Amen. “Sometimes.”
“Most of the time.” Allie threw herself onto her mother’s bed and the dog curled into a ball beside her. “I’m gonna stay here for a while.”
“Good idea.” Jenna decided not to run after Cassie. Let her cool off. They were all upset. She sat on the corner of the bed. “Why don’t we watch a movie together?”
“’Cause there’s no school tomorrow?”
“We think.”
Again, Allie flashed both hands, showing that all her fingers were crossed for good luck, her thumbs crossed as well, her fears about the blinking lights allayed for the time being.
“Not a scary one, okay?”
“I think we can find a comedy.” Using the remote, Jenna turned on the television, lit a couple of candles, and found extra pillows for their backs. She couldn’t admit it to the kids, but she, too, was jittery as all get-out about the potential loss of power. The last thing they needed was to be trapped in a house without any lights or heat.
And someone out there…
Knowing. Watching. Waiting.
She walked to the windows and snapped all of the blinds shut. As she did, she caught a glimpse of Jake Turnquist trudging past the stable, his boots breaking a new path in the piling snow, white powder visible on his dark jacket and hat.
A lonely sentry on a cold winter night.
Jenna shivered and crossed her own fingers, silently praying that the bodyguard was enough protection from whatever evil was watching her.
I will come for you.
Like hell, she thought, and remembered the shotgun lying ready beneath the bed.
Carter mentally kicked himself all the way home.
What the hell had he been thinking at the parking lot of the theater?
When women were being abducted in his county and a murder was yet unsolved, he was hitting on Jenna Hughes? Thinking horny high-school-kid thoughts of a Hollywood princess? Jesus H. Christ! What kind of idiot was he?
Well, actually, she had been hitting on him, he reminded himself. He’d caught a glint of desire in her eyes, felt more than a hint of arousal as she’d swept her cool lips against his face. But had she really been interested? Or had her little display been just a performance by a convincing actress?
“Damn,” he muttered, craving a cigarette.
Squinting as his wipers tried to keep up with a fresh onslaught of snow, he nosed his rig along the winding road that passed his property. “Put it out of your mind,” he told himself. He’d done his duty. She was safe. Nothing had happened. So she’d kissed him out of gratitude. So what?
He passed Roxie Olmstead’s accident site and wondered about the missing woman. From the notes on her laptop computer and information gleaned from her co-workers, the police had decided that she’d been on her way to Carter’s house to try and pry information out of him, information regarding the mystery of Sonja Hatchell’s disappearance. Had someone found out about her quest and tried to thwart Roxie’s attempts at a story, or had she been the next victim? Was she stalked purposely. Or selected at random?
How organized was this guy?
Did he plan his abductions in advance, search out his victims, or just run across a woman who appealed to him and then get lucky? He couldn’t wait to see what the FBI’s profiler thought.
Cranking on the steering wheel, he felt the tires spin a little before finding purchase. The Blazer whined as it plowed through the drifts covering his drive.
Though the OSP and FBI weren’t completely convinced that the two missing women were connected, Carter trusted his gut. Both he and BJ considered those cases, Mavis Gette and Jenna Hughes, somehow linked. Carter just hadn’t figured out how they were associated yet, though that elusive link teased at the edges of his brain. He felt that same frustration he always did on a hard case, that teasing niggle that he was missing something—something important enough that it could break the case wide open.
So what was it?
Through the curtain of snow his headlights flashed on the rustic siding of his cabin, a home that was comparable in size to Jenna Hughes’s garage. The Blazer rolled to a stop and he cut the engine. The differences between Jenna Hughes and himself were so vast, it was ridiculous that he even entertained fantasies about her. He was, he’d always told himself, a realist.
So why did she continue to haunt him, not only at night when his dreams would take him into her bedroom and into her bed, but during the day?
The images were vivid and visceral.