Cold Peak boasted three computer shops/Internet cafés. During her lunch hour, Taylor strolled to the closest one.
When she stepped through the door, a lean, dark-haired kid with glasses and a name tag with Neil printed on it unfolded himself from behind a computer screen.
“I need a new security suite for my computer.” She gave him the make and model, and watched as he pulled a box off the shelf behind him.
The packaging was familiar. “I already have that one.”
“Have you been updating it?”
“Every week. It didn’t do the job.”
His eyes glinted. He moved farther along the shelf and retrieved a box from a locked cabinet.
“This is what you need. It’s expensive, but it’s worth it. I use it myself.”
She paid for the program and completed the rest of her shopping, adding in a can of tuna and an extra carton of milk for Buster.
When she got home that evening there was an entire box of cat food on her front step with a delivery docket from one of the supermarkets. She glanced over at Letty’s house, but the place looked closed up.
She picked up the carton, unlocked the door and walked inside. Letty hadn’t said exactly when she was going, just that she would be away for a few days, but it looked like she had already left.
Buster materialized from beneath the wisteria and glided in the door behind her, his attention on the box of cat food.
He ate a whole can in one sitting. Taylor hadn’t yet tried to pick him up, but he looked like he weighed about twenty pounds and none of it was fat. His paws were large, the claws, when he extended them, like razor-sharp hooks. One ear had a notch chewed out of it and at some stage he’d gotten a gouge across the nose. Beneath his fur, he no doubt had any number of old wounds. Cute he might be, but in cat terms, Buster was the equivalent of a badass.
Taylor missed out on her usual run in favor of doing some yoga. It gave her a chance to rest her ankle and, if she was honest, to avoid the possibility of another one-on-one with Fischer.
After showering, she made herself a salad and put a potato in the oven to bake. Periodically, she checked on Letty’s house, which was partly visible through her kitchen window. As she dressed the salad, Taylor noticed that sometime in the past few minutes the curtains had been closed, which meant Letty was home after all, and had probably decided to have an early night.
After dinner, she carried her purchase through into the sunroom. After uninstalling her previous security suite, she slid the new disk in and started the installation process. Buster ambled into the room and sat staring out of the French doors at Letty’s house. He hadn’t shown any propensity to leave, and Taylor was reluctant to shoo him out just yet. If she was looking after him for the next week, he might as well make himself at home.
When the download was complete, she pressed a button and initiated the program, then watched as it processed the operating files on her computer. A report flashed up on the screen. One program had compromised her system.
She studied the file name highlighted. It looked like her old security system, but it couldn’t be. She had uninstalled the old system before she had installed the new one.
She copied the highlighted file to a Zip drive, and placed the Zip in her bag. She would take it into the computer shop during her lunch break and ask Neil to take a look at it.
On impulse, she found the box containing her disks, slipped the disks into an envelope and propped the envelope beside her purse. She would get Neil to copy the disks for her before she risked downloading them onto her computer. After almost losing her research on Lopez, she wasn’t taking any more chances.
Just before going to bed, she picked Buster up and took him out onto the deck. The moon was up and almost full, casting a silvery light over Letty’s house, which was still in utter darkness. Repressing a shiver at the cool bite in the air, she closed the door behind her so Buster couldn’t scoot back inside and carried him across to the hedge, intending to drop him over. Just before she reached the hedge, Buster went rigid. A split second later, he exploded out of her arms and disappeared beneath a thick clump of hydrangeas.
Clutching her arm where his claws had dug in, she walked back into the house, ran the tap over the kitchen sink and cleaned the scratches. Dabbing her arm dry with a paper towel, she walked back outside, this time with a flashlight. She didn’t know if Letty had a cat door or if she routinely put Buster outside at night, but she was betting that he normally slept inside, in which case, she wasn’t comfortable with Buster being locked outside all night.
Crouching down, she directed the beam beneath the hydrangeas, but the foliage was too dense for it to penetrate more than a few feet. After searching along the thick border of shrubs that edged the backyard, Taylor decided to try another tack. For all she knew, Buster had slipped back through the hedge onto Letty’s property and, if there was a cat door, was already safely tucked up inside.
Flicking the flashlight off, she strolled through her front yard, out onto the sidewalk and carefully opened Letty’s front gate so the latch wouldn’t creak. Moonlight flooded the front yard as she walked up the neat path.
