
He moved closer, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible in the muffling snow. As he lifted his boot onto the bottom porch step, it creaked under his weight. He froze, listening for any movement, but the cabin stayed quiet and dark. Daring to try the next step, and then the next, he reached her front door.
His hand reached out and grasped the doorknob.
* * *
Lou woke suddenly from a heavy sleep, pulse racing.
Inhaling a deep breath, she forced herself to calm down and take inventory. A nightmare hadn’t woken her. Had it been a strange sound? She listened intently, but her heart was still pounding in her ears, deafening her to anything else. She glanced at the clock, which read two twenty a.m.
A creeping anxiety sent a chill up her spine. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t escape the feeling that someone was out there—watching her.
“Don’t be stupid,” she whispered, but her voice didn’t sound like her own. It was just the investigation getting her amped up—her head was filled with tire vandals and murderers. It was nothing.
It didn’t feel like nothing.
She had to check it out. No way was she getting back to sleep now.
Pushing back the covers, Lou slid out of bed, wincing at the creak of the wooden floor beneath her weight. She crossed the room and reached for the light switch, but hesitated and pulled her hand back without turning on the light. It would make her too vulnerable, not to be able to see outside. Besides, the moon was full enough that her bedroom was fairly bright.
Her house was isolated, and there wasn’t a clear view of her place from any of her neighbors or the road, so she didn’t have any window coverings. She’d figured the bears and coyotes could peek at her all they wanted. Now, though, the dark squares of glass made her feel exposed and queasy.
Carefully placing her feet to avoid the floorboards that creaked the loudest, she crept into the living room. All looked normal, everything still as it was when she went to bed, except the fire in the woodstove had burned down to glowing red coals, putting off just enough light to turn her furniture into ominous shapes.
Still, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was off.
The kitchen was visible from the living area, but she crept around the breakfast bar to check the spaces she couldn’t see. The pantry door was cracked, making Lou frown. Didn’t I shut that? she wondered as she reached for the doorknob. Her fingers slipped on the cool metal, and she realized that her palms were sweating.
She hesitated, her hand on the knob. She was being ridiculous, right? No one had broken into her house only to hide in the pantry. Besides, if there was someone in there, she didn’t think she wanted to know. Maybe she should just return to bed and be blissfully ignorant.
Not that she’d be able to sleep, wondering if she’d been wrong.
Annoyed at her wishy-washiness, Lou tightened her fingers and gave a hard twist. The door swung open—and a dark shape lunged at her.
With a shriek, she jumped back, twisting out of reach. Something fell to the floor with a loud smack. As Lou stared at what was just an innocent broom lying on the floor, she resisted the urge to kick it. It wasn’t the broom’s fault she’d turned into a horror-movie cliché. Trying to ignore her too-quick breaths, she bent to pick up the fallen broom. After putting it back in the pantry, she closed the door.
Her stomach tightened as she glanced at the black windows of the living room again. The exposed glass brought a prickling feeling of unease that made her long for blinds. She was tempted to grab the blanket from the couch and use it as a temporary curtain, but she shook off the idea. It was just nighttime nerves making her crazy. There was no one out there.
As she moved toward the bathroom, the only unsearched room left, her heartbeat pounded in her ears. The wind had died down earlier, and Lou almost missed it. Without the usual whistling and groaning, everything was quiet—too quiet. The silence felt almost watchful. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she pushed the bathroom door open and forced herself to step inside.
The light from the fire didn’t reach very far into the small room, so the corners were draped with heavy shadows. The shower was the scariest, its heavy curtain hiding who-knew-what. Although she was tempted to back out of the room and go back to bed, pretending like she’d checked behind the curtain and her little home was secure, Lou knew she needed to see for herself if she ever wanted to sleep again.
Her hand shook as she reached toward the closed shower curtain. Her obvious fear annoyed her, and she yanked the covering aside with more vehemence than she’d planned. The rings rattled against the curtain rod, making her jump, even as she realized that no one was crouching in the shower. Her exhale shivered even as she smiled. At least her life hadn’t turned into a scene from Psycho.
After adding some firewood to the stove, she double-checked that the front door was locked and then headed back to her bedroom, peeking into the closet before crawling back into bed. Even though she’d just checked every space in her home big enough to hide even the smallest of people, Lou still felt like she was being watched.
“Silly,” she scolded her paranoid brain as she snuggled into a ball, tugging the covers to her chin. As she drifted to sleep, the thought of seeing Callum in just a few hours crossed her mind and made her smile.
Her fear was forgotten—for now.