Hidden in Shadow

by Georgia Florey-Evans

  “Pastor Rollins here.”

  “Pastor, this is Holly. I’m sorry to be calling at this time of the evening, but I have an urgent request for the prayer chain.”

  The pastor’s cheerful demeanor didn’t seem fazed. “You can call at any time of the day or night for the prayer chain, Holly. You know that. What do we need to add?”

  Holly took a deep breath and began talking. Pastor Rollins listened silently as she told him everything, starting with the first call in Tullen.

  He was assuring her the chain members would both pray and keep their eyes open, when suddenly, a howl erupted from the guest room.

  “What was that?” the pastor asked.

  “Luke is letting Clarence spend nights with Tessa and me. I’d say that was him getting kicked out of Tessa’s bed for the last time.”

  She could hear Pastor Rollins chuckle. “Clarence is your watchdog?”

  “He always stays close to me when I’m out at Luke’s, and he nearly attacked Richard once, for trying to hug me.” She couldn’t believe she was defending the dog. “Luke is pretty confident Clarence would do his best to take care of me if I were threatened.”

  “Well, from my experience, he might lick the guy half to death.” The minister was outright laughing.

  Clarence chose that moment to appear in Tessa’s open bedroom door. One of his ears was standing straight up like it was stuck that way, and his typical unkempt hairdo looked even wilder than usual. It appeared he and Tessa had gotten into a wrestling match. Holly wondered what Tessa looked like.

  “Thank you for listening to my problems, Pastor Rollins.” Holly had a feeling she better get off the phone before her friend made an appearance.

  “I’ll start the prayer chain as soon as we hang up, dear.” His voice was full of kindness. “And please let me know if you require some extra help. There isn’t any shame in needing to talk about things. Sometimes it helps more than we can imagine.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Goodnight, Holly.”

  “Goodnight, Pastor.”

  Tessa emerged from the bedroom just as Holly placed her phone on the end table. Holly promptly burst into laughter. Tessa’s blond hair, which usually framed her face, was in complete chaos, sticking out in every imaginable direction. Holly laughed even harder when her friend stuck out her lower lip and blew several unruly curls out of her eyes.

  “I won!” Tessa was proud of herself.

  Clarence turned his head and looked over his flanks at her before marching resolutely into Holly’s room. Holly just hoped he made himself comfortable on the bed she fixed on the floor. Otherwise, she’d be wallowing around with him next.

  Her phone rang.

  “Pastor Rollins must need to tell me something.” She picked it up and answered.

  “You’d better stay away from Walker, my Holly. I’ll have to show him he can’t have you. Nobody can have you.” It was the voice she dreaded the most. “You’re mine. All mine. Don’t forget it.”

  Before Holly could respond, the caller disconnected.

  “Holly? Are you all right?” Tessa rushed over to her. “Was it him?”

  Holly nodded wordlessly.

  “Sit down before you pass out again.” Tessa helped Holly onto the sofa. “What did he say?”

  The realization hit her. “It’s really him, Tessa. Doing all this.” Holly shuddered. “Just like he told Luke to stay away from me, he told me to stay away from him. That Luke…he will show Luke he can’t have me.” She looked at her friend with fear in her eyes. “Maybe it would be safer for Luke if I stayed away from him for a while.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Holly.” Tessa’s lips formed a firm line. “You talk about this man taking something away from you. You can’t let him take one of the most important relationships in your life. Got it?”

  Holly considered her words and slowly nodded. “You’re right. I just couldn’t bear it if Luke were hurt because of me. It’s bad enough he’s exposed to this mess.”

  Tessa gave her a hug. “Believe me, Luke wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Holly remembered Luke’s words. He would do anything for her. While she couldn’t allow herself to consider exactly what he meant, Holly knew Tessa spoke the truth.

  Chapter 12

  “Is there any news about Holly’s case?” The older-than-dirt, wooden chair creaked ominously as Luke lowered his large frame onto it.

