Twisted Threads (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 3)

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Do you sell Elias Burton’s art?” he asked.

  “Occasionally a small watercolor. His oils are higher priced than we go. You’ve seen his work?”

  “Yeah, in the window of that gallery next door to the Sea Watch Café.”

  “And you coveted.”

  “I’d have bought one of his paintings if it had been a couple of hundred dollars.”

  She really laughed at that, making him feel as if his feet were hardly touching the beach. He sensed she didn’t laugh often anymore, if she ever had.

  When she said she needed to turn back, he circled with her. They talked less on the way back; even he’d worked up a good sweat despite the chilly ocean breeze, and he was content with the progress he’d made.

  He wanted to ask where Mr. Drake was, but didn’t. She’d been reluctant to get personal at all. If he pushed too hard, too fast, she’d pull back into her shell like a clam. There was time, he told himself. Proximity of a sort, with them right next door to each other.

  He speeded up, and she matched him. Only when he judged they were maybe half a mile from their starting point did he slow to a jog. She got ahead before she noticed and followed suit. When they finally stopped, she bent over, hands on her thighs, and gasped for breath. Tiny tendrils of hair stuck to her temples and forehead, and she was bright red. He could have run a little harder, a little farther, but had had a decent workout and the satisfaction of company.

  Plus, he’d inserted a small wedge in the door she’d carelessly left open.

  “Ugh,” she said finally, straightening and pushing hair back from her forehead. “That was farther than I usually go.”

  He smiled crookedly at her. “Competitive, are you?”

  “I’d have called it pride.”

  “That’s a positive spin,” he teased.

  As they started toward the dunes, she stole a look at him. “The murder you told me about. Do you think you’re getting anywhere?”

  Sean opened his mouth to issue his usual line. We’re pursuing leads. Only they didn’t have any. And he found he didn’t want to be evasive with her.

  “Don’t repeat this,” he said, “but no. Nobody saw anything. The guy came and went unseen, and didn’t leave much of anything behind.” More like nothing. “The victim was an attorney, which means he probably made a lot of people mad along the way. We don’t have access to his files, but even if we did...” He hesitated.

  “Knowing who was mad at him might not help, because lots of people get mad at an attorney but don’t kill him.”

  “And if they did, it would likely be an enraged outburst, not a carefully planned, cold-blooded murder.”

  When the path narrowed, he let Emily go ahead of him. They had momentarily lost sight of the ocean, although he could still see and smell it. He felt as if he was in a maze, twining between sand dunes that were tufted with beach grass and a surprising variety of other plants, too. He recognized the shrubby growth of beach knotweed and a clump of lupine. Mostly, he looked at the woman in front of him. He liked the view from the front, but this was as good, especially with skin-tight pants that let him see every flex of muscle. She had an amazing ass and amazing legs. He itched to wrap that thick, dark braid around his hand, too.

  Damn, he was getting aroused, and even the jockstrap he wore under thin sweatpants wouldn’t hide an erection.

  Murder, he told himself desperately. Think about murder. Because he had a bad feeling that Emily would take offense if she saw him with a hard-on now. He wouldn’t get near her again. And Sean wanted very much to get close to her. Often.

  Unless it turned out she had, say, an invalid husband secreted away in her house. Or what if she’d stayed behind when her husband took a temporary job of some kind overseas? Hell, what if he was National Guard, currently deployed?

  Damn it, he needed to just ask.

  She turned her head to give him a shy glance over her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  She was sorry? Because she really was married? It took him a couple of beats to get it. Murder. That’s what they’d been talking about. She was sorry because his investigation was going nowhere.

  “I don’t like the idea of anyone getting away with a crime like that.”

  They popped out at their cars. “But sometimes people do,” she said.

  He couldn’t deny it.

  She took her car key from a pocket that had been invisible and unlocked her car. “Thank you for the company.”

  “Even if you didn’t want it?”

