Shielded in the Shadows

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  You wouldn’t know that by the way he spent the next several minutes grilling her. And then checking Bill Heber’s phone app to verify that both times she’d thought she’d been followed, the man had been nowhere near Santa Raquel. And then passed another long minute as he attempted to call her out for not telling him about it.

  “There was nothing to tell,” she said, her tone firming enough that he backed off.

  Sat back. Studied her.

  And made her want to crawl back into his arms again.

  “I had a great time earlier tonight.” Did his voice really just drip sex? Or was she losing all control? And was he reading her mind, too?

  “I did, too.” She couldn’t sit there and lie to him. But added, “It was just like we said it would be...just physical.”

  The way he was studying her made her uncomfortable. She shifted in her chair, pulled her skirt down underneath her thighs. Worried about the missing top button on her blouse. Nothing but the edge of her bra showed. A lot of women displayed more than that.

  She wasn’t a lot of women.

  And her breasts tingled. Her nipples hardened. Remembering.

  “My physique wants to know if you’d be interested in a repeat performance sometime.”

  “Of course.” The words slipped out. Inside, Emma slapped her darker side down. But it was too late. Jayden was already smiling. Not a big smile. Not sitting there in what was really an interrogation room. But a smile that reached her baser instincts with a thunk. “If...you know, the whole idea was to rid ourselves of the magnetism. Even in relationships that fades with familiarity.”

  “Right.”

  He nodded. Didn’t look challenging at all. Good.

  They’d get rid of their desires and be done.

  * * *

  Chantel wanted to send Emma home under police protection—just until Luke Lincoln was found. She understood the concern, she’d said. Shared it. But added that in her neighborhood cars weren’t allowed to park on the street. Of course, they could get permission from the homeowners’ association, due to the circumstances, but she was loath to draw undue attention to herself. In small communities like hers, word spread. It was bad enough that they’d note the police car out front. Still, she could play it off as minor vandalism. She hadn’t been robbed. There was no reason for anyone else in her community to be afraid. And she liked her current anonymity.

  Those who knew of her at all, knew her simply as a lawyer who worked all the time, was quiet, lived alone. She explained herself to him and Chantel quite clearly.

  Jayden could hear a hint of fear in her voice, though.

  There were other options. Cars in her driveway, for one. Surely her neighbors wouldn’t find it completely a shock for her to an overnight guest.

  “I just...there is so much real crime out there,” she said. “I don’t want to waste personnel watching my house while I sleep.”

  He got that. The attention wouldn’t feel right to him, either.

  “I’ll just stay in a hotel. At least for tonight.”

  “Luke’s my responsibility.” Jayden spoke up for the first time since Chantel had come back into the little room to let them know that the warrant to pick Luke up had been sent to departments all over the state, but no one knew where he was. His sister said she hadn’t seen him since he’d left court earlier that day. He hadn’t been due to work, because of the court hearing. And, so far, no one up north had seen him, either. “I can follow you home. Sleep on your couch.”

  Or in her bed. Whichever she preferred.

  He half expected her to stick with her hotel plan. Didn’t like the idea that he really didn’t know what to expect with her. Usually, when he slept with a woman, there was at least a modicum of expectation...

  “The city would most definitely put you up in a hotel,” Chantel said when Emma didn’t immediately respond.

  “If I go to a hotel, I’ll foot the bill,” Emma said, standing.

  Jayden stood, too. “I’ll pay for it. As I said, Luke’s my responsibility.”

  Seriously? It was past midnight and they were going to stand there and squabble about a hundred bucks?

  “No.” Emma put her satchel on her shoulder. “I’ll just go home. And you can sleep on my couch, if you must,” she said, glancing at Jayden and then back at Chantel. “I’d have to go back to the house anyway to get my things. Someone would have to go with me. And I’d rather sleep in my own bed. If whoever did this is watching the house—and somehow I feel certain that Bill is—then he’ll know he won if I’m not there. And he’ll know he’s going to lose if he makes a move while Jayden is.”

  Just when he’d been relaxing into the idea that Emma wanted him in her home as badly as he wanted to be there, she came up with a perfectly valid, completely professional justification for his presence that had absolutely nothing to do with him personally.

  “Just for tonight, then.” Chantel nodded. “Because it’s so late. We’ll reassess in the morning. See if Luke’s been picked up by then. If not, we can figure out whether or not we should move you out.”

  Emma nodded. Thanked the detective. And walked out the door.

  Presumably expecting Jayden to follow her.

  * * *

  Emma had a few rough minutes that night. Pulling into her driveway was one of them. The police still at the scene told her they had checked her house, both inside and out, with no sign of anything other than the writing on her back door. Her desert rock landscaping prevented even so much as a footprint. They took some pictures, would analyze everything, but they had very little to go on. The perp had probably been wearing gloves, so what fingerprints they’d managed to collect—nowhere near the writing on the glass—would probably belong to Emma.

