by Dana Marton
“Watching Kate. I want to get into Betty’s place.”
“You got a search warrant?”
“I’m telling you, something about that place bugged me when I was there to help with the cleaning.”
“You try to sell that to the judge. The hamburger wrapper had no usable prints, by the way. The results just came back.”
“And who would eat a hamburger with gloves on? Then there’s Emma saying she saw Betty’s ghost in the kitchen window the night after Betty had died.”
“Broslin PD doesn’t investigate ghosts.”
“I’m not Broslin PD.”
“Take that thought and meditate on it.”
“Emma is gone. I’m not going to let the bastard take Kate too.”
Bing said nothing for a couple of seconds, then a couple more. The silence was followed by a sigh that indicated his strong suspicion that he expected to regret whatever he was going to say next. “Linda Gonzales has the key. As police, I can’t go in without a warrant. As someone who was there helping with packing things up, if you need to go back in for something completely unrelated to police business and Linda gave you the key…”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. She isn’t home. Her daughter collected her this afternoon to celebrate her grandson’s birthday in Trenton. She won’t be back until tomorrow morning.” Bing paused. “Hold on. Sophie is calling. I have to take that.”
Murph drove straight to Kate’s place. He didn’t relax until he saw her through the window, crossing her kitchen.
Mike sat behind the wheel in his cruiser by the curb, wide awake, not on his phone, alert and looking around, to his credit. He rolled his window down when he saw Murph walking up. “Nothing out of the ordinary so far.”
“No movement around Betty’s house?”
“Nothing. I’ve been watching the place like it’s the last doughnut in the break room. A dog was barking in one of the backyards a little while ago. I got out and walked around, but didn’t see anyone.” A glint sparked in his eyes. “Hey, do you know why the snowman named his dog Frost?”
“Why?”
“Because it bites.”
Murph covered his face with a hand as he shook his head. “You should ask Harper to host an open-mic night over at Finnegan’s.”
Mike shrugged. “He doesn’t appreciate my jokes. Lost all sense of humor now that he’s in loooooove.”
“What? He had a sense of humor before that?”
The two of them shared a laugh before Murph said, “Thanks for keeping watch. I’ll look around too. Just in case.”
He headed over to Betty’s place, passing the OPEN HOUSE sign on the front lawn—noon to 3:00 p.m. the next day. Things were moving fast.
He checked the front door. Locked. Windows. Locked. Back door. Locked.
No scratches on the wood anywhere, no sign of any locks being jimmied, no forced entry. Every piece of glass he came across, he looked through. Enough moonlight filtered inside so that he could see shadows—furniture that hadn’t been removed yet. Nothing moved. None of the shadows were man shaped.
The house felt deserted. Had Murph thought otherwise, he might have bent the law and pushed his way in there.
He walked back to his truck with a wave to Mike. Then he drove around to the next street over to talk to Chase.
* * *
Kate
Kate couldn’t sleep. She stared at the ceiling and cried, then swore alternately.
Oh God, Emma. I love you. Be safe, please.
Asael coming back was her worst nightmare. That and someone she loved getting hurt. And not a damn thing she could do about it.
This was exactly what she’d been trying to avoid, why she’d spent years on the run.
She tossed and turned.
She almost, almost, called Murph. But if Asael was here and he was after people Kate cared about, then she’d do best to stay as far away from Murph as possible. She didn’t want to paint a target on his back.
If anything happened to him… She couldn’t bear finishing the thought.
Was she being stupid holding him off?
Maybe she was being stupid.
They needed to talk. She just needed to share her fears and doubts with him.
After Emma was found.
Kate couldn’t think past that right now. Right now, finding her sister was everything. The only thing.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Murph
Murph spent the night guarding Kate’s house from the outside, circling her block over and over. When the sun came up and the new shift started to arrive to watch her, he went home to catch a couple of hours sleep, then he showered, caffeinated, and drove to Linda Gonzales’s house bleary-eyed. He hoped Linda was home from her visit with her daughter early.
Nobody answered the doorbell.
While Murph waited, he called the captain. “Any news on Emma?”
“Would have called you if we had anything.” Bing sounded as if Murph had woken him from a deep sleep. “We’ll keep looking. Got into Betty Gardner’s house?”
“Waiting for Linda to come home.”
“Let me know if you find anything.”
Murph promised, then ended the call because a blue minivan was rolling up the driveway.
“Oh, you don’t need a key, hon,” Linda told him once he presented his request. “Open house today. Realtor is probably over there already, setting up. She said she’d go early, see if she could do something to put the place in the best light. I think they usually bake cookies to make a house smell nice, don’t they?”
Murph had no idea. “Things are moving fast,” he commented. “That’s good, I suppose. Closure.”
Linda pressed her lips together. She blinked, then shook her head, struggling for words.
“You must miss her.”
“We had a lot in common. I could talk about anything with Betty. She read a lot, listened to NPR, watched PBS. She used to be a teacher. She had an opinion on everything. Read romances, like I do. We used to swap books.” Linda teared up.