  The sheriff set the can of soda he’d been drinking on his desk and looked across it. “It’s only Tuesday, but thanks to Pastor Rollins and his prayer chain, I think at least half of Shadow already knows she has a stalker.”

  “Yeah. Besides praying, Pastor asked people to keep their eyes open for a stranger.” Luke was worried about Holly, though. She looked incredibly tired that morning when he picked Clarence up.

  “Are we so sure it’s a stranger?” Mitch asked.

  “It has to be.” Luke surely misunderstood the other man. “You can’t think one of our friends or neighbors would be doing this. Everybody likes Holly.” His seat tottered as he thought of another reason Mitch was wrong. “They wouldn’t have been in Massachusetts when she was there.”

  “I don’t know.” Mitch pulled a file folder out of his desk drawer. “This is all the paperwork from the Tullen Police Department. They wondered why he never physically approached her. There was not one reported sighting.” He pulled what Luke could see was a campus map out of the folder, and indicated a blue circle. “The girls lived here, in a busy apartment building on the edge of campus. According to the officer I spoke with, it’s a heavily trafficked area, and a lurker would have drawn attention.” Mitch slid a full-page photograph of Holly out of the folder. “The guy was coming on too strong not to have wanted to be around Holly, don’t you think? If he was there.”

  This was opening up and entirely new line of possibilities, none of which seemed desirable, to Luke.

  “Just suppose,” Mitch continued, “the stalker knows Holly because they’re both from Shadow. He could have been making those calls from anywhere, Luke.”

  “Then why the time gap? She’s been home from Massachusetts for nearly six years, and he’s just now starting to do this again.” None of this—nothing— made sense.

  Mitch sat back in his chair and sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe he saw something that made him think your friendship was deepening into something else, and it set him off.”

  It was true Luke was finding it more and more difficult to hide his feelings for Holly. Might somebody close to them have noticed? “This man would have to fit in our environment.”

  Mitch nodded. “It would explain how he knows where you live. That Tony and Susan are Holly’s parents.”

  Then Luke remembered the phone call. “But I didn’t recognize his voice. If he were somebody I knew, wouldn’t it be familiar, even though he tried to disguise it?”

  “Let me show you something.” Mitch reached into another desk drawer and pulled out a small object resembling a tape recorder. “Hank picked this up at the last convention he went to. He thought it looked like a trouble-causing gadget.”

  He pushed a button and spoke. “My name is Mitch Landon. I’m the sheriff of Shadow.”

  Then he set the machine down and pushed another button. Mitch’s recorded voice came out. Next he adjusted a dial on the edge of the device. This time, when he pressed play, the voice it produced sounded like an elderly woman. The speech was clear and intelligible, but it wasn’t Mitch’s voice anymore. He adjusted the dial and repeated the play process. A child spoke this time.

  “I can make my voice sound like just about anything I want with this thing.” Mitch picked it up and held it out to Luke. “The device costs less than a hundred dollars, and you can order it from a thousand places on the Internet. Maybe our guy has one of these or something like it. Hank said there’s some that alter your voice when you speak directly through them.”

  Luke turned the small recorder over in his hands.
“Who thinks of things like this?”

  “People who are smarter and have a lot more extra time time than me.” Mitch returned the two sheets of paper to the folder from Tullen and slid it back in a drawer. “What’s the latest on Holly’s calls?”

  “I know she’s gotten one every night this week.” Luke handed the device back to Mitch.

  “I wish I had the manpower to set up a watch around her house. I don’t like that she lives on the edge of town. It would be safer if she had neighbors who would notice if anything strange was going on.” Mitch returned the recorder to his desk.

  “She would skin me alive if I tried to sleep in my Jeep outside her house.” Luke knew that for a fact. “Or else I’d do it, just so she could feel safe enough to sleep.”

  “Sheriff?” Haley Johnson, the dispatcher, was speaking over the intercom.

  Mitch pushed a button on a dust-covered electronic device. “What do you need, Haley?”