  At least they’d cleaned the words away. A courtesy to her, she was sure. Because of who she was.

  Jayden, who’d come in right behind her, having asked her to wait for him before entering the house, confirmed her thoughts. That whoever had been to her house investigating had been nice enough to wipe away the evidence.

  He’d insisted on looking around one more time, too. It was his first time in her home. She kind of wanted to walk through it with him, but didn’t. His being there was business. Not personal.

  Still, she thought about each room as she heard him move to and from them. Wondered what he thought of the little trunk filled with flowers and antique perfume bottles in her bathroom. Or if he noticed that she hadn’t dusted in over a week.

  She held her breath while he checked out her room—the floral quilt ensemble on her bed, with all the matching throw pillows and wall art, made the room her happy place. She loved every single thing about that room. The way the sun came in. The view of the ocean in the far distance if you stood just right and knew what you were looking for. The plush carpet.

  Definitely not a guy place.

  She allowed the distraction of Jayden in her home, to keep her from the darker thoughts threatening...what if whoever had left that warning had actually come inside her home? What if he came back?

  By the time Jayden had come to join her in the living room, she already had a sheet on the couch, a blanket and the bed pillows from the spare room. She’d thought about suggesting he just stay in the extra bedroom, but he’d better serve his purpose for being there by staying close to the entrances of the home.

  He hadn’t balked. Had wished her good-night. And she’d gone to bed.

  Ms. Shadow had whined a bit. And in the middle of the night, when she’d sat straight up in bed from a sound sleep, she’d thought about going out to Jayden, maybe asking him to join her, but then she’d heard the flush of the toilet in the hall bathroom and knew why she’d woken in the first place.

  It had taken a while for her to get back to sleep. Her fault, not his. Or rather, Ms. Shadow’s. But, all in all, they made it through what could have been a
hugely awkward situation with little discomfort. He’d gotten up before her, all of his bedding folded on the couch when she came out—dressed in shorts and a T-shirt because she had company—to make her coffee. She’d offered him a cup. He’d said he had to get home to shower and get to work and was out the door before she’d even put her pod of dark roast in the brewer. He was working on Saturday. That didn’t surprise her.

  It was what she planned to do, too. Just as soon as she’d inhaled her first cup of coffee. And cleaned her back window again. Hell, she’d clean all of her windows, just in case the creep had touched any of them.

  By her second cup of coffee, she was feeling better.

  She was showered, dressed in a casual, tie-dyed summer dress and on her third cup of coffee, in her home office, when she heard from Chantel again. And then hung up and called Jayden.

  “Luke’s been picked up. And he has an alibi,” she said the moment Jayden answered. He’d be hearing officially, she was sure, within minutes. Chantel had just called her immediately. “After he left court,” she continued, “he went to spend the night at his mother’s. She and his sister don’t get along, apparently, and she sided with him, in that the sister shouldn’t have taken him in if she was going to feel the need to put him at risk by having a gun. The mother verified all of that. They apparently were both confused to see police at their door, thinking he’d been released because he’d had the charges dropped.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time a mother lied for her son,” Jayden noted.

  “A neighbor saw Luke leave there this morning.” She needed him to be on Bill. To not let up. Not for her sake. For Suzie’s. “The police caught up with him when he went into work. He said he was going to try to get moved to his mother’s house. Said that he didn’t want to go back to his sister’s since ‘she’d done him wrong that way.’” She quoted Chantel’s rendition of Luke’s own words. “That’s when they told him his release had been a mistake.”

  “A more accurate account might be that his sister refused to have him back after he made her lie for him in court. And that the gun is his,” Jayden said. “I’m on my way to speak with her now. The preliminary parole revocation hearing has not been canceled. The board will hear from me and witnesses, and determine if they think Luke violated the conditions of his parole. It’s set for Monday.”

  Emma hoped justice would be done. Trusted that it would be. It appeared that Luke had an alibi for that night. That he wasn’t her stalker.

  But that could be a lie, too.

  Turning to her own case, she said, “The surveillance tape showed no instances of a car entering my community on the back of another last night. However, there was one walk-in. Looked to be male, six feet, two hundred pounds. Blue long-sleeved shirt. Jeans. Dark baseball cap with no logo visible. The image was blurry and the guy’s head was turned away from the camera.”

  “As though he knew where the camera was,” Jayden observed.

  “Bill Heber once lived in a gated community. He fits the description.”

  “So do hundreds of other men, Emma, but I’ll stop by to see him this afternoon. And see if anyone in his neighborhood noticed his truck gone.” He didn’t sound happy about the task.

  “Thank you,” she said, understanding that Jayden didn’t want to crush Bill’s chances of making it on the outside by doubting him. Hounding him. But the man wasn’t going to stay clean, no matter what Jayden did. The only question was whether or not Suzie would make it until they had enough evidence to convict Bill this time.

