Present Danger

by Susan Andersen

  Was the madness to begin all over again?

  Lola and Mary went with her to file a police report. She was, by then, convinced her caller was Wesley. Once the officer taking her report learned which college she was attending, however, he was equally certain they were dealing with the man harassing her fellow students.

  “In either case,” he finally said with strained patience the third time she attempted to argue with him about it, “the procedure works the same. Call this number and the tele-abuse line will tell you how to proceed.”

  “I have a restrainin’ order against my ex-husband,” Aunie informed the officer. “But it didn’t prevent him from beatin’ me black and blue once before. Can you at least promise you’ll respond quickly to a call for help from me if it does turn out to be him?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That I can do.” He scribbled a notation on her report. Resigned to the fact that it was probably the best she could hope for, Aunie rose. She offered her hand. “Thank you, officer. I appreciate your time.”

  He shook her hand, tipping his head politely. “Ma’am.”

  “Well, that was pretty much a waste of time,” she commented glumly once she, Lola, and Mary hit the street.

  “At least you have a case number,” Mary said with uncertain optimism.

  “Yes, I have that.” She squinted against the bright March sunshine, took a deep breath, and slowly expelled it. “So. I suppose my next step is to contact the telephone company.”

  Lola dug in her purse for a pair of dark glasses. “Let’s go get somethin’ hot to drink, woo-mon,” she suggested. “And something chocolate. We’ll find us a place that overlooks the mountains, have us a latte or tea, eat somethin’ fattenin’, and relax.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Aunie said, perking up. “Mary?”

  “You guys navigate and I’ll drive.”

  They ended up at a small restaurant in Post Alley across the street from the Pike Place Market. Over tea and decadently rich desserts, Lola asked, “You ever consider askin’ James for advice?”

  “No!” Aunie stated emphatically. Her prickly, hard-earned independence demanded she handle it herself. Then she amended truthfully, “Well… yeah, I did consider it. Briefly.”

  “The mon can be wickedly inventive when it come to handlin’ this sorta thing, Aunie.”

  “I know… or at least I’ve guessed as much,” Aunie admitted. “It’s those damn eyes of his …” She straightened defensively. “But he’s made it pretty darn clear what he thinks about me and my problems, Lola. And besides, I’m supposed to be learnin’ to stand on my own two feet.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t think I’ll be sayin’ anything to James Ryder about all this. I’ll deal with it on my own.”

  She girded herself for Lola’s argument, but to her surprise Lola merely shrugged and changed the subject.

  When Aunie got home, she called the tele-abuse line at the phone company. Upon reciting her police case number, she was told a trace would be put on her line and she was instructed to keep a precise record of the date and exact time of each suspicious call. She was further instructed to phone in her list of said calls each Friday. Once she’d hung up, she sat drumming her fingertips on the arm of the couch.

  She had a nasty feeling that too little was being done. She felt like a sitting duck and she detested the sensation. If her caller were Wesley—and she had an awful feeling it was—and if he were able to proceed in a natural progression that would advance him from step A: having traced her unlisted number, to step B: tracking down her actual address … Oh God.

  She was as good as dead.

  The total defeatism of that thought put the starch back in her spine, and she pushed out of her chair, pacing militantly back and forth in front of the fireplace. She had progressed a long way from the girl she’d once been. She’d discovered strengths in herself and a depth of intelligence she never would have guessed she possessed a little over a year ago.

  Bully for you. It doesn’t mean diddly if you can’t figure out a way to utilize your swell new accomplishments.

  She had gained a certain degree of competence, dammit, earned through hard work and trial and error. She was not a useless decoration, willing to sit still like a good little victim, just waiting to be attacked. Not again, not ever. She was damned if she was going to let Wesley’s sick obsession destroy everything for which she’d worked so diligently.

  That being the case, how did she go about preparing herself so she wouldn’t be a sitting duck?

  You’re a smart woman. Think!

