by Leigh Landry
After a moment of panic, he found her and the dog walking down the street. The little bundle of energy wouldn’t sit still for long. He guessed he would have to start calling it Puck soon.
Could the dog have smelled the gas? Was that a thing dogs did?
Marc knew he hadn’t turned on the stove. Sierra could have done it while he was next door with the arson guy, but that didn’t make sense either. She was hungry and said she hadn’t eaten all afternoon. So why would she have turned on the stove?
What if Puck wasn’t warning them about the gas? What if he was warning them that someone had been in the house?
Or maybe he hadn’t been barking to open the door earlier. Maybe he’d been barking to tell them someone was there.
Could someone have walked into his house while they were having sex in the other room?
It seemed far-fetched, but he didn’t have any other explanation. He would have a hell of a time explaining that to the cops though.
Once the firemen arrived and switched off the gas, Marc looked down the road again. Sierra was gone. He shook his head and tried to remember why she’d been fighting for his attention when he was on the phone. The signal had been awful, and he was having trouble hearing them, so he’d waved her off.
Big mistake.
Now she was MIA again, and with Sierra that spelled danger.
No. He wasn’t doing that anymore. Sierra could take care of herself, and she didn’t need him to watch over her.
At least he knew from experience that the firemen would never let her through. And if she had snuck back into the house before they got there, they’d have dragged her out by now. So he tried to convince himself that at least she was safe, wherever she was.
He called her phone. No answer.
An engine turned over, and he spun around to find Sierra backing into his yard to get around the fire truck. Marc ran after her, waving his arms in the air.
She waved and smiled but didn’t stop.
“Be back in a little while!” she shouted out the window. Puck smiled from the back seat, his tongue hanging out in sheer joy. “Got some stuff to take care of. I’ll be right back!”
“Stuff? What stuff? Where are you going?”
As soon as all four tires left the driveway, she switched gears and slammed on the gas. Within seconds, she was gone.
Great. He couldn’t follow her while he was stuck dealing with this gas leak mess. But, of course, she knew he couldn't chase after her. That's why she’d left the way she did. And the fact that she didn't tell him where she was going…
Marc paced the driveway and waited for the firemen to clear the scene for the second time in less than a week. A small handful of neighbors flocked like zombies once again. Only this time, they were missing their ringleader.
Right. Mrs. Guidry was moving soon. Today or tomorrow.
He walked to the end of his driveway and looked down the street. The movers were there already, loading boxes from the garage into the back of the truck. But Mrs. Guidry's car wasn't there.
He’d told Sierra the idea was ridiculous. He still couldn’t think of a possible reason she’d want to chase them off their property. She couldn’t want the house or the property itself if she was already moving somewhere else.
But she must have a key to Adrien’s apartment. And she knew Marc and Denise’s schedules by heart because she was nosy as hell. She had easy access to both their houses and probably to the snakes as well.
But why? Why would she threaten him and try to scare them off their property?
He pressed both hands against the sides of his head in a desperate attempt to prevent it from exploding.
He wanted to rush after Sierra, but he couldn’t leave until the firemen signed off on the place. He could call Freddy, but he wasn’t sure what to ask him to do. Track Sierra down? Keep her safe until he could get to her? He didn’t even know where to look.
But there was someone else he needed to find.
Someone he’d need help finding.
Sierra parked in the shade and rolled the back windows down halfway. With a warning look, she told Puck, “Remember this place? It wasn’t very nice for you here. Stay. In. The. Car. Okay, dude?”
She patted the door and ran up the cypress steps.
“Um, you’re welcome,” Kurt said, as she pushed past him in the doorway.
“Is Dale here?”
She’d tried to call him on her way into town, but he wasn’t answering his phone. Her best guess was that Lynette Guidry had gone to work to clear out things before she left. But Sierra couldn’t find anything about her online. No law firm bio page. Nothing that would tell her where Lynette worked.
“He got a call and left early. He said he’d be back, but I haven’t heard from him since.”
Dale showed up early and left late every single day. He didn’t have a lot of friends, except the folks at the monthly bird watch outings. The only calls in his cell phone log were to his mother’s nursing home, his brother in Oklahoma, Kurt, Sierra, and the Chinese place that delivered to the station.
“Have you ever known Dale to leave work early?”
Kurt frowned and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. “So?”
“Without telling anyone?”
He shook his head. “You’re blowing this out of proportion.”
“Wow, big word.” Sierra stuffed her keys in her pocket and put her phone on the desk so she could shuffle through Dale’s datebook and drawers. She made sure it was on silent and face down, in case she got another flurry of concerned texts from Marc. “Watch out, I might start thinking there’s actually a brain in that pincushion you call a head.”
“Whatever.” He pushed away from the wall. “You gonna lock up when you’re done?”
Sierra waved him off and continued to shuffle through the drawer, looking for anything that might have Dale’s address. If she could track down Dale, he might know where she could find Lynette. This would be a whole lot easier if he’d just answer his phone.
