by Katie Ruggle
“You’re such a sucker.” With a sigh, she shut down her computer. “You just think he’s pretty.”
“Who’s pretty?” Her twin, Charlie, charged into the kitchen, heading directly to the fridge. Warrant, their very large and very hairy Great Pyrenees mix, immediately hopped up from his sprawl under the table to follow her, obviously hoping for snacks.
Trying to disguise her guilty jump by standing and slipping her laptop into her backpack, Cara blinked innocently at her sister. “One of the skips.” It wasn’t a lie.
Charlie frowned at the contents of the fridge before closing the door and grabbing a banana. “Whose turn is it to get groceries? Things are looking a little desperate in there.” Leaning her hip against the counter, she raised an eyebrow at Cara. “Speaking of desperate… A skip? Really?”
Despite her discomfort about talking—even indirectly—about the mess she’d made of her encounter with Kavenski, Cara had to laugh. “Come on. You can’t tell me that, of all the hundreds of skips we’ve handled, you’ve never found any remotely attractive?”
Charlie grinned around her bite of banana, conceding the point without saying a word.
Zipping her backpack, Cara hauled it over her shoulder and glanced at the time on her phone. “Got to get to class. And it’s your turn.”
“My turn for what?”
“Getting groceries. Don’t bring home only junk this time, or Felicity will make you run extra laps.” Cara headed for the door as her twin gave a dramatic groan.
“Fine, but I’m still getting Lucky Charms.”
“It’s your funeral,” Cara called, stepping outside and closing the door behind her, rather proud that she’d managed to wiggle out of what could’ve been an awkward conversation. As she headed toward where her car was parked in the driveway, she felt an uneasy prickle on the back of her neck.
She was being watched.
Trying to look casual, she glanced down the street, but there weren’t any parked cars in sight. Her gaze roamed over the neighborhood, but it all looked quiet. Even the ever-present breeze had settled, leaving only the scuff of her shoes against concrete to break the eerie silence.
“Stop it,” she ordered herself. “You’re getting paranoid.” Just to be on the safe side, though, she scanned the trees next to the house, looking for anything suspicious. Since they’d gotten an alarm system installed, the attempted break-ins had dropped significantly, but there was still the occasional treasure hunter trying their luck. Thanks for that, Mom.
The forest was still and dark. Despite the lack of any suspicious figures lurking in the shadows, the prickle of unease intensified, and she hurried back to yank open the door.
“Charlie!” she called.
“Yeah?” Charlie stepped into view.
“Make sure to set the alarm when you leave.” Still unsettled by the odd stillness of the forest, she frowned. “Or if you stay. And lock the door.”
Charlie straightened, meeting Cara’s gaze. “Trouble outside?”
“Nothing I can see. Just a feeling.”
“Got it.” From Charlie’s sober tone, Cara knew she wouldn’t blow off the warning.
“Thanks.”
Dropping her serious expression, Charlie made shooing motions with her hands. “Now get to class before you’re late. Your future kindergartners won’t teach themselves.”
Cara gave her a mock salute before closing the door and hurrying to the car. She hoped that they’d find their mom soon—as well as the valuable necklace Jane had stolen—so their lives could go back to normal. Maybe it was wrong to hope that her only surviving parent would be sent back to jail, but Cara didn’t care. Jane had really screwed them over this time. If she hadn’t stolen the necklace, used their house for collateral on her bail bond, and then skipped town, Cara would be happily attending classes and doing her usual research. Instead, she was scanning the bushes for danger and breaking into murderers’ motel rooms.
Accused murderers, her brain corrected, and she sighed. It was probably a good thing she’d sworn off chasing Henry Kavenski. As far as he was concerned, she seemed to be having a hard time staying objective, maybe because he hadn’t actually killed her.
Or because he really was incredibly pretty.
Chapter 2
Cara’s child development theories class was a good distraction from the utter chaos of the rest of her life. The two hours flew by, and she was disappointed when it ended and all her worries came crashing back down on her. Not wanting to return to dealing with skips and the possibility of burglars lurking in her backyard, she dragged out the process of packing up her bag.
When she was the last one in the classroom, she knew she couldn’t delay any longer. It was time to dive back into the less-fun parts of her life. Heaving her backpack over her shoulder, Cara headed for the corridor. The classroom was on the third floor of Meyers Hall, an ancient brick building that was stiflingly hot in the summer and as cold as a walk-in freezer in the winter. The majority of the students had already made their way outside, and the few remaining were making their way toward the stairs.
Cara followed slowly, still reluctant to get home and have to think about which skip she would choose to take the place of Henry Kavenski. The soles of her tennis shoes squeaked against the highly polished floor, and the sound echoed through the hall, making her realize how quiet it had become. The classrooms had emptied and the rest of the straggling students had disappeared, leaving her alone.
A light scuffing sound behind her made her glance over her shoulder. No one was there.
It’s just my imagination, she thought, huffing a quiet laugh at how easily she scared herself. Her amusement evaporated as she continued walking down the hall and the slightly offbeat echo of her footsteps followed her. Despite the uneasiness that prickled the back of her neck, she refused to allow herself to look over her shoulder again. No one is there. I’m alone. No one is there. As she repeated the mantra in her mind, she tried to keep from walking faster.