  She had the oddest expression on her face as she stared at him for a moment too long. “I...enjoyed myself more than I expected to,” she said at last.

  “If I’m home the next time you want to go for a run, knock on my door. I try to go at least four days a week. I liked the company, too.” He hesitated, not wanting to ruin the beach for her, but needing to say this. “Plus, it’s pretty isolated over here for a woman alone.”

  “I’ve never had trouble before.”

  “And you probably won’t.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She yanked her door open. “Way to kill a mood.”

  Contrite, he said, “I’m sorry. Cops tend to have a dark view of the world.”

  Her shoulders eased and she sighed. “I understand.” She slid behind the wheel before giving him a last, grave look. “Me, I’m fatalistic. It’s one reason I don’t worry. I wouldn’t kill myself, but if it happened...I don’t think I’d mind.” And then she closed the door, started her engine, and drove away without so much as glancing his way again.

  Stunned, Sean stayed where he was for a long time.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Emily knotted the thread and pulled the needle through the quilt top, tugging until the tiny knot disappeared beneath the surface. Then she cut off the thread, pushed the needle into her pin cushion, and let herself sit for a minute without moving, her eyes closed. She didn’t need to study the quilt in the frame; the image was on the back side of her eyelids. It was queen-size, a Wedding Ring quilt she’d hand-pieced. Tiredness blurred her thoughts. Yes, she might be able to fall asleep now.

  She turned out lights as she went, then stripped and pulled on her usual flannel pajama pants and too-large T-shirt. She had always worn pajamas on the rare occasions when Tom was away, not in bed to warm her. She’d had them on the night the police came to the door, and worn them every night since.

  Don’t, she told herself sharply. If she thought about Tom, or even worse, about Cody, she’d never sleep. She knew better than to do this to herself.

  But, of course, it was too late. A fine tension in her body told her she’d already lost the hard-won sense of peace she’d won by placing hundreds – no thousands – of stitches.

  Nonetheless, she slid between the sheets on her side of the bed. In the first year, she had quite often found in the morning that she’d gravitated to Tom’s side, seeking his heat and solidity but never finding it. She had done that less and less often, until she sometimes felt an invisible barrier down the middle of the bed. It made her think of early sitcoms, when Mom and Dad slept in twin beds and the watcher was never encouraged to so much as imagine the pair entwined on one. Half of her bed was now lost to her, along with the man who had occupied it. Was her half even as wide as a twin bed?

  She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. She tried to make herself think about fabric, or an abstract quilt she was presently piecing, or the dark woodland quilt taking shape in her mind. But that didn’t work, so she watched herself feeding fabric beneath the foot on her sewing machine as the needle rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell. Or perhaps gathering layers onto her needle. The minute detail of the work was sometimes sleep-inducing.

  But instead she saw herself running on the beach with a man at her side, effortlessly pacing her. Of course he could have gone faster and farther, and she knew why he hadn’t. She’d seen the way he looked at her from the first time their eyes met, his slightly narrowed and possessing that intensity. He want
ed her.

  She’d done so well keeping her distance until the day she saw him weary and disturbed. And today, she’d been too polite to say, “I’m sorry, but I do prefer to run alone.”

  You can start with me if you want. Really? What had she thought he’d do? Jog half a mile with her and then wave casually and turn on the after-burners? What she’d convinced herself was bare civility had really been something else, and being polite had nothing to do with it. She had surrendered to temptation.

  Because he did tempt her. Lying here in the dark, this was the first time she’d let herself acknowledge a dangerous truth. She was attracted to the man next door. A man who wore a badge and gun, who daily made decisions that could destroy people’s lives. He could be hard, she knew, lacking in compassion. All she had to do was remember how angry he’d been at a girl who’d been only slightly more foolish than other girls her age.

