Gingerly, she turned the key to start the engine, and began to drive home.
By the time she pulled up in front of her building, she was so angry and frightened she could hardly breathe.
What was she going to do?
Thunder crashed with such force it shook the earth, waking her from her reverie. The winds were getting stronger. Tree branches rose and plunged, sending Spanish moss swinging wildly.
She climbed out and ran across the street with her head down. The water in the gutters was already ankle-deep as she splashed through it and up onto the sidewalk.
She was halfway up the front steps before she saw Luke.
He stood by her front door, his expression grave.
She hated how her heart leapt, seeing him there.
“Hey,” she said. “You didn’t have to come over.”
He moved back to make space for her on the sheltered top step.
“Sorry to show up like this,” he said. “I thought you’d be here. Mondays are your days off. I wanted to talk this through some more. I don’t like what’s going on.”
“It might be worse than I thought.” She cast a look down the darkening street, through the lashing rain. It appeared empty but she felt observed, and there was no way to know if it was all in her mind.
“You better come in.”
He stood behind her, waiting as she unlocked the three locks, one after another, and read the code from her wrist and punched it in, quieting the alarm system.
She sensed him observing the steps she’d taken to make herself safe. Noting the baseball bat by the door. Missing nothing.
When she switched on the living room light, his expression was troubled.
The air-conditioning cooled the water on her clothes and skin, and Harper found she was shivering uncontrollably.
“I’m soaked—I need to change,” she said. “Do you want a towel?”
Swiping the water from his face, he gave her a rueful look.
“Probably a good idea.”
“Two minutes,” she said, and ran down the hallway. As she did, she searched for signs that someone had been here while she’d been out. But, this time at least, everything felt normal.
Zuzu was curled up on one of the sofas. Harper had begun to realize the cat was never there on the days she now suspected an intrusion had occurred. She must run out through the cat door and stay out until she was sure Harper was back and everything was safe again.
Grabbing a towel in the bathroom, she hurried back into the hallway and tossed it to Luke, who still stood where she’d left him. He caught it easily.
“Thanks.”
In her bedroom, Harper ripped off her top and found another towel to dry herself off. After changing out of her wet things, she raked a brush through her hair.
In the mirror, her color was high. Her hazel eyes looked confused. The dusting of freckles she’d never been able to fully cover stood out against her skin.
She looked younger than twenty-eight. She looked scared.
Taking a deep, slow breath, she walked back into the living room.
Luke was sitting on the sofa next to Zuzu, who, in a rare gesture of conciliation, allowed him to stroke her fur.
Harper watched the two of them for a moment before breaking the silence.
“You want some coffee?” she asked. “I could use the caffeine.”
“Yeah. That’d be great.”
After patting Zuzu one last time, he stood and followed her to the kitchen.
“The place looks good,” he said. “I like the new sofas.”
“Thanks.” Harper turned on the kitchen light, and the spotless room, with its tall white cabinets and black-and-white-tiled floor, burst into view.
Luke leaned back against the counter as she picked up the canister of coffee.
She had to reach behind him for the coffeemaker. It seemed too close—she could feel the warmth of his body against her skin.
He shifted out of the way.
The room seemed so small with him in it.
“Well,” he said, watching her scoop the coffee into the machine. “Why is it worse than we thought?”
Thunder rattled the windows as Harper told him what she suspected.
When she’d finished, she leaned back against the fridge and faced him.
“I still don’t know if any of this is real or my imagination. But if he took that picture of my mom…” She shook her head. “Man. That pisses me off.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said, soberly. “Harper, is there anyone you can think of who might be behind this?”
She shook her head. “Nobody.”
“Have you dated anyone who seemed unusually attached in the last year? Someone who would know how to get in here? A cop?”
His voice was even. Still, heat rose to her face.
It was such a loaded question.
“No.”
“It could be anyone,” he prodded. “Someone you only had one date with. Some random guy from a dating website. Maybe he didn’t seem threatening at the time but…”
“There hasn’t been anyone.” The words burst out louder than she’d intended. She lowered her voice. “I haven’t dated anyone. Not since you.”
Silence fell between them, filled with the sound of summer rain falling hard, and the burble of the coffeemaker.
She couldn’t look at him. Afraid of what she’d see in his eyes.
“I forgot the milk.” Hurriedly, she turned around to open the refrigerator.
With her back to him, she paused, letting the chilled air cool her skin.
When she spoke again, she thought she sounded fine.
“Do you want sugar? I know you usually don’t but…”
“No, thanks.” His tone was so bland, the previous conversation might not have happened at all.
She checked the milk to make sure it hadn’t turned, and then made them each a cup.
Positioning herself with her back pressed against the countertop as far as she could get across the small room from him, she nudged the conversation back to the break-in.
“What do you think? Could this be connected to the first break-in?”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But the MO is different. That time, the guy broke a window, right?”
“Yeah.”