Even as she told herself she was being silly, she couldn’t help but tense. Her pace quickened, the sound of her hurried footsteps making her even more anxious. She tried to be amused by how many horror movie clichés her imagination had dreamed up, but it was hard to laugh at her very real apprehension as she rushed toward the stairs. All the crazy, dangerous things that had been happening to her and her sisters lately made her see menace in everything.
“Hey, Cara Pax.”
She whirled around, a shriek of surprise trapped in her throat. As soon as she saw who’d spoken, she was glad that the startled sound hadn’t made it out. The little weasel had intentionally tried to scare her, and she would’ve hated to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d succeeded.
“What are you doing here, Stuart?” she asked, wanting to keep walking toward the stairs but not trusting the creep enough to turn her back. Moving backward away from him felt too much like running, and she wasn’t scared of this little punk. Thanks to Jane regularly helping herself to her daughter’s tuition money, Cara was several years older than most of her classmates. Stuart Powers couldn’t be much over twenty, but he was already mixed up in Langston’s shadier side.
He’d been one of the many who’d tried to break into their house. Since Molly and John had caught him in the act, he’d been popping up around campus wherever Cara happened to be. He seemed to have the mistaken impression that she knew where her mom had hidden the stolen necklace—and that she could be intimidated into telling him where he could find it.
“Why are most students in a campus building?” He really did have the most punchable smirk in the history of the world. He stepped closer, and she backed away. Cara was so intent on keeping some distance between them that she didn’t even realize he’d cornered her until she felt the press of a recessed classroom door against her back. Shifting closer, he asked, “What do you think I’m doing he
re?”
Irritation spiked at the question, and she surged forward, knocking him hard enough with her shoulder that he took an automatic step back, giving her an opening. She moved quickly toward the stairs, too annoyed to be worried about what he’d do if her back was turned. “Quit stalking me.”
His low laugh followed her, and she straightened her shoulders, fighting the urge to glance back. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing just how creepy she found him. He was trying to frighten her. What he didn’t realize was that she dealt with scarier people every day. She’d faced down Henry Kavenski. After that, Stuart seemed like small potatoes.
Still, Stuart’s mocking laugh did make her uneasy, as much as she tried to hide it. Campus was her escape from the stress of bounty hunting, and knowing he was lurking around her, following her, ruined that feeling of safety.
Anger filled Cara as she rushed down the stairs, her shoes thumping on each step, creating enough of a clatter that she couldn’t hear anything else that Stuart tried to say. When she reached the ground floor, she couldn’t keep herself from glancing up to see if he’d followed her. The stairs were poorly lit, the steps quickly disappearing into the gloom, and she felt the prickle of goose bumps ghost down her spine.
That’s what he wants, the reasonable part of her brain supplied. He wants to freak you out.
Despite knowing that, she still had to hide a shiver as she shoved through the door out into the late-afternoon sunshine. As she strode toward the parking lot, pretending that she wasn’t relieved to see the clusters of students scattered around the area, Cara set her jaw. No more chickening out. She was going to bring in a skip and show her sisters that she could be useful in the field. That way, Charlie and Felicity could focus on finding their mom and bringing her back.
Cara was going to do whatever she had to in order to get their lives back to normal. She only had to be a badass for a short time, and then she could go back to worrying about normal things, like class projects and finding a student-teaching position next semester and whose turn it was to clean the bathroom.
Her cell phone dinged, the ringtone telling her it was a work call, and she pulled it out with brisk motions, caught up in a wave of determination. “Pax Bail Recovery.”
“Hey there.” Barney Thompson’s slimy voice made her wrinkle her nose. Between him and Stuart, she was getting a full dose of creeps today. “Which pretty Pax sister am I talking to?”
“This is Cara. How can I help you?” She put on her best professional tone. Before everything happened, she would’ve blown him off as quickly as possible, but now that he held their mom’s bail bond—which meant he’d own their house if Jane didn’t show up for her next hearing—Cara had to be polite to him, which just about killed her. That was another thing that needed to go back to normal as quickly as possible. She was going to relish being able to hang up on Barney again.
“I have a job for you.”
She had to bite her tongue to hold back a groan. The last skip Barney had wanted them to bring in had almost killed Molly multiple times, and Cara and her sisters had almost been blown up.
At her silence, Barney hurried to add, “He’s nothing like the last one. This one’ll be easy. A walk in the park, especially for you.”
“Why especially for me? Cara asked warily.
“Because Abbott loves to get college students to do his dirty work, and aren’t you still in your tenth year there or something?”
She hadn’t been attending that long. Seven years at the most. With effort, Cara swallowed her protest as he continued.
“I’m actually doing you a favor by telling you about him.”
“What’s he being charged with?” she asked.
“Tax evasion. He owes enough that the judge set his bail high.”
That was promisingly nonviolent. “Send over his file, and we’ll consider it.”
Barney’s grunt made it clear he wasn’t too happy that she wasn’t accepting the job immediately, but he just said “Fine” and hung up.
