Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021

by Anna J. Stewart

  Wes leaned back hard, shocked. “Who in the hell has it in for both her and me?”

  “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me,” Joe replied.

  He shook his head. “I’ve been over and over the time I spent with her in Washington, all the mutual acquaintances we had. People I knew through her father. I’ve racked my brain, and I’ve got nothing, man.”

  Joe made a sympathetic sound. “Keep trying. If something or someone clicks, give me a shout. I’ve got Jessica working on it, too.”

  An urge to ask how she was doing danced on the tip of Wes’s tongue, but he bit it back. Besides, he knew the answer for himself. She was partying it up with her girlfriends and restoring a fancy house. Life was going just great for her.

  “There’s something else,” Joe said grimly.

  Wes yanked his attention back to his cousin sharply. “What is it?”

  Joe opened a drawer, pulled out a folder and pushed it across the desk toward Wes. “I’ve been in touch with the Washington, DC, police recently. The name Demoyne ring a bell?”

  Wes looked up sharply. “He’s the guy who arrested me after I beat up the guy who drugged and assaulted Jess.”

  “Officer Demoyne has been working with Jessica for a while, now. She has been getting threatening emails from an anonymous sender.”

  “Yeah, and she took long enough to tell me about it,” Wes blurted.

  “Probably because she hates your guts, man.”

  Wes scowled at his cousin. “I wasn’t that big a jerk to her. She might have walked out on me, but I highly doubt she hates me outright.”

  Joe shrugged. “I try to stay out of relationship drama as much as possible.”

  “Good call,” Wes replied drily.

  “At any rate, Demoyne has been forwarding the emails to me. They’re coming from a computer server in Billings, but the user could be signed in from anywhere in Southwestern Montana and be using the server wirelessly.”

  “Can’t you track this person down?”

  “Apparently not. I don’t fully understand the technology, but the stalker is intentionally disguising his or her location and identity.”

  “What do you need from me?” Wes asked in concern. Joe didn’t use words like threatening and stalker lightly. He was a cop, for crying out loud, and those words had specific and weighty meanings.

  “Here’s the thing. We’ve got no idea who might be sending these. Officer Demoyne has had an FBI profiler take a look at them, but the profiler says they’re too generic to give him a handle on the psyche of the author. I was wondering if you’d take a look at the emails. See if they trigger anything for you.”

  Wes picked up the file and opened it. He thumbed through message after message, reading in growing horror. Why in the hell hadn’t Jessica told him about the rest of these? The first messages were dated well before she’d moved out of his house. He could see what the profiler meant. The messages were similar, with several common themes running throughout them. The author wanted Jessica to leave Montana and go back to Washington, DC. And the author told her over and over that if she didn’t leave Montana, and soon, both she and Wes would be in mortal danger.

  “This bastard’s threatening me?” Wes blurted. “Why?”

  “If you’ll notice, the threats against you subsided soon after she moved back to Sunny Creek and bought the Cleever house.”

  “She bought a house in Sunny Creek?” Wes exclaimed.

  “Well, yeah. You didn’t know?” Joe shrugged. “It’s one of those big old Victorians on the north end of town. She’s restoring it. I hear she’s really turning it into a showplace. Folks are raving about it.”

  “She’s not actually planning to stay in Sunny Creek, is she?” he asked in dismay. He didn’t know whether to be thrilled that she hadn’t bolted to some distant shore or royally pissed that she’d stuck around his hometown just to taunt him.

  “How the hell should I know? I’m not her social secretary. Not that I’d mind applying for the job. She’s one fine-looking woman. Nice lady, too. What the hell were you thinking, dumping her?”

  “I didn’t dump her,” Wes ground out.

  “Ah. She dumped you, huh? Tough luck.”

  Wes really didn’t want to talk about his failed love life with his cousin, or anybody else for that matter. “Why didn’t you tell me I was being threatened in these emails of Jessica’s?”

  “Because the threats against you had stopped by the time I was brought into the loop, but have recently started up again. Officer Demoyne is also worried about Jessica’s safety, and asked me and my guys to keep an eye on her as long as she’s in town.”

  “Are you?” Wes challenged.

  “Absolutely. We’ve got someone within a block of her place pretty much around the clock. When she goes over to Hillsdale to pick up stuff for her house, one of my guys almost always follows her.”

  “How long are you planning to keep up this security detail?”

  Joe leaned forward. “As long as those threats continue to come to her inbox.”

  “How many are there, anyway?”

  “Fifty-three and counting. She gets one or two a day, usually. Now and then she gets a cluster of several all at once.”

  “And there’s no distinguishing words or phrases to help you identify this asshole?” Wes asked.

  Joe shook his head.

  Wes picked up the stack of emails again and went through them, more slowly this time. They were stiff. Formal. Almost like business letters. Something in the emails resonated with him but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  Joe pulled out another folder. “You ready for the kicker, Wes?”

  “There’s more?”

  “Yeah,” Joe answered heavily. “A few days ago, the tenor of the emails changed. They stopped being threats and started being promises.”

  “That sounds ominous?”