  Yes, but she’d seen other, powerful emotions surging beneath his surface disgust. He hadn’t signed off at the end of his shift - did detectives have shifts? - and left the searching to others. He’d been determined to find her, save her. Would have done anything to do just that, Emily suspected, and he’d have been devastated if the poor girl had been found dead.

  Emily hadn’t so much as set eyes on him in two days now. She hadn’t been consciously trying to tell him she was unavailable, but apparently her subconscious had taken over the job. Unfortunately, the memory of what she’d said still made her cringe. She was surprised he hadn’t placed her under some kind of suicide watch.

  I did say I wouldn’t kill myself.

  For Pete’s sake, she’d been out there to do aerobic exercise to keep her body strong.

  Did it matter what he thought? Evidently what she told him had worked to scare him off, and that’s what mattered. He might...draw her, but she didn’t have anything left to give another person. It was all she could do to make it through a day. A full night’s sleep still, after four years, eluded her.

  Something crashed.

  Emily bolted upright, fear pulsing through her. That had been in the house – the living room or kitchen. Without conscious thought, she leapt from bed and rushed to close her bedroom door, for what good that did when there was no lock. Her head turned wildly. The dresser. She rushed to the far side of it and shoved it in front of the door, even knowing its bulk would barely slow someone down. An antique, it wasn’t very large; in fact, because it lacked the mirror that had once been attached, the top fit neatly beneath the doorknob. There was nothing larger or heavier in the room except the bed.

  I’m being ridiculous.

  Had she left the iron too close to the edge of the board? This was an old house. The aging timbers could have...shifted. Sighed. Made the iron topple.

  The effort to calm herself failed. No shifting of timbers would send something as heavy as the iron thudding to the floor. Anyway, the sound hadn’t been only a thud. It was if someone had fallen over…what? The rocking chair? The quilt frame that filled the middle of the room? The ironing board itself? If a burglar had broken in, without turning on a flashlight he wouldn’t have known her living room was really a workroom.

  Even as her mind raced, she stood, completely rigid, staring at the door. She still wanted to believe she’d overreacted. Could the crash even have been outside?

  But her body, stiff with fear, knew what her mind wouldn’t accept. Her breath backed up in her lungs. The light in here was scant, but her eyes had adjusted enough for her to focus on the doorknob.

  No, no. Whoever had broken in was undoubtedly long gone. He would assume she’d dialed 911 by now. Oh, God, she should have.

  She almost whimpered but wouldn’t let herself make a sound. She’d set her phone on the kitchen counter earlier and never given it another thought. If it had been here at her bedside, would she have called anyway? What if the police came, found something silly – raccoons had gotten into her garbage can? – and she caught them rolling their eyes?

  It might make sense to call in the morning once she saw what had really happened.

  The doorknob turned and the door hit the dresser, which shook and moved an inch or two.

  Emily screamed, shoved the dresser hard against the door again and bolted to the room’s single window. The ancient wood frame groaned as she shoved it up. The whole time she was looking over her shoulder. Something – no, someone – slammed into the door, scraping the dresser across the wood floor. In a frantic rush, she pushed the screen off, slung her leg over the sill and threw herself forward, over the azalea that grew beneath her window and onto the cold, damp grass. She scrambled to her feet and ran for the single gate in the six foot fence, still screaming.

  It opened before she reached it.

  Her scream seemed to bubble in her throat and she stumbled back.

  *****

  “Emily! It’s me.” Sean grabbed her arm to keep her upright. “Sean.”

  “Oh, my God,” she whimpered.

  “What is it?”

  “Someone...in my house.”

  He shoved his phone at her. “Hide behind a bush. Call 911. Tell them I’m in there.”

  Then, gun in his hand, he ran toward her window, leaping to hook his elbows over the sill. With a single heave, he rolled to her floor and to his feet, Glock extended before him. Her bedroom door gaped open, a dresser standing askew in the middle of the room. Her small closet had no space for a man to hide.

