“Robbie!” Lindsey cried. “What are you doing here?”

Robbie was looking past Lindsey with a glower at Sully, who she noticed had a decidedly pleased look on his face.

“The lovely Nancy saw me come calling on you, and when you didn’t answer, she invited me in for breakfast,” he said. He gave her a pointed look, and Lindsey was suddenly very aware of how the situation looked given that she was wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday.

“It’s not how it looks,” she said. “We went for a walk.”

There was a beat of silence and Robbie said, “Must have been a long walk.”

Lindsey noticed Robbie was still looking past her at Sully when he said this, and he was still glaring. She glanced over her shoulder at Sully, who was smirking. Smirking!

“You’ve got the wrong idea,” she said.

“Reeeeally?” Robbie asked. “What idea would that be?”

“I spent the night at Sully’s—” she began, but he interrupted.

“Oh, I’d say that was the exact idea that I have,” he said. “How about you, Nancy, same idea?”

“Well, they do look a bit rumpled,” she said. The twinkle in her blue eyes was full of mischief.

“Do I?” Sully asked in a mock tone of surprise. “Well, now how could that have happened?”

“You are not helping,” Lindsey chided him.

“Helping with what?” he asked.

“Helping yourself to the goodies apparently,” Robbie muttered.

Sully shrugged and Nancy coughed in a way that Lindsey suspected she was trying to mask a laugh and failing miserably.

“Oh, for gosh Pete’s sake!” Lindsey cried. “I went to the pier to tell Sully not to look into identifying the yacht because I don’t want to see him get hurt.”

“Isn’t she the sweetest?” Sully asked Nancy, who nodded.

“Hush!” Lindsey ordered in a stern voice. Heathcliff gave her a concerned tip of the head. She reached down to rub his ears in reassurance while she continued.

“Sully had soup made so Heathcliff and I joined him for dinner and a walk on the beach, where we discovered someone was following us.”

“What?” Nancy and Robbie spoke in unison. They both straightened with concern and looked to Sully for confirmation.

Lindsey glanced at Sully. Gone was the teasing; instead he looked suitably grim.

“He wasn’t from around here,” he confirmed. “At least, I’d never seen him before. I don’t know that he intended any harm, but I didn’t want to take any chances, so we ditched him at the old red shack.”

“Define ditched him,” Nancy said.

“I encouraged him to investigate the shed and then I shut the door after him,” he said.

“So it’s not like you bludgeoned him over the head or wrestled him to the ground or got an ID on him or anything?” Robbie asked. Lindsey wasn’t sure how he did it, but he managed to make it sound like Sully was lacking.

“I was more concerned with getting Lindsey and Heathcliff out of there safely than I was about taking down someone who might be completely innocent,” Sully said. “Priorities.”

“If you want to call it that,” Robbie said. His look was taunting. Sully opened his mouth to protest, but Lindsey cut him off.

“In any event, we got back to Sully’s house, and fell asleep,” she said. Sully smiled. Robbie frowned. Lindsey clarified, “On the couch.”

Robbie was still frowning.

“On separate ends with Heathcliff in between us.”

Robbie snatched a slice of bacon off his plate and held it out to Heathcliff, who devoured it in one swallow.

“You really are man’s best friend, aren’t you, mate?” he asked as he tousled his ears.

Heathcliff licked his hand, either cleaning up the grease or looking for another slice.

“Bacon bribery won’t help you,” Sully said. “Heathcliff loves everyone.”

“Not bribing, just rewarding,” Robbie said.

“Oh, please, that was a payoff if I ever saw one,” Sully said.

“Zip it, you two,” Nancy said. She leaned across the table and stared at Lindsey. “Why would Sully think that man was following you? Does this have something to do with the dead man in the library? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

Lindsey met Nancy’s gaze. The woman was too shrewd for her own good.

“Hey! I saw that!” Robbie shouted.

“Saw what?” Sully asked.

“You just snitched a piece of bacon off the counter and gave it to the dog!” Robbie accused.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sully said innocently—too innocently.

Lindsey took the opportunity to avoid any more questions from Nancy.

“That’s it!” she said. “Come on, Heathcliff, upstairs before these two make you too fat to fit through the door. No more spoiling my dog—either of you!”

She gave them a dark look and then hurried through the door before anyone, namely Nancy, could stop her. She hit the stairs at a jog, thinking Heathcliff probably needed to work off the bacon anyway.

She reached the second-floor landing when the door popped open and Nancy’s nephew Charlie poked his head out.

“Oh, hey, Lindsey, I didn’t expect to see you up this early,” he said.

“Don’t you start,” she chided him.

“What?” he asked. He rubbed Heathcliff’s head and asked, “What did I say?”

“Just because I didn’t sleep at home last night doesn’t give everyone the right to comment on my behavior,” she said. “It’s not what you think.”

“What am I thinking?” he asked in confusion. He blinked at her and Lindsey noted that he was still in his pajamas, a pair of black and red checked bottoms with a matching long john black top.

“That just because I spent the night at Sully’s, something happened. Nothing happened.”

“Wait.” He shook his stringy black hair as if he was trying to wake himself up. “Did you just say you weren’t home at all last night?”

“That’s what I said.” Lindsey tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Yeah, big fail. “But it doesn’t mean that we’re back together, and it certainly doesn’t mean everyone can gossip about us. We’re just friends. That’s it.”

“So you weren’t home at all last night,” Charlie said. “Not even at three o’clock in the morning?”

“Let it go, Charlie,” she said. She made to move around him and continue up the stairs.

“No!” Charlie shouted and grabbed her arm.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked in exasperation. “I know you want Sully and me to get back together, but these things take time, and we’ll just have to see what happens.”

“No,” he said.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“Sorry, what I meant was this isn’t about you and Sully, although that would be totally cool if you and the boss man hooked up again.”

Lindsey gave him a pointed look.

“Okay, okay,” he said. He let go of her arm and palmed the sides of his head as if trying to squeeze his brain into proper functionality. “I’ve had no caffeine, and when I’m trying to converse, that never goes well.”

“It’s okay.” Lindsey patted his arm. “When you figure it out, you let me know.”

She moved past him and began up the stairs to the third floor.

“Three fifteen,” Charlie called after her.

Lindsey paused and looked back at him. “Explain.”

“At three fifteen this morning, I know because I looked at my clock, there was a lot of noise coming from your apartment,” he said. “It sounded like you were moving your furniture around. I almost came up and offered to help but then the noise stopped so I figured you were done. And yeah, well, I fell back asleep. Of course, now I realize the moving furniture idea makes no sense, but hey, I was dead asleep when the noise started.”

“Charlie, focus. You heard noise in my apartment?” Lindsey repeated. Her brain was whirring like the back tires on a car stuck in a bog.

“Really loud noise,” he confirmed.

Lindsey began to run up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She turned the corner and jogged across the landing to her front door. It was open just a crack and her skin tingled all over her body. Charlie was right. Someone had been in her apartment and maybe they still were.