  “The FBI profiler thinks it’s ominous. He’s forecasting that our stalker has decided to take action to, uhh, punish both Jessica and you. Consider this an official warning from your local law enforcement official that you may be in danger. I’m formally offering you police protection if you desire it. Both the FBI and I deem your life to be in significant danger.”

  Wes just stared at his cousin. This was Sunny Creek. Where everyone knew each other and nothing really bad ever happened. Hell, they hadn’t had a murder in close to twenty years, and the one that had happened in town had been from a drunken knife fight between two drifters passing through.

  “Why the hell is Jessica showing herself in public?” he blurted. “She knows to take these threats seriously!”

  Joe answered soberly, “I tried to convince her to lay low, but I get the impression she doesn’t much care about her safety. I don’t think she cares if the stalker kills her.”

  Wes stared at his cousin in dismay.

  Reluctantly he picked up the second folder and read the last half-dozen posts. They were, indeed, different from the others. The blustering and threats were gone, replaced by cold calm and a declaration that his and Jessica’s time was up to do what the writer wanted. Now they were going to pay for their crimes.

  What crimes? Giving a damn about each other?

  A shiver rattled down his spine. Whoever was writing these emails was certifiably crazy. And not just a little. This stuff was serial killer worthy. And the bastard’s sights were firmly locked on him and Jessica.

  Wes leaned back in his chair, staring at the files of threats. “How come I’m not getting any threats?”

  “Do you have an email account?”

  “Not at the moment. No need all by myself on my ranch.”

  “That’s your reason, then,” Joe said.

  Wes blurted, “And she has no idea who’s sending these to her?”

  “None. She claims not to have any enemi
es, and not to know anyone who hates her enough to kill her. Would you say that’s an accurate assessment? You knew her back in Washington, DC, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did know her. And yes, I’d say she’s correct. Everyone who met Jess loved her.”

  “Someone apparently didn’t. And he or she has developed a sick fixation on our girl.”

  “You have to protect her, Joe. She won’t let me anywhere near her, or I’d do it myself. But stick to her like glue. Promise me.”

  “Dude, I’ve got this. Nobody’s getting hurt around here on my watch.”

  Wes nodded grimly at his cousin. “If you need more manpower, deputize me. I’ve still got my concealed carry permit and weapons certifications from the Marines.”

  “You’re not exactly an objective third party, my friend. And besides, I need you to keep a sharp eye on your own six o’clock.”

  “No one’s sneaking up on me.”

  “Don’t underestimate whoever’s writing those emails. This guy’s sitting around all day long plotting out whatever he’s planning to do. He’ll be meticulous and thorough, and potentially very dangerous.”

  Wes swore and didn’t bother to hide his frustration from Joe. “You can’t let anything happen to her. I’m the reason she came out here in the first place. If something bad happens to her, it will be all my fault.”

  “Unless you’re the whack job writing those emails, it won’t be your fault. Get your head in the game, Wes. You have to set aside your guilt and whatever else you’re feeling about her. I need your head clear and you thinking on all cylinders if you’re going to help her. My gut feeling is that both of you know whoever’s writing those emails. Go home tonight, stay sober and think as hard as you can about who might be stalking Jessica. Will you do that for me?”

  “I’m not a damned drunk—”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything. I just know that if I had lost a woman like Jessica I’d be hurting powerfully. And I might try to self-medicate away some of that pain so I could sleep and eat and breathe. Just sayin’.”

  Wes sighed. Joe was right. There was no need to rip off his cousin’s head because Jessica had left. “I’ll think on it.”

  “Call me if you come up with anything, Wes.”

  “Will do.”

  He stood up to leave, and a lump settled heavily in the pit of his stomach. Something bad was about to happen. He could feel it coming. He just didn’t know what it was or what direction it would come from. He’d gotten this same instinctive intuition of impending danger when he’d been a combat officer in foreign war zones. The intuition had never let him down and had never been wrong. It was part of why he’d brought almost all of his men home alive—his gut was uncanny at warning him.

  And it was screaming at him now. Something—someone—was coming for him, and more importantly, for Jessica.

  Wes went straight out to the barn when he got home to finish repairing his tractor. Although he got the machine up and running, it was too close to dark to start dragging the lower pasture today. The job would have to wait until tomorrow. He fed the cattle, checked on the cows still getting close to calving and then went into the house.

  It was undoubtedly Joe’s fault that the back of his neck tightened as he entered the house. He felt silly doing it, but he searched the place, peeking under beds and in closets and behind doors, wherever a human being could hide. Nobody was there, of course.

  Shaking his head at his paranoia, he sat down in his armchair with a frozen pizza to watch a baseball game on TV. He was jumpy through the evening and finally had to laugh aloud at himself. He was a former Marine who had lived and fought in some of the most dangerous corners of the planet. And here he was acting like a nervous civilian without any idea how to handle himself.

  He checked the shotgun he kept loaded by his bed, and he slept fitfully. All was quiet inside the house and out. But he couldn’t shake the foreboding feeling that had settled in the pit of his stomach. Something bad was about to happen.