  He didn’t turn on a light. Instead, he slipped into the hall and moved silently down it with his body turned sideways to minimize the target he made. He didn’t hear so much as a whisper of sound.

  Another bedroom door, closed. Small bathroom, empty. A cool breeze moved over him as he stepped into what he assumed was the living room. He moved slowly, carefully, seeing odd shapes looming everywhere.

  The window that looked toward his house was wide open. The blinds had been raised, and when he leaned out slightly, he saw the screen propped against the siding.

  No movement.

  Of course the intruder was gone. After the ear-splitting screams, he’d have heard Sean’s voice. Even so, Sean cleared the house, remaining cautious. Through a door off the kitchen, he found a washer and dryer and, incongruously, a treadmill with a laundry basket left sitting on it. Finally, he turned on the porch light and let himself out the front door at the same time as he heard an approaching siren. He hadn’t heard another vehicle. He turned his head, scanning the street and every deeper shadow. Rounding the house to the gate, he raised his voice just enough to be heard in her back yard. “Emily! It’s okay. He’s gone.”

  She crept from a mass of shrubs along the fence. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.” He met her mid-lawn, and yanked her into his arms, as much for his sake as hers.

  For a moment she stayed stiff, even straining away from him. He was about to accept her resistance and let her go when she suddenly sagged, grabbed onto him, and laid her head in the crook between his neck and shoulder. Then she shook, her fingers biting into the bare flesh on his back. Through her thin T-shirt, he felt the thunder of her heartbeat, matched by his own. He didn’t remember ever being as scared as he was when that first scream tore him from his sleep. He’d known instantly it had to be her.

  The patrol car pulled up in front and the siren abruptly cut out.

  Sean rubbed his cheek against her dark hair, inhaling a scent he knew he’d forever associate with her. It was herbal, he thought: thyme or rosemary and possibly lavender. “Emily,” he murmured. “The police are here. We need to go talk to them. Take a look and see if we can tell exactly what happened.”

  She went utterly still. He felt her gathering herself before she straightened. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said in a shaken voice that told him how embarrassed she was. “I don’t know why I was…clutching you.”

  “You were taking momentary comfort from another human being,” he answered, sharper than he should have.

  “I...yes. Of course. I’m sor�
��” This time she cut herself off.

  Knowing some of his anger was a rebound from fear, he kept his mouth shut, only laying his hand on her back to guide her through the gate.

  “I’m Detective Holbeck,” he called. “BCSD, here with the homeowner.”

  A uniformed officer with his hand on the butt of his still holstered weapon crossed the front lawn to meet them. Sean suppressed a sigh. It was one of the painfully young ones. Tall, rawboned. Sean couldn’t make out the freckles in this lighting, but the stirring of a faint memory told him they were there. He must have met or at least seen this guy.

  “I’m Officer Slawinski.” He looked and sounded suspicious. “What’s a county detective doing here?”

  “I live next door.” Sean nodded toward his house. “I heard Ms. Drake scream.” Damned if he’d call her missus. “I already cleared the house. The guy’s gone.”

  “You’re sure there actually was an intruder?” the officer asked. “I mean...excuse me for asking, ma’am, but--”

  She stiffened beneath Sean’s hand.

  He rubbed his hand in a soothing circle. “I’m sure.”

  No surprise, lights had come on up and down the block, and neighbors were already cautiously venturing out to the sidewalk, clutching robes tight around themselves. Mr. Rumbaugh hovered on his porch, but Louella Shoop was on her way across the street.

  After Sean bought his place, the Cape Trouble police chief, Daniel Colburn, had told him wryly that he had reason to believe Louella Shoop owned military grade binoculars with night vision capability. Sean hadn’t been surprised when she showed up on his doorstep within an hour of his moving truck arriving, a casserole dish in hand. He’d appreciated the gesture even though he had a suspicion she just wanted to get a look inside. Since then, he’d learned she was scarily well-informed about everyone in town.