  “The message was written in red lipstick. The lab is testing further to see if they can determine a particular kind or brand,” she told him. “Chantel said she’d send officers to canvass the local drugstores within a few miles of Heber’s place to see if someone matching his description bought any lipstick recently, but I suggested that you might want to do it yourself,” she offered the concession she’d sought for him.

  “I do want to. Thank you.”

  He was on the wrong side of this one, but he was there for the right reasons. She’d help where she could. Just not when it came to putting Suzie at further risk.

  “What about your other cases?” he asked when she’d thought them done with business and had been wondering what he was doing with his Saturday night. “Is anyone looking into the possibility that whoever left that message on your door was someone else? Neither Luke nor Bill Heber?”

  “Chantel picked up my case files this morning and already has people checking through them. Really, at this point, it kind of seems like overkill to me. All the man-hours being spent on this. It was a note on the door. No one got hurt.”

  “Not yet.”

  Now he was scaring her.

  With reason, she knew. She just didn’t want to confront the degree of danger. It wasn’t just a note. Behaviorists would find the red lipstick significant. The fact that it was her back door, not her front, factored into the severity factor, too. And her home, not her office. Or in the mail. The perpetrator was letting her know he could get to her if and when he wanted to do so.

  She’d faced some really heinous people in the courtroom over the years. Put a lot of them away. Some cases she’d lost. And some of the offenders were out now. It was a downside to her job...the fear part. She couldn’t let it get the best of her.

  “I owe you a dinner,” her darker side blurted.

  Emma should call Sara at The Lemonade Stand to see if she’d talked to Suzie. Or Chantel. Emma wanted to talk to Suzie herself. Maybe she’d missed something the last time she’d been up against Bill. She’d underestimated him.

  Jayden hadn’t replied to Ms. Shadow’s dinner comment. Emma noticed, even though she was trying her best to stay focused on work: the one thing she did that contributed to society. Both sides of her agreed on that one.

  “My bourbon pork is decent,” she said, admitting to herself that she wasn’t looking forward to the evening there alone. Had the man been at her back door the night before because he’d known she was gone? Was he watching her? Still?

  Or had she just been lucky she hadn’t been home?

  Of course, that all led to, what if he came back?

  This person must be a proficient criminal. He’d left very little real evidence. Nothing easily traceable. Most men with an ax to grind against her, most likely had acquired that ax by being one of her defendants. Bill Heber had been slick enough four years before to get away with murder. And he could have learned a thing or two in prison, too.

  “Do you want to come over for dinner tonight?” She finally just put it out there.

  “I was wondering if you were going to ask.” There was a hint of...pleasure in his voice. He’d been messing with her with that silence.

  He’d gotten her to declare herself.

  Points to him.

  “I’m wondering if you’re ever going to answer.”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether or not your invitation is professional or personal?”

  “The threat is still out there.” She couldn’t believe she’d actually said that. That she was using a serious situation in such a way. “You don’t want to keep me safe tonight?”

  “I’ll keep you safe. If it’s professional, I’ll be over after dinner.”

  He’d put it all right back on her.

  So...fine. She wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. “My dinner invitation stands.”

  “Under my specifications?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time should I be there?”

  Chapter 14

  Jayden picked up a bottle of the same wine Emma had brought to his house the night before. There was still half a bottle at his house, but bringing that would be tacky.

  He almost grabbed his six-pack, too. Then didn’t.

  Freshly showered and in blue sho
rts and a white polo shirt, with a pair of tennis shoes, he showed up at her door exactly on time. Six o’clock, just like she’d said.

  Figured them for a nice dinner and bed by a little after seven. He wanted to take things nice and slow. Maybe snack in between sex sessions. She had a pool, he’d noticed the night before, and he had some ideas there, too. One thing he’d discovered about Emma Martin last night was that she’d walk on the wild side with him.

  At least a little bit.

  The thought had tantalized him on and off all day. At the most inappropriate times. It hadn’t interfered with his work, though. If that happened, this was done.

  When he first walked into her home, he was certain something was wrong. She’d pulled open the door but left it hanging there, telling him to come on in, and all he saw was her back.

  The place was darker than his own. Far darker than it had been when he’d left that morning. Every curtain and blind in the place was drawn.

  He had kind of an emotional reaction to that. Moved past it.

  She was at the stove, stirring something in one pan while another large skillet held about twelve slices of tenderloin. Had she invited others over?

  He’d only brought one bottle of wine.

  And conversation for an intimate twosome.

  “That smells good,” he told her, refraining from a kiss on the back of her neck, but just barely. Her hair looked like she’d tried to contain it with a band, but a lot had sprung free. Her tight skirt was short, black, made out what looked like T-shirt material.

  He reached out and touched her backside because...he just did.

  She continued to cook. Her arms, slender and busy, lifted out over the pans in front of her. Pressing himself against her, he slid his hands around the white cotton hugging her torso to cup her breasts.

  Her spoon slipped, but she recovered. Stirred.

  “This has to reduce to half a cup in eleven minutes,” she said. Her nipples hardened beneath his fingers.