  She chewed the skin around her thumbnail as she paced. Damn! If she were supposed to be so darn smart, then why was her brain working with such appalling sluggishness? The only thought that came readily to mind was that any confrontation with Wesley would have to be brought to her and as such would be out of his natural territory. She’d take any advantage she could secure, of course; but as a strategy it was a little on the passive side.

  Frankly, as a strategy, it was downright pitiful.

  When her doorbell rang, she was grateful for the interruption and jumped up enthusiastically to answer it. This searching for a workable solution was a lot like having a name on the tip of her tongue that she couldn’t quite recall. The harder she tried, the bigger the blank she drew. Perhaps if she shelved it for the moment, the solution would come to her.

  She opened the door, expecting to see Lola.

  Instead, it was James who lounged against her door frame. He was wearing a leather carpenter’s belt, riding low on his hips and bristling with tools. A drill was loosely clasped in one large hand. As she stared up at him in surprise, he slowly pushed away from the doorjamb.

  “Hi there, Magnolia Blossom,” he said with a lopsided smile as he strolled uninvited into her apartment. “Lola tells me you’ve been receiving a rash of nuisance calls.” He closed the door behind him, leaned back against it, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked down at her. The light in his moss green eyes made him appear even more of a rabble-rouser than usual.

  “So?” she inquired blankly.

  “So,” he stated, wagging the drill beneath her nose. “I’m here to take you in hand.”

  Aunie pushed the drill aside with a dainty fingertip. “Ah beg your pardon?”

  He grinned at her imperious tone. “You heard me. Lola said the cops think it’s the same person who’s been harassing some other students from your college, but you believe it’s Cunningham.”

  “Lola said a lot, apparently,” Aunie muttered. No wonder she hadn’t bothered to argue with her earlier in the afternoon about involving James. She probably hadn’t wanted to give Aunie the opportunity to flat-out forbid her to drag him into this. Aunie leveled her dark brown eyes on James’s. “Thank you very much for your concern,” she said coolly, “but I can handle this on my own.”

  “Uh huh,” he said agreeably and unlooped the cord to the drill. He extended the end to her. “Here, plug this in for me.”

  She ignored it and stood her ground to block his way, hands on her hips. “James, are you listenin’ to me? I said I appreciate your willingness to help, especially considering everything you’ve said to the contrary in the past, but…”

  “I want to do it my own self,” he concluded for her, making her sound like a recalcitrant four-year-old. He picked her up by the waist and moved her out of his way. Kneeling down, he plugged the drill into the wall socket, then straightened and fed out the cord to the front door. Hefting the drill in his right hand, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Come here.”

  “Now listen heah, Mistah Ry—”

  “Come here!” There was such authority in his voice that she found herself automatically taking several forward steps before she caught herself and stopped. By then, however, the damage had been done, for that involuntary response to his peremptory command had brought her within James’s range. He reached out a long arm and snagged her wrist in one rawboned fist, yanking her forward. “Now,” he said, grasping her shoul
ders and whirling her around to face the closed door, “stand still. I’m gonna measure for a peephole.”

  “Oh.” That wasn’t a bad idea. She probably would have thought of it herself… tomorrow.

  He shook his head in amazement as he bent down, leaning over her shoulder to make a pencil mark on the door. “Christ,” he muttered under his breath. “It’s a damn good thing I purchased the swiveling kind or all you’d see from this height would be a bunch of navels.”

  Aunie had been hearing comments about her lack of stature all her life and rarely had she allowed them to affect her one way or the other. There was, however, such a thing as timing, and James’s was somewhat less than fortunate. She was already feeling railroaded by the way he’d barged right in and taken over. The last thing she needed at the moment was to hear a sarcastic remark about her height.

  She whirled to face him, giving him an angry shove to the diaphragm that took him off guard and backed him up a pace or two. “Ah didn’t ask you here,” she spat out, “and I have no intention of putting up with you or your stupid comments.” She whipped open the front door, then grasped his forearm with both hands, fully intent on throwing him out of her apartment. “You can just get out of my home right now.”