“This guy has a key and your security code. And access to your car—possibly also with a key. On the surface it seems like two very different styles. One’s brute force, the other is finesse. I mean, how the hell could he get your keys?”
“Here’s what I’ve been thinking.” Harper set her coffee down. “What if the first break-in was when he got the keys?”
Luke’s brow creased.
“Did your keys go missing?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The whole place was trashed. Whoever it was dumped the fridge on the floor. Knifed every piece of furniture. Threw my clothes around, painted on the walls. It never occurred to me to check the keys.”
Turning to the cupboard behind her, she pulled out a ceramic jar marked TEA.
“I keep my spare keys in here,” she explained. “I haven’t even looked in here since the burglary. I mean, how often do you check your spare keys?”
Without waiting for an answer, she dumped the keys out onto the counter with a clatter. The two of them bent over the tangle of silver and brass. Her spare set of car keys was there, right where it should be, along with spare house keys, the keys to Bonnie’s place, and a couple of random leftover keys, including one for a bike lock she’d long ago thrown away.
She looked up at Luke. He was standing close. She could smell his familiar scent—cinnamon and sandalwood.
“It’s all here,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean anything, does it?”
Luke shook his head. “He could have had copies made and brought your originals back any time.”
Harper reached for the house keys.
“Don’t touch anything,” he ordered.
She jerked her hand back as if it had
been scalded.
He pulled a pen from his pocket and used it to pick the keys up by the ring.
“Do you have a plastic bag?” he asked, glancing at her.
Harper got one out of the drawer and handed it to him.
“I’ll get these checked for fingerprints,” he told her, dropping the keys inside. “Just in case.”
Harper hated how well the scenario fit.
The entire break-in—all of the destruction—could have been a distraction to ensure she never thought to check her key jar. If that was the case, it worked. She’d fled her home to stay with Bonnie—leaving the cleanup to Billy and his crew.
A sudden thought made her breath catch.
“What about Bonnie?”
Luke gave her a puzzled look.
“Those are her keys,” she explained, pointing at the set still sitting on the counter. “He could get in her house.”
He leaned over to study them.
“They’re not marked. There’s no way for him to know whose they are. They could be mine for all he would know.” He glanced at her. “I think the only keys he wanted were yours.”
Those last words hung there.
Outside, the storm was quieting, at last.
“Whoever this guy is, he’s good, Luke.” Harper reached for her coffee to give her hands something to do.
“Yeah, he’s good. But we’re better.” He rubbed a hand across the edge of his jaw, staring at the keys as if they held answers only he could see.
“Let’s assume he has your car keys, too.”
She was already there.
“I’ll have the car locks changed, tomorrow,” she said. “My mechanic will fit me in.”
“Good.” He paused to think. “Get him to take a look at everything. Check for anything the guy might have left.”
It took her a second to figure out what he was saying.
She took a step back. “Oh, hell, Luke. You think he put a tracker on my car.”
“I don’t think anything,” he said. “I want to be sure.”
“Who is this guy?” Anger made her voice rise. “What does he want?”
“I intend to find out.”
He held up the plastic bag of keys. “We’ll start with these and the car.” He hesitated before adding, “You know, I’m starting to think you ought to move out for a while…”
“Not happening,” she cut him off.
A faint smile crossed his face.
“I figured that.”
He put the keys in his pocket.
“Well, if anything happens—anything at all—don’t take any chances. Call me.”
“If anything happens,” she told him, “I’ll kick this guy’s ass myself.”
He gave her a hard look.
“Call me.”
Harper didn’t know what to make of this sudden protectiveness. Did it mean anything at all? Or was he just being a cop?
“I better go.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to be somewhere.”
“Oh, sure.”
Turning quickly, she led him to the front door.
It was so weird the way he’d turned up, behaving like nothing ever happened. The hero again, coming to save her.
It left her disoriented.
Outside, the rain had almost stopped. The sun was already coaxing steam from the soaked sidewalks. In a few minutes, the city would be a sauna.
Harper leaned against the doorframe. “Thanks for coming over.”
On the top step, Luke turned back, the light glinting off his hair.
“Take care, Harper.”
The moment felt haunted by different times. Times when they’d kissed on this very doorstep. When he’d talked about going but hadn’t left. When they’d locked themselves inside and forgotten about murder for a while.
She wondered what he’d do if she reached for him, now. Pulled him close. Told him she was sorry.
But she kept her hand on the door.
“I will,” she said.
Then she shut the door before he walked away.
20
Harper spent the night on the sofa with the baseball bat at her elbow, the scanner quietly humming. She slept shallowly—her fitful dreams filled with Luke, Naomi Scott, and danger.
She woke before the sun came up, but she didn’t get up. Instead she lay in the dark thinking, with Zuzu at her side.
By the time dawn stretched long fingers of light across the polished oak floor, she’d made up her mind.