The door slammed shut behind Kurt, while Sierra examined an invoice for some personal items Dale had delivered to the station. Since he’d paid with his own credit card, she found his billing address near the top of the page.
“Bingo!”
Sierra ran out, flipping the lights off and locking the door behind her.
The moving guys had told her the owner left a note instructing them to load up the boxes in the garage. That left Lynette Guidry unaccounted for.
Lynette and Dale.
The fire had her paranoid. Or maybe it was that threatening email. Or maybe it was the fact that someone had tried to blow her up.
She flew out of the park and headed to Dale's house. Sierra tried to convince herself she would find him there. Hopefully, he was at a lecture, busy chatting afterward.
That was it. Dale was safe. A little forgetful for once in his life, but he was safe.
Sierra would have a heck of a time explaining why she was about to show up at his house to check on him, but Dale was safe and that was all that mattered.
If only she believed that.
22
Marc found out he'd need a technician from the gas company to sign-off that there wasn’t a leak before they’d reconnect his power and the main gas line. They also recommended that he replace the stove before using it again, even though the obvious cause was that all four knobs were turned on high. The thing was over ten years old, but Marc wasn’t worried about the stove.
Someone, possibly his own neighbor, had broken into his house. Someone had walked right in and turned on the gas. They could have killed him and Sierra.
Where the hell was Sierra?
Chloe’s top-down silver convertible pulled along the street.
“Thanks.” He met her at the passenger door. “I’d invite you in, but they’ve cut off the power, and, actually, I’m kind of in a hurry. Sierra’s sort of missing.” His words caught in his throat as he forced them out. “You didn’t have to d
rive out here. I was just wondering if you knew where your mom might be.”
He should probably make up some bogus reason why he was looking for Chloe’s mom, but his brain couldn’t manufacture anything that made sense.
“Get in.” She unlocked his door. “Hurry up.”
Marc wanted to ask where they were going, but something about the determined set of her jaw told him to sit down, shut up, and snap the seat belt in place. She drove the short distance to her mother’s driveway and left the car running.
“I’ll be just a second.” Her face softened a bit as she turned to Marc. “Then we’ll look for Sierra. I promise.”
Marc didn’t know what was going on, but he nodded in obedience. The moving truck had loaded and left, so Marc could see through the garage to where Chloe waited at the front door. She knocked a second time, then pulled a key chain from her tiny yellow purse and let herself in. A minute later, she returned.
“Not home?”
“No. Dark, quiet, and empty inside.” Her distraught expression returned.
“I was hoping you might know where I could find her. I…uh…had a question for her.”
A thousand questions.
Chloe threw the car in reverse and sped out of the driveway. Then she slammed to a halt at the end of the road and screeched out of the neighborhood.
He forced a laugh. “In a hurry?”
Chloe’s eyes were glued to the road ahead. She’d never gone even five minutes without smiling. He’d never seen her like this.
Actually, he had. Once.
Marc's mom had brought him and a pecan pie to Chloe’s house after her dad's funeral. Marc had slipped through the grown-ups to find Chloe sitting on the swing set left behind by the previous homeowners. She’d sat eerily still and quiet in that red vinyl seat, staring ahead at nothing.
He’d expected her to be upset. They’d just buried her father. Well, not her actual father, but the idea of him. They’d put an empty coffin in the ground with a picture of him inside it. Mrs. Guidry had told her kids and anyone who would listen that the farce had been necessary. Even though there had never been any evidence that the man had died. Even though Mrs. Guidry had told everyone that she believed he’d up and left them. She’d still insisted on a funeral. Her husband wasn’t coming back, she’d said, and burying his memory would give them all closure.
Chloe had that same look now that she’d had on that swing set so many years ago. She focused on the road and barely registered that Marc was in the car with her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Try Sierra again.”
Not a bad idea. “Nothing.”
“Where was she headed?” Chloe turned onto the interstate, heading toward Lafayette.
“She said something about not being able to find her boss. I don’t know what was going on, but I guess she went to check on him.”
“Where does she work?”
“The Nature Station. It’s on the north end of—”
“I know where it is,” Chloe said, her voice cold and sharp.
Marc had forgotten how her dad had spent every Saturday morning walking the trails and chatting with someone over there. That someone must have been Dale.
It took a lot of convincing to get the security guard at the campground gate to let them through. The guy knew Sierra, and he said her red Forerunner had torn out of there only a few minutes earlier. He wasn’t happy about it, but he let Marc and Chloe in to check the station.
Chloe parked close to the stairs and left the engine running. “Go up and check. I’ll wait here.”
Marc took the stairs two at a time until he reached the deck, only to find it locked. He knocked anyway. No answer.
He walked around the side and pressed his head against the glass window. He could only see what the dim outside floodlights illuminated. It was empty, but he spotted something on a cluttered desk: a phone with a bright orange case lying face down on a pile of papers. Sierra’s phone. That explained why she wasn’t answering.
On his way down the stairs, Chloe called out, “Found anything?”
“Just Sierra’s phone locked inside.”