  CHAPTER 16

  The next morning, just as Jessica was knocking off for lunch after spending the morning stripping paint, her cell phone beeped an incoming text. She picked it up to glance at it and then gawked in shock.

  Jessica, I need your help with a big problem. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important. And frankly, you owe me one. Please come up to West Lake, to the White Pine Forest State Park. Go to the cabins by the lake. I’ll be in the last one. Number Eight. Hurry.

  Holy cow. Wes really must be in trouble if he’d asked for her help the day after being so rude to her in the diner. Or maybe he’d only been that way yesterday because he was in front of his friends and family.

  Why didn’t he just call her? Why the text? Was phone reception bad up by the lake? God knew, her cell phone hated these mountains and her coverage could be spotty in the high mountains.

  Then there was the fact that he had never played the “you owe me one” card before. It was certainly true that she did owe him—many times over. But he’d always insisted that helping people in trouble was not the sort of thing he kept a tally of. He did it because it was the right thing to do. His problem must be dire, indeed, if he felt a need to twist her arm like that to get her to come to him.

  She texted back, Leaving now. There as soon as possible.

  Wes didn’t reply. Which was also unlike him. In the past, his texts were generally chatty. Conversational. And always polite. He didn’t just cut them off like that. What the heck was going on with him? He didn’t sound like himself at all.

  Worried, she pointed her sporty little car up into the mountains west of Sunny Creek. This wasn’t an area she’d visited before, and she was amazed by the alpine beauty of the mountains rising up around her.

  As advertised, the White Pine Forest State Park was full of tall, lush-needled white pine trees along with aspens, birches, spruces and a bunch of other trees she couldn’t identify. A paved road wound into the state park, following the shore of a large lake, which she glimpsed through the trees from time to time. It was sapphire blue and the sun glittered across its rippled surface like a diamond. No matter that it was pretty. She still didn’t like lakes. It looked deep and cold, and she shuddered a little at the reminder of how her mother had died.

  Rebecca, an experienced swimmer and strong athlete, had gone out for a swim in the lake behind their house. The assumption was that she’d had a cramp or some kind of physical distress and never made it back to shore. Her body was found eventually, submerged in the middle of the lake, by rescue divers.

  Jessica spotted the wooden sign pointing toward the cabins and took the turn. The road wound through a copse of pine trees that carpeted the ground in brown needles. The pines gave way to a thick stand of brush and deciduous trees, however, before she got to the last cabin, which was set a ways beyond the others.

  She didn’t see Wes’s truck, which was weird. In fact, no vehicle at all was in sight. Was he even here? Or maybe she’d beat him. Frowning, she got out of her car and climbed the steps to the small, covered porch. She knocked on the door.

  “Wes! It’s me. Are you there?”

  The door opened, and Wes was not standing there. In fact, the last person on earth she would have expected to see was standing there.

  “Daddy? What on earth are you doing here? I got a text from Wes—”

  He cut her off, ordering, “Come in, Jessica. We need to talk.”

  She stepped through the doorway, blinded by going from the bright light outside to the relative darkness of the tiny cabin’s interior. She had started to turn toward her father to give him a hug when something—two sharp somethings—suddenly poked into her back.

  A massive jolt of electricity slammed into her and her entire back clenched and spasmed, jerking uncontrollably. Her legs collapsed out from under her and she fell to the floor as she started to lose consciousness. What t
he—

  Everything went black.

  * * *

  She regained consciousness sometime later. She was flat on her back on what felt like a bed. What the heck had happened to her? Had she fallen? Hit her head? No...

  Good grief, her brain was sluggish. She’d gotten an electrical shock of some kind.

  “Awake, are you? We can’t have that, now, can we?” a gruff voice said from outside her line of sight. She tried to turn her head to see the source of the vaguely familiar voice, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. At all. As in she was completely paralyzed. Fear surged through her, abruptly clearing the cobwebs from her mind.

  What was wrong with her?

  She tried to wiggle her fingers and was stunned when even that much movement took more energy than she could summon.

  A wasp or a bee stung her in the upper arm, and the wooden walls and ceiling began to spin around her very slowly. She was sinking...sinking...

  And the blackness absorbed her into its soothing embrace once more.

  * * *

  The next time she woke up, the first sensation she became aware of was thirst. Her lips were dry and cracked, and her throat felt bruised and tender, like she’d been swallowing rocks.

  “Water,” she whispered.

  “Oh, now you want to drink,” someone said sarcastically. “I try for hours to get you to swallow and nothing. But as soon as you wake up, you’re begging for it. Ungrateful child.”

  She knew that raspy voice. Why couldn’t she place its owner, though?

  A plastic straw scratched her cracked and tender lips roughly, and she sucked greedily at it. A hand came under her head to lift it up, and she sucked even more thirstily. The water was tepid and tasted like sulphur. And she totally didn’t care. It was wet.

  That damned bee stung her arm once more, and she drifted away yet again, this time into a cloud of spun cotton that tangled around her arms and limbs so tightly she couldn’t move a single inch.

  * * *

  The next time she woke, she desperately had to use the restroom. “I have to go to the bathroom. Now.”