  “A call just came in that Jack Wallace showed up at the high school. One of the teachers caught him on the ball diamond, asking students where Billy Andrews was. He has the restraining order, so Hank went to arrest him. Wallace is nowhere to be found. What do you want Hank to do?”

  Luke’s heart leaped into his throat as he came to his feet. “Did he get to Holly?”

  Mitch stood and held his hand in a “stop” gesture. “Hank is aware of the entire situation. If Holly were involved in any way, he’d have let me know. I promise.” He pushed his intercom button again. “Tell Hank to go to Gina Andrews’ house and sit tight. I’m on my way. Call the state dispatcher and have a BOLO put out on him so the state guys know we’re looking for him.”

  “Will do.”

  “Sorry to run, Luke, but I can stick the guy back in jail now. One less thing for Holly to worry about.” Mitch waited for Luke to walk to the door. “I figured he’d break the order. I’m just glad he did it while Billy was safe at school. Now the creep will be behind bars until his trial.”

  Luke followed Mitch out of the building and made his way to his Jeep. Just as he was about to get in, Dennis Ewing pulled up beside him.

  “Looks like I can save myself a phone call.” Dennis pushed back the goofy looking, purple fedora he always wore, releasing a few blond curls.

  “How’s that?”

  Dennis rolled his eyes. “Jen is bugging the daylights out of me. She’s on the warpath about those questionnaires. I know we still have a couple of weeks before the reunion, but I guess she has just about everybody’s. She’s worried about yours and Holly’s.”

  In all honesty, with all that was going on, the reunion and questionnaires were just about the last thing on Luke’s mind. He didn’t imagine they were very high on Holly’s list of priorities at the moment, either. “I’ll get mine to her tomorrow, and remind Holly. Good enough?”

  “Thank you.” Nearly white eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead as Dennis frowned. “I was sorry to hear about someone harassing Holly. Did Mitch make any progress yet?”

  Luke leaned against the cab of his vehicle. “He’s afraid now it may not be a stranger. That’s worse, since nobody will suspect one of our own.”

  “Jen and I are praying for her, and I told all the employees at the store to be on the lookout for any strangers. I’ll change it to unusual behavior from anybody.”

  “That’s a big help. Thank you.” Besides his job with the school district, Dennis owned one of the busiest places in town, a convenience store next to the interstate. It gave Luke hope to think the people who worked there had their eyes open.

  “Give Holly my best.” Dennis waved and pulled away.

  Luke slid behind the steering wheel of his Jeep. The stalker may not be a stranger. He might be one of the people Luke saw on a regular basis. Somebody he would never suspect. Somebody who could get close to Holly without raising any red flags. He didn’t like that idea. He didn’t like that idea at all.

  Chapter 13

  “I don’t know what my favorite memory of high school is.” Holly was about ready to wad the silly questionnaire up and pitch it in the trash can. Jen could just make one up for her. It wasn’t like very many would know the difference anyway.

  “I know what your favorite memory of school is.” From across the kitchen table, Tessa looked up from the papers she was grading.

  “I’m glad one of us does.” Holly had no idea what her friend might be referring to.

  “It was our adult living class. Remember?” Tessa waited expectantly.

  Holly thought about the class. It was set up so all the important aspects of adulthood were covered. The curriculum included handling money and necessary household chores. Her favorite though had been...

  “When I finally changed a tire on my car.” She shared a smile with Tessa.

  “You were the only one left who hadn’t managed it.” Tessa clicked her tongue. “And you had to do it to pass the class that quarter. Remember?”

  Holly remembered quite well. “I still think somebody sneaked my car in and tightened the lug nuts with some kind of machine. I liked to never get those silly things off.”

  Tessa giggled. “You finally climbed up and balanced on the four-way wrench and jumped up and down. What I would have given for a video camera.”

  “Well, I got my tire changed.” Holly mustered up a little indignity.

  “In forty-five minutes.” Tessa’s eyes watered as her laughter grew.