Chloe frowned. “That’s not good. She had to be in a hurry to leave her phone like that.”
Marc laughed and got in the car. “She’s always in a hurry, and she’s always forgetting things. All that phone explains is that she was here and now she’s not. I have no idea how to find her.”
Chloe backed the car out of the gravel and drove toward the campground exit, avoiding the campers setting up for the night. “I already know where she went.”
“How?”
“She was looking for her boss, right?”
“Yeah, Dale.”
“We find Dale, we find Sierra.”
“Right.” Marc looked at Chloe, grateful she was there with him, even though he still had no idea why she was helping him. He’d never exactly been nice to her, and he sure as hell hadn’t ever helped her with anything. Facts he didn’t have time to feel guilty about but made a mental note to make right later. “Thanks. You don’t have to come with me. I can—”
“Yes, I do.”
“You keep saying that, but I don’t get why. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Marc stopped talking as he remembered her running into her mom’s house a few minutes ago. Then he remembered telling Sierra that he suspected Chloe’s mom and how Sierra said she already knew.
He looked at Chloe again, confusion and guilt making room in his brain for suspicion. “Or does it have something to do with you after all?”
Chloe kept her eyes focused on the road ahead.
“Let’s just find Sierra,” she said. “And we can hope I don’t have to explain the rest.”
Sierra rubbed her face and sat on Dale’s front step, holding Puck’s leash while he fertilized Dale’s azalea bushes. She felt desperate and defeated with no idea what to do next.
Dale was missing.
He wasn’t at his house. He wasn’t at the station. And it was too late for him to still be giving a lecture, if that’s what he’d actually left work for.
For half a second, she cursed herself for not checking the trails before leaving the park. What if he’d been lying in the middle of the woods with a broken leg or a snake bite or some other wound, bleeding to death alone in the dark. She’d never forgive herself for being so rash and stupid.
But she knew in her gut that wasn’t the case.
She rubbed her face and reminded herself that Kurt saw Dale leave after he got that call. If Dale had returned, he would have checked in with Kurt before hitting the trails, and his truck would be outside.
Why did he leave? Who had called him?
She knew exactly who had called him.
It wasn’t enough that she’d burned a house and had tried to blow up Marc and Sierra.
Now she’d taken Dale. Or hurt him. Or worse.
A shiver ran up Sierra’s back as she tried not to think of all the things that Lynette Guidry could have done to Dale.
Part of her wanted to drive to the other side of campus where her dad lived and curl up on his couch while he made jasmine green tea and asked if she’d been meditating and charting her dreams. He might even chant or light a candle for Dale. She’d sip her tea, wrap herself in a blanket, and maybe even say a prayer.
But none of that would solve anything.
Sierra pushed herself up from the step and stomped to her car. Whatever happened to Dale, she wouldn’t get answers sitting on his porch or lying on her dad’s couch.
Lynette Guidry might have emptied out of her house, but Sierra had a feeling she wasn’t done in that neighborhood yet. She’d tried to get Marc and Sierra out of there for a reason. She must have unfinished business on that family’s property.
“Come on, Puck.” She led him back to the car. “We’re going to get a few answers. And if she doesn’t give us any? You get to bite some ankles.”
23
Chloe knew w
hat street near campus Dale lived on but not which house, so they drove up and down that street, hunting for Sierra’s car with no luck.
They parked along the road and exited the convertible. If they could at least find Dale, he could tell them where Sierra went next. Maybe she was already on her way home safe.
“So the plan now is to go up and down the street knocking on doors asking where Dale lives?” Marc asked.
Chloe pointed a finger and her cold stare at a nearby house, hiked her skirt two inches higher, and knocked on the door. Less than five minutes later, they were standing on Dale’s front porch.
“How the hell did you do that? And what would you have done if some little old lady lived in that house? Were you gonna drop your phone in front of her too?” He flinched at his own words, realizing he sounded exactly like Adrien.
And for the first time, he also realized she didn’t need either of them. If he was learning one thing that night, it was that Chloe Guidry could take care of herself.
She rolled her eyes. “No curtains. No flowers in the garden beds. And a cardboard case of cheap beer sticking out of the trash can near the road. Student renters.”
He glanced back at the trash can. “Good eyes.”
“I’m a reporter, Marc. What did you expect?” she said. “Besides, it’s not like that required deep investigation. It was obvious.”
Before her promotion to editor of their publication covering fundraisers and fluffy profile pieces, Chloe had been a reporter. It was Marc’s own fault for forgetting that. And for underestimating her.
While he stood on the porch wondering what to do now, Chloe double-timed down the steps and ran to the back of the house.
What was it with the women around him? Fierce, feminist super sleuths. Both Sierra and now Chloe. He was glad Denise had left town for a while. He didn’t think he’d survive a third.
“Found anything?” he asked.
Chloe finished hopping from window to window, peeking in Dale’s house while he looked around for a hidden spare key. “No surprise. I figured he’d have this place tied up tight, even though I’m sure there’s nothing of real value inside.”