The gracious lines of the house looked faintly creepy by night. The verandas were thickly twined by gnarled stems of wisteria and climbing roses, and towering oaks and elms plunged the sides of the house and the backyard into dense shadow.
Flicking the flashlight back on, but taking care to cover most of the beam with her fingers so that only a narrow slit of light glowed through, she checked the doors and windows. If Letty didn’t have a cat door, it was possible she left a window open wide enough for Buster to get in, although with the burglaries, that wasn’t likely.
She circled the house then returned to the rear porch, which was roomy enough to accommodate a set of wicker furniture and an assortment of plants. After establishing that Buster wasn’t under the couch or either of the chairs, or crouching in the thick jungle of potted plants, she stepped back out onto the lawn, flicked the flashlight off and waited for her night vision to improve. She checked the luminous dial of her watch. Twenty minutes had passed since Buster had bolted. There was no way he could have gotten inside Letty’s house, which meant he was either still on the loose outside or he had sneaked back into her place.
A faint rustling in the trees off to her left kicked her pulse up a notch. Cursing herself for not thinking to carry a weapon, Taylor flicked the flashlight on and flooded the area beneath an ancient oak with light. Aside from a clump of lilies, the area was bare of everything but dried leaves and a few scattered acorns. She shifted the beam sideways as something small and shadowy streaked up the trunk of the oak. Her stomach muscles unclenched. A squirrel.
Keeping the flashlight on but directing the beam away from the windows of the house in case she woke Letty, she walked through to the front yard. The squirrel hadn’t made a sound when it had bolted up the trunk of the tree. Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her, but for a few brief moments the old paranoia had flooded back and she had been certain someone, not something, had been there.
After the shadowed dimness of the backyard, the combination of moonlight and street lighting was almost ludicrously bright. Letting the gate snick shut behind her, Taylor quickened her pace. Paranoid or not, checking Letty’s house over had reminded her that she had left the door to the sunroom partially open. If there was someone creeping around, they had had free access to her house for the past few minutes.
She checked the kitchen and the sitting room. Everything appeared to be as she’d left it, but the tingling feeling at her nape was still there. Keeping her tread silent, she walked through to her bedroom, placed the flashlight on the bed and retrieved her gun from the closet. Snapping the clip in place, she checked the two spare rooms, then ghosted through the rest of the house, opening doors and checking cupboards.
A sound in the direction of the sunroom froze her in place. Even though the sound had most likely been made by Buster sneaking back inside, she held the gun in a two-handed grip as she paced silently down the hall.
When she stepped into the sunroom, a furry head popped up from behind her computer monitor. Round green eyes stared at her like miniature lamps. Her gaze dropped. The source of the noise was obvious in the pens scattered across her keyboard. Buster must have knocked the jar of pens over when he had jumped up on the desk.
She closed the sunroom door and locked it before he could get out again and set the gun down on the desk. Buster was wedged in behind the monitor. If he hadn’t looked up, she wouldn’t have seen him at all, which was probably the point. He was hiding.
Walking through to the kitchen, she rinsed and dried her forearm again, then got the first aid box down from the top shelf in her pantry and dabbed her arm with antiseptic. Normally, the small pin-pricks Buster’s claws had made wouldn’t have registered, but they had punctured the still-tender scar tissue from the bullet crease, which accounted for the extra zing.
She packed the first aid box away, and made herself a cup of chamomile tea. While she waited for the tea to steep, she stared out the window at Letty’s house. The moon was still high, glinting off the windows and the bleached weatherboards. She noticed one of the curtains in the upstairs bedroom was now partially open, which indicated that she had disturbed Letty. In all probability, Letty had checked out of her window, recognized her in the bright moonlight and gone back to bed.
Carrying the tea through to the sunroom, she sat down and sipped and tried to coax Buster out from behind the computer.
The silence in the house was profound. She checked her wristwatch, surprised to see that it was close on midnight. Cold pushed through the glass doors, raising gooseflesh on her arms and reminding her of the moment she had stared into the darkness, certain something had been there. A faint shudder went down her spine and she drew the curtains, blocking out the night.
She’d had enough of darkness and creepy old houses. The paranoia and the scar on her forearm were both reminders she could have done without.
She was safe in Cold Peak. After Wilmington, Burdett had taken extra precautions. No one knew where she was, not even Dana.
No one had followed her.