  “There was no time limit, was there?” Holly harrumphed. What she never told anybody, nor would she ever, was before she pulled out of her parking space, Luke insisted on tightening her lug nuts. He was afraid she wasn’t strong enough to do it very well, and it worried him. He turned them several times before they stayed put, so he probably had good reason to be concerned. Yet another “rescue” from him.

  “Would you look at this?” Tessa had gotten distracted by the paper she was grading. She shoved it across the table to Holly.

  Holly looked at it. “What am I supposed to see?”

  “Look at question number nine.” Holly wouldn’t have been surprised to see steam coming from Tessa’s ears.

  She looked at the question. In the above triangle, which is the right angle? The student had written the one that isn’t wrong.

  Holly chuckled. “Whose paper is this? You ought to give partial credit for originality. At least, it’s not blank.”

  “Ronnie Chambers. I never know what to expect from him.” Tessa glared at the offending paper as she accepted it. “According to him, acute angles are better looking than ugly ones.”

  Her little darling cell phone programmer. Why wasn’t she surprised? “Do you want me to talk to him?”

  “It probably wouldn’t hurt.” Tessa scribbled his grade at the top of the paper and went on to the next one in her pile. “He tells his pals he’s going to college. I shudder to think of him set loose on college math courses.”

  That knowledge would help Holly. “I’ll just tell him he’d better start taking his grades seriously if he wants to go to college, then.”

  “Thanks, Holly.”

  Holly’s phone rang—a nice normal bell sound. She looked at the clock. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet.

  “It’s probably Luke. We haven’t made plans for Bible study tomorrow. It’s at Annie Sanders’ house, so it’s not out of his way to pick us up.”

  “Holly, don’t forget to check—”

  “Hello.” The word was out of Holly’s mouth before Tessa’s warning soaked in. She immediately regretted it.

  “You’ll be my wife soon. Mine, not his.” After Dennis Ewing so graciously set it up, she hadn’t even thought of using Caller ID.

  “Just leave me alone.” Holly tried to sound forceful.

  “You’re going to marry me, and have my babies. You’ll never be with anybody else. You better tell Walker before he gets hurt. You’re mine. You’ve been mine for a long time. Don’t forget it.”

  The line went dead before Holly could say anyth
ing. She set her phone down with shaking hands.

  “It was him, wasn’t it?” Tessa was out of her chair and next to Holly in a flash.

  She drew a shuddering breath. “He said we were going to get married and have babies, and I’ll never be with anybody besides him.” Her eyes welled with tears. “He said I’d better tell Luke before he gets hurt. Tessa, he’s going to do something awful to Luke if I don’t stay away from him.”

  “And we’ve had this conversation before.” Tessa picked up her own phone and dialed a number.

  “Mitch, this is Tessa. That creep just called Holly again, and he’s getting more precise in his threats.”

  Her hand on her hip, Tessa barely left enough time for a response.

  “He told her she was going to marry him and have his children, that’s what.” Tessa turned and nodded reassuringly to Holly; she had this under control. Holly would have laughed at her haphazard friend if she wasn’t so frightened.

  “Well, then, he told her if she didn’t stay away from Luke, he was going to get hurt. Mitch, you’ve got to find this guy and take him down. D-o-w-n, down. Before he actually does someth—what?”

  Now, Mitch was receiving her nod, telepathically—no, telephonically. Holly slapped a hand over her mouth to stop hysterical giggles from erupting.

  “Just a minute and I’ll ask.”

  Tessa pulled the phone away from her mouth and, seemingly unaware of Holly’s oncoming meltdown, spoke calmly. “Mitch wants to know two things. Did he seem to respond directly to anything you said, and what exactly did he call Luke?”

  Any last urge to laugh disappeared as Holly mentally replayed the conversation. “He acted like he didn’t hear a word I said. And he referred to Luke by his last name.”

  Tessa passed the information on to Mitch. There was a longer silence while she listened to his response.

  “Okay. We’ll come straight there after school tomorrow. But what about tonight, Mitch? Am I supposed to tell him to go away because I told on him? Or maybe throw my hairdryer at the cr—” Tessa frowned as she listened to him.