Cara had barely gotten into her car before her phone alerted her that she had an email. Still suspicious why Barney was so desperate to have them bring in a simple tax-evading skip—rather than siccing his own bounty-hunting dogs on the guy—she opened the file. After scanning the information, she was frowning more deeply. The skip, Geoffrey Abbott, appeared to be an easy job on the surface, but the name teased her brain. It sounded oddly familiar.
Setting down her phone, she started her car, eager to get home and research the guy. Familiar or not, he might be just what she was looking for to replace Henry Kavenski as her first successful capture. Her mood lifting for the first time since Stuart had swooped in to ruin her day, she backed out of her parking space and headed home.
As she drove, she tried to focus on Geoffrey Abbott, but another skip kept wiggling his way back into her thoughts.
“Stupid Henry Kavenski,” she muttered, slowing down to turn onto her street. “Get out of my brain.”
Despite her determination to drop his case, she knew it wouldn’t be easy to let this skip go.
* * *
“Why are you doing this again, dum-dum?” Cara muttered to herself as she pretended to examine the for-sale listings plastered over the real estate office’s window. In actuality, she was watching a certain skip—one she’d sworn to stop chasing—in her periphery. “You survived likely death once. Stop following the murderer, go home, and start researching the nice, nonviolent tax evader.”
Despite the mental lecture, she didn’t walk away. Instead, she continued staring at Henry Kavenski’s reflected image. Ten minutes ago, he’d parked himself on a bus-stop bench down the street, and he hadn’t so much as shifted since.
“We need the money,” she argued under her breath. “That’s the only reason why I’m giving this another shot. If I can bring in Kavenski and Abbott, that’ll give us some breathing room while Felicity and Charlie search for Mom.”
When she’d walked into the house the day before, ready to start researching a much safer Abbott, she’d found Molly hunched over her laptop, her expression more drawn and deeply worried than it had been since that first hungry year after they’d started the business. Cara had known that they were hurting for money after the whole Jane thing—especially after the burglary—but the tight line between Molly’s eyebrows and the anxious downturn of her mouth really brought home how serious things were. Plus, if they ended up losing their house…
Cara hurried to cut off that train of thought, not wanting to fall down the familiar black hole of stress and worry—especially while she was actively watching a skip. Despite his surprisingly nonviolent reaction to finding her breaking into his motel room, she couldn’t afford to get complacent just because Kavenski’s shoulders were impossibly broad and his mouth looked both hard and temptingly soft at the same time.
Stop. Even though no one could hear her thoughts, her cheeks still burned with embarrassment. This tiny crush she was developing—on an accused murderer—was ridiculous and dangerous, and she had to nip it in the bud immediately.
Mortification won where common sense hadn’t, and she started to move away from the real estate office. Her car was parked less than a mile away. She’d leave, drive home, research a more reasonable skip, and forget that she’d ever set eyes on Henry Kavenski.
As she turned, she couldn’t resist a final glance at the still figure sitting on the bench. Judging by the lack of other people, the bus wasn’t going to arrive for some time, and she felt a shot of curiosity about why he’d planted himself there. In the days she’d followed him, she’d found that he tended to stay out of public places. He’d never parked himself on a busy street for no apparent reason before.
Cara took two steps before succumbing to the need to glance at him again. As she did, she saw his spine straighten in a movement so slight that it was almost imperceptible. If s
he hadn’t been watching him too closely for her own good, she wouldn’t have noticed it. Even though she could only see his back and a hint of his profile, there was something about the way he held himself that told her he was alert and prepared for trouble.
Well, I can’t leave now, she thought with exasperation—and more excitement than was appropriate. Things are just getting interesting.
Pulling out her phone, she leaned against the rough brick wall and pretended to text. Instead, she pulled up her camera app and surreptitiously scanned the area for whatever had made Kavenski tense. There was an older couple setting up a flower stand halfway down the block, a twentysomething guy walking slowly past the bus shelter while staring down at his phone, and a woman pushing a stroller toward the bus stop at a brisk pace.
When the guy looking at his phone passed Kavenski with no apparent interaction, not even a glance, Cara turned her attention to the woman with the stroller. She was wearing oversize sunglasses, and her hair was either very short or tucked up under a trendy knit hat. From her boots to her belted jacket to the thin scarf artfully wound around her neck, the woman was perfectly put together. The baby in the stroller was hidden by the deep sides and the pulled-up sun hood, and everything about them seemed like a picture from a fashion shoot.
When the woman stopped the stroller next to the bus-stop bench and took a seat next to Kavenski, Cara knew something was up. For one, she would eat her phone if that woman would ever set foot on a public bus. Also, Kavenski, for all his hotness, was a big and intimidating guy. No one would casually plop themselves down next to a dangerous-looking stranger, especially with her baby right there.
With both Kavenski and the woman facing forward, it was impossible for Cara to see if they were talking. She was tempted to move closer to the pair to see if she could eavesdrop, but Kavenski had known she’d been following him earlier, and that made her hesitate. It was one thing for her to follow as he skulked around town, but this meeting seemed very shady and purposeful. He’d let her go once, but who knew what he’d do if she had incriminating information on him.