“I don’t read a lot of romance novels,” Murph told her, “but if you need help with anything else, you let me know.”
“You’re a good man.” Linda patted his arm. “Tell Kate I said hi and thank her for me for all her help. You snap that girl up and marry her.”
“Working on it,” Murph said, then he went on his way.
Mike sat in a cruiser outside Kate’s house, with bags under his eyes, looking decidedly worse for wear.
“Not a mouse stirring last night,” he said when Murph walked up to him.
Murph looked up the walkway, toward Kate’s front door.
“You gonna talk to her this time? Or just shoot more pining glances?”
“Give my greetings to your amazing girlfriend.”
“Not funny. It’s not a sin to be single. My moment will come. It will be love at first sight. We will marry immediately and live happily ever after.”
“Hey, Linda Gonzales is looking for someone to swap romance novels with.” Then, since Mike started to roll up his window, Murph quickly added, “Why are you still here?”
“Harper had to wait for the liquor delivery at Finnegan’s to sign for it. His parents are out of town. The truck broke down, so everyone’s running late. But he just called to let me know he’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“Thank you for keeping an eye on Kate.”
Mike nodded, somewhat mollified, before he closed the window all the way. That he hadn’t cracked a single joke spoke to how exhausted he was.
Murph walked over to Betty’s house, knocked on the front door, and was let in.
The Realtor was a pretty young woman, wearing a rose-hue business suit. He didn’t know her. Then again, he didn’t know everyone in Broslin. New people moved in all the time. The town had a blue-ribbon school district, and it was an all-around great place to live.
“Mila.” She offered her hand and a welcoming smile. “Come on in. Interested in the h
ouse?”
“Hi. Murph Dolan. Interested, but not in buying. I’m working with the local police on a case as a civilian consultant. Do you think I could quickly walk through the place?”
Her smile fell. She glanced past him, through the window, at Mike’s police cruiser by the curb. She sighed. “This is going to be terrible for business today.”
“I could call the next shift and ask them to come in an unmarked car.”
Her face lit up again. “Could you, please?”
Murph pulled out his phone and texted Harper. A second later, Harper texted back. No problem.
“All set.”
Mila stepped aside. “Look at anything you’d like. But if anyone else shows up early, please pretend you’re just another prospective buyer.”
“Want me to say I love it so much, I’m offering full price?” Murph joked. “Bid it up a bit?”
She laughed. “Thank you, but no. That would be cheating.”
He left her at the door and walked straight through to the laundry room in the back, inspected the lock on the inside. Same as on the outside, no sign of tampering. And the key hadn’t been stolen. It was hanging on a peg on the wall. Murph even tested it to make sure it was the right key.
Then he hung it back up, stood in the middle of the room, and looked around. Nothing out of place. And yet, his cop instincts kept prickling.
As he turned to leave, the window caught his eye. The orientation of the window, more specifically. He looked out. Kate’s bedroom window was directly across, he realized when she appeared behind the glass, wrapped in a towel. Her curtains were open to only a small gap, no more than six inches, but it was enough. Their gazes locked.
She shook her head, her tightening eyes transmitting What the hell, Murph? as clearly if she’d spoken.
He drew up his shoulders in a way he hoped conveyed Sorry, didn’t mean to be a Peeping Tom.
She snapped the curtains closed.
Right. He had no idea what to do about her anymore. Lately, it seemed no matter what he did, he’d just screw up. Which was why he hadn’t gone in to talk to her the night before.
He checked the laundry room again, without finding any sign that Asael had ever been in there, then he walked out the back to inspect the ten or so feet of grass separating Betty’s house from Kate’s.
No footprints that he could see. No cigarette butts or gum wrappers or any other random garbage under Kate’s bedroom window, or anywhere else, no sign that anyone had been out there lately.
He walked around to Kate’s front door, then knocked. They couldn’t not talk forever.
She opened up, fully dressed, her cheeks tinged with red from obvious anger, her eyes narrowed to slits.
“No!” she said, but stepped back to let him in.
Hunter rose from a chair by the kitchen table, leaving his mug of coffee behind. He nodded at Murph, gauged the density of tension in the air, then strode off toward the back of the house mumbling, “Gotta use the bathroom.”
Coward.
Then they were alone, the sudden storm that had risen in the foyer intensifying by the second.
Before Murph could ask what was wrong, Kate put her hands on her hips and stuck her chin out. “You are not buying that house.”
What house?
“You are not moving in next door to keep an eye on me. This is not normal. This is not healthy. This is exactly why I asked for time and space.”
“Kate—”
“This is not space! You can’t live next door.”
“Kate—”
“Dammit, Murph. This is exactly what I didn’t want. Why can’t you listen to me?”
And she went on. And on. The protest died on Murph’s lips. He took her in, the red-hot fury, that pitch in her voice that said she was nearly in tears. She was stressed to the max, and he was part of it.
Did she really see him as a stalker? Was she this desperate to push him away? Was what he felt completely one-sided?
He wanted to be with her. But if her answer was no, which it was, loudly and emphatically… A no was a no.