  His bare arm. was warm beneath her gripping hands, hard with muscle, soft where the veins stood out, and rough with hair. It didn’t budge so much as an inch when she yanked on it. Aunie could have screamed in pure frustration.

  James looked down at her. He reached out his free hand and rubbed a calloused thumb over the arch of her cheekbone. “I’m sorry for that crack,” he apologized. “It was rude and uncalled-for.” Aunie felt somewhat mollified until he ruined it by adding, “Now back off, will ya? I’ve got work to do.”

  Reining in her anger, she sighed in defeat, accepting that he wouldn’t leave until he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do. She released his arm.

  James fished a flat case out of one of the pockets in his carpenter’s belt, selected a bit, and squatted down to fit it in the drill. Moments later, the scream of metal ripping through wood filled the apartment, along with a faint scent of sawdust. Aunie watched him work for a minute, then walked away, settling herself at the dining room table to study.

  She heard the front door open and close awhile later and thought he had left. A moment later, however, she heard the door reopen, a soft rumble of wheels, and then the high-powered whine of a shop vac. She decided he must be cleaning up.

  James stuck his head in the room. “All done,” he said. “Want to come check it out?”

  Aunie ignored him.

  “Guess not.” He stepped into the room. “I suppose my chances of being offered a beer are pretty slim, huh?”

  She ignored that, too.

  “You gonna sulk all night?”

  Her head snapped up. “I am not sulking!”

  “Of course you aren’t,” he agreed, resting a hip against the table and bending down to finger her lower lip. “This is always pouting out to here.”

  She slapped his hand away, shoved back her chair with a screech and stood. Going to the kitchen, she retrieved a Dos Equis from the refrigerator, popped the cap, and returned to the dining area, slapping the bottle down on the table next to him. “Here” she said. “It’s to go.”

  He pulled out a chair, whirled it around, and straddled it. Taking a long draw on his beer, he held the bottle loosely between both hands and looked at her. “Why are you so mad?”

  “Because you’re just like every damn man I’ve ever met,” she spat. “They all think I’m either too stupid or too helpless to do anything for myself.”

  A muscle in his jaw jumped. After hearing about some of the men in her life, he wasn’t exactly thrilled to be lumped together with them. “I don’t think you’re stupid at all,” he said evenly, “and if you’d climb down off your high horse and let me help, I could teach you ways to minimize your helplessness.” When she didn’t immediately snap his head off, he asked, “What have you come up with so far? How do you plan to handle the situation?”

  Oh God, he would have to ask. “Wesley’s goin’ to have to bring the confrontation to me,” she said softly.

  “Presuming it’s him.”

  “It is. At least … the probability that it’s him is a lot greater than that of it bein’ the Campus Caller or some other stranger. Well, actually,” she amended truthfully, “I did opt for the stranger theory until I found out that my lawyer’s office had been broken into. But not now.” When he didn’t argue, she continued, “Anyhow, it won’t be in Wesley’s natural territory this time. It’ll be in mine, and I’m gonna work on leanin’ it well.” She waited for him to scoff at her feeble plan.

  “Damn straight,” he agreed to her surprise. “And I can help. I was born and bred here.” When she didn’t snap up his generous offer but sat there staring at him with those big, brown, noncommittal eyes, he said in a surly tone, “You say you aren’t stupid, right? If you’re so damn smart, then act like it. Just stow your effin’ independence for a while and accept all the help you can get. The trick is to survive.”

  She pursed her lips. “I’ll think about it.”

  Christ, she was stubborn. James surged to his feet, grabbed Aunie’s elegant little chin in one hand, and tilted her face up. “You do that,” he instructed crisply. “You think about it long and hard.”

  He released her and stalked out of the room. Aunie could hear him gathering his tools together and then, a moment later, the click of the front door shutting softly behind him.