There was someone else she needed to talk to. Someone who might be able to help.
First, though, she needed to take care of the car.
She left the house before eight, giving the Camaro a quick search in case anyone had left more packages inside.
Satisfied it was unmolested, she drove straight to Madsen’s Motors on Veterans.
Howie Madsen had worked on her car since she bought it four years ago. He always cut her a good deal, and he knew Camaros.
This time, in addition to changing the locks, he also conducted a thorough search for tracking devices.
“Why’re you worried about trackers, Harper?” he asked when he’d rolled himself out from under the Camaro on a wheeled backboard, looking up at her as he wiped oil from his hands with a stained red cloth. “You pissed someone off?”
“That about sums it up.” She sat on a dirty plastic chair near the open garage door holding a large cup of coffee she’d acquired from the doughnut shop next door.
The warm air smelled powerfully of engine grease—a sugary scent she was surprised to find she sort of liked.
“Well, there ain’t nothin’ there at the moment.” Howie stood up and kicked the board away. “Keep an eye out, though. It’s awful damn easy to fit one of them things without anyone noticing.”
A short while later, with the locks changed, she was driving west down Highway 280, with the sun at her back.
She’d been down this road four times over the last year—never once had she told a soul. This was her thing, and she intended to keep it that way.
It was an easy drive—the road was so straight and flat you could fire a bullet at one end of it and hit the markings right down the middle a hundred yards away. She drove fast through the lush Georgia countryside.
She used the time in the car to come up with all the questions she wanted to ask. She needed to focus the conversation from the start—there wasn’t much time. She had to be at work by four o’clock.
She was still thinking it through when the cold white walls of Reidsville State Penitentiary rose up in the distance, surrounded by acres of glittering razor wire.
It was a chain-metal fortress, bristling with weaponry. Watchtowers marked each corner of the fence line. Sniper guns followed the car as it rolled up to the huge gate.
Harper stopped where the road markings told her to and waited as a guard approached her, a .45-caliber handgun on his hip.
When she lowered her window she saw herself reflected in his aviator sunglasses.
“Kill your engine,” he ordered, in a tone that managed to be bored and tense at the same time.
Harper turned the Camaro off and put her hands on the wheel, where he could see them.
“How can I help you today?” he asked, leaning in to see her scanner on its holder on the dash, and then turning to see the backseat, where Harper had thrown her laptop and notebook.
“I’m Harper McClain. I should be on your visitors’ list for one o’clock,” she said.
Stepping back, the guard pulled a paper from his pocket and ran his finger down it—his expression told her instantly that she wasn’t on it.
“I was a late addition,” she explained before he could ask. “They only added me this morning.”
His expression didn’t change as he folded the paper away and clicked the button on the microphone at his shoulder.
“Got a McClain, Harper, at gate four. Says she’s on the list but she ain’t on mine.”
He waited, head cocked expectantly, o
ne hand hanging loose near his sidearm. A long minute passed as someone in an unseen office did some digging.
It was so quiet out here. A crow cawed in the distance, and Harper heard it like it was sitting on her car. Every sound seemed amplified in the stillness—the tick of the car’s cooling engine, the long, low rustle of wind across grass.
She heard very clearly when a curt female voice responded over his radio. “McClain is approved for visit at thirteen hundred hours.”
The guard raised an arm at someone in the distance. A moment later, the massive metal gates behind him shuddered before rattling open, revealing the gray prison world on the other side.
“You have a good day, now.” The guard stepped back, mirrored sunglasses looking past her.
Driving into the prison grounds gave Harper instant claustrophobia.
She had to focus on not looking anywhere except straight ahead to steady her racing heart and calm her sudden, panicked desire to flee.
The visitors’ lot was nearly full. The only space she could find required her to squeeze the Camaro in between an SUV and a mud-caked pickup truck with a Confederate flag and an empty gun rack in the rear window.
A sign at the edge of the lot warned visitors to remove all valuable possessions from view.
Ironically, prison parking lots are not that safe.
She put her laptop, scanner, and phone in the trunk before heading across the sunbaked concrete to a thick metal door marked VISITORS.
Inside was a small, dank room where the air-conditioning seemed to serve mostly to make the air so damp drops of condensation formed on the concrete walls. At a table near the door, she put her keys in a plastic tray, which was shoved onto a shelf by a sullen guard who didn’t look at her once.
From there, she lined up behind a raucous family who, apparently unconcerned by the setting, chattered with one another and the guards.
The two guards—a tall, emaciated young man, and a woman half his height, whose wiry, dark hair was scraped back into the tightest of knots—let the kids play with their metal-detecting wands as they waited.
“And you’re six now?” the female guard asked a small, round-faced boy, who nodded seriously while scanning the top of his own head.
“Six and four weeks,” he said, as if this were an incalculably large amount of time to be alive.
A Beautiful Corpse--A Harper McClain Mystery Page 15