Hell, if one of the staff at work came to him, told him an ex wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t walk away, kept stopping by almost every day to check on her… Murph would have had a talk with the guy, explained to the asshole that stalking was a crime.
And in this case…
He was the asshole of Kate’s story.
Shit.
If this was how she felt, then it was time for him to go. And not just for her sake, but for himself too. He was tired of the two-step distance. He was tired of holding his breath, waiting for her to decide she wanted him. He was tired of walking on his knees.
He was tired period, exhausted from a long night of guard duty, short on patience due to the lack of sleep.
He held up his hands, palms out. “Okay. You know what? You’re right. I haven’t been giving you space. But I’m going to do that now. I’m going to give you all the space you want.”
Then he turned and opened the door, looked over his shoulder and held her gaze. “This is me, walking away.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kate
There it was. Murph mad at her. Really, truly mad.
Kate hadn’t thought anything could make her feel worse, but she’d been wrong.
Her throat burned with repressed emotions as she stood in her foyer and stared at the closed front door.
God, it was a shit day. After a sleepless night, a call from Cirelli had woken her, to let Kate know that the FBI still had no idea where Asael or Emma were. Then a call from Captain Bing with an identical update.
Emma had been missing for over twenty-four hours.
Kate knew what that meant.
She’d cried in the shower. Coming out to find Murph looking through her freaking bedroom window was more than she could take. She’d lost it. And he walked away.
Murph finally did what she’d been asking of him for months. Left her alone. Gave her space.
Kate couldn’t breathe.
Hunter came back from the bathroom. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Kate held on to her emotions with an iron grip as she turned. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I think I’ll go back to bed and lie down for an hour.”
She wasn’t going into work. Her house was easier to secure than the rehab center. Also, ultimately, Asael wanted her. She had no doubt the assassin was behind Emma’s disappearance. The police and FBI could have their doubts, but Kate had none at this stage.
In the end, Asael would come for her. And she didn’t want to draw him someplace where others could get hurt; she didn’t want him anywhere near her patients.
She avoided Hunter’s eyes. “Could you please wake me up if there’s any news?”
“Of course. Go get some rest.”
She closed her bedroom door behind her. Then she stood there, her back pressed against the wood. She couldn’t hold the tears back, or the pitiful choking noises that escaped her throat.
She hurried into her bathroom and closed that door too before she gave her emotions free rein.
She cried in big, heaving, ugly sobs.
About Emma, first of all, who was in the clutches of a killer. Her baby sister whom Kate was supposed to protect. Oh God, Emma.
Kate’s role had always been to be the big sister who sheltered the baby from the monster who’d given them birth. She’d protected Emma in foster care too, until they’d been adopted by a good family, until they were finally safe. Taking care of Emma had kept Kate alive, gave her young life purpose. If it hadn’t been for Emma, she would have run away—had thought about it a dozen times—ended up on the street. Then she would have been dead, because how long would a ten-year-old possibly make it sleeping in abandoned buildings and parks, with predators on the prowl at night?
Kate had kept Emma safe, and keeping Emma safe had saved Kate. But then Kate had let down her guard. You couldn’t do that. It was never safe. You relaxed for a second and that
was when the worst happened.
She couldn’t trust happiness with Murph. Because what if she allowed herself to be happy with him, and then something terrible happened to him? Because that was life. Nobody was ever safe.
Something terrible could happen to Murph, like it just happened to Emma.
Murph walking away was for the best. Even if it didn’t feel like that at the moment. Even if right now, Kate’s heart was in a thousand shattered pieces.
She dropped onto the edge of the tub and buried her face in her hands.
She sobbed so wretchedly, sniffed so loudly, that she almost didn’t hear her phone ping in her pocket.
Multimedia message from an unknown number.
The type of call she would normally ignore, but this time she clicked so fast the movement, was a blur. She held her breath. Blinked away tears so she could see.
A photo flashed onto her screen, a woman’s hand bound with a plastic tie at her lower back, the skin red and raw, showing obvious signs that she’d struggled.
Kate would have recognized Emma’s hands even without the turquoise turtle ring. Their fingernails were shaped the same.
Her breath whooshed out, her chest constricting. Her fingers trembled as she tried to scroll, but there was nothing more, no message, not even a single word.
She pushed to her feet and stepped toward the door on liquid knees, light-headed. She had to show the photo to Hunter, forward it to Captain Bing and Cirelli. And Murph.
Because Murph would help. No matter what. He was probably out there right now, looking for Emma. It hadn’t even occurred to Kate that he would stop, regardless of the breakup. But she stopped in front of the bathroom door and didn’t open it. Didn’t call out to Hunter. Didn’t send anyone anything. She laid her forehead against the wood instead and tried to slow the thoughts racing through her anguished mind.
Asael wanted her. He didn’t really want Emma. He was using Emma as bait. He was using Emma to scare Kate, to make her desperate, to lure her to him.
The second photo pinging onto her phone, an eye with a fresh bruise, confirmed Kate’s fears. Emma’s eye, looking straight into the camera, defiant, as if saying Don’t you worry about me.