  Once she was sure he was gone, she immediately got up to inspect her new peephole.

  CHAPTER 12

  She had the opportunity to try it out first thing the following morning. The doorbell rang as she was tossing texts and notebooks into her book bag. Stopping only long enough to slip on a pair of shoes, she crossed to the door and peered through the peephole. She was greeted by the sight of a male chest and she quickly adjusted the swivel upward. James’s face was slightly distorted but still readily recognizable.

  She opened the door. “Now what do you want?” she demanded ungraciously. “I’m on my way out.”

  “Yeah, I figured as much,” he replied equably. “I wanted to catch you before you left. I need your key.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m gonna run some wires in here for an alarm.”

  She immediately forgot her resentment over the way he was assuming command of her life. “Really? How will it work?”

  “You got time for an explanation?” he inquired dryly.

  “Oh!” She looked down at her watch. “No. Rats, I don’t.” She handed him her key. “How am I supposed to get back in?”

  “This is not a speedy procedure, Magnolia,” he responded dryly. “It’s gonna take me awhile. Buzz up here when you get home and I’ll release the front door lock for you. If I’m gone, buzz Lola and get her spare key. I would have gotten it myself, but she and Otis aren’t home right now. Besides, I knew you’d have a tizzy if I let myself in without asking.”

  “I think you’ve got that backwards, James. I’m not the one who got all bent out of shape the last time someone entered an apartment without permission.” Without waiting for a response, she grabbed her cashmere jacket, picked up her book bag, and sailed out the door.

  James watched her depart, then shook his head and closed the door behind her with a low, sardonic laugh. Trust her to remind him of that.

  The moment Lola had informed him about this newest travail in Aunie’s life—the phone calls and Aunie’s belief that her ex-husband was responsible for them—he’d been resigned to taking a hand in its resolution. He might have fought against his involvement in her problems from the first day they’d met, but somewhere in the back of his mind he’d always known that, one way or another, he was going to be roped into them.

  She needed taking care of, and knowing that, he was incapable of leaving her twisting in the wind. It wasn’t, as she had suggested yesterday, because he c
onsidered her too brainless to fend for herself. She was about as bright as they came. What she wasn’t, however, was notably streetwise; and if she weighed in at an ounce over a hundred pounds, he would eat his shorts. He’d seen how well she’d fared the last time she had come up against Wesley in a physical confrontation. He was determined to do everything in his power to improve her odds should the man ever turn up seeking a second round.

  Whether little ol’ Magnolia Blossom liked it or not.

  Hell, he was resigned to doing what needed to be done, and once having accepted the necessity of taking her in hand, he found it slightly irritating that she wasn’t equally as accepting. Wasn’t he backing down on every single vow he’d ever made—loudly and publicly—to remain uninvolved? Yes, he was, dammit, and the least she could do in return was not fight him every damned step of the way. It was her ass he was attempting to save here.

  James spread out his plans on her dining room table. He’d been up until nearly three A.M. the night before working on them, but he counted the little bit of lost sleep worthwhile, for he was pretty pleased with the final result. Old Wesley was in for a surprise if he arrived here expecting to find Aunie all alone and helpless.

  His main dilemma had been whether to put sirens in each hallway that were loud enough to turn Wesley on his ear once the switch was flipped or to go for the silent alarm method. He’d talked it over with Otis and ultimately they had opted for a signal that would sound in both their apartments without alerting Wesley. They had agreed that the man was unstable enough already. No telling how he’d respond to an obvious alarm, and they sure as hell didn’t want to risk precipitating an action in which Aunie would be the ultimate loser.

  The corner of his drawing began to curl inward and James picked up Aunie’s little laptop computer and used the edge of it to anchor it. After studying the plan, he let himself out of her apartment and went to gather the tools be would need from his basement workshop. Once he had everything assembled, he made a pot of coffee and set to work.