Keeping Watch

Seeds of an old memory sprouted in his mind, but he quickly stunted them. The past was just that, the past.

Reaching around the jamb, he flipped on the light and stepped into the room. The closet door was open. A trail of clothing and broken hangers lay on the floor in front of it. She must have hidden inside, but the assailant found her.

Royce examined the layout of the bedroom, his gaze pausing on the massive bed against the south wall, at the bunching of covers thrown back. What had gotten her out of bed and into the closet? Taking one last look, he left the room and found the linen cupboard.

He pulled a couple of towels out and went back down to the parlor, where Gina was putting the coil of duct tape into a paper bag.

“What woke you up tonight?” he asked, coming around the sofa to hand her a towel.

“Wait,” Gina said, just as Adelaide shook the towel open. “I’ve got to have the blindfold, too.”

“Sorry.” Adelaide waited as she cut the towel off and put it into a bag.

“The lightning. A flash woke me up, and I’d left the window open a crack. The blind was hitting against the frame and I got up to close it. That’s when I saw him standing in my backyard.”

“And you called 911?”

“No. Not until I heard him break a window in the back door of the kitchen.”

“You hid in the closet?”

Fear hissed through Adelaide’s body as the memory reconstituted in her mind. “Yes. That’s when I dialed 911 from my cell.”

“What happened next?”

She clutched the towel, pulling it up around her neck, trying to combat the surge of anxiety sliding along her spine.

“He kicked in my bedroom door and came into the closet after me.”

“Did you get a look at his face?”

“No. I never saw him. He grabbed me, covered my eyes, taped my hands and—”

Reaching up, she milked a section of her hair to confirm a weird suspicion. “He clipped off a piece of my hair.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know, Detective. Maybe it’s some sort of trophy to appease a fetish.” Her voice threatened to give out, but she cleared her throat. “He was so strong, I couldn’t get away.”

Royce moved in next to her and sat down. “You fought hard. It wasn’t your fault.”

His words calmed the what-if game raging inside her head. What if she’d have called the police last week after she suspected someone had been in her house. What if she’d have put in a security system. “Miss Charboneau…Adelaide?”

She glanced over at the detective, suddenly aware he’d spoken her name more than once.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that…I think someone may have been in my house last week. I wish I could be one hundred percent certain, but I’m not.”

Royce sat forward, letting his instincts take over. “How so?”

“I ran to Delesandro’s Bakery to pick up my mother’s birthday cake before two when they close, but halfway there I realized I’d forgotten my cell phone in my studio, and I was waiting on an important call. When I ran back into the house to grab it, there was an unfamiliar scent inside, and some of the work in my studio wasn’t where I remember leaving it. It was like someone had shuffled through everything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I always put my sketches away in a portfolio, but I found them scattered on the table. I suppose I could have forgotten, but I’m pretty consistent.”

A tingle of caution crept along Royce’s spine. Had the unsub cased her home for its layout before tonight? Judging by his violent entry, he knew exactly where to find her.

He watched her towel her hair, letting his gaze slide over her slender body no longer covered by his jacket. Hard to imagine she’d ever have been able to overpower her attacker. Maybe it was better that she hadn’t. He might have really injured her. But he deemed her a fighter, judging by the mess upstairs, and her physical injuries. Still, the need to protect her welled inside him, festering and flooding into his brain like a drug.

“Would you like me to call an ambulance? You should have your ankle looked at.”

“I’m going to ice it and call my mother. She’ll take me in.”

He nodded, noting the pink in her cheeks matched the color of her drying nightgown. He tamped down a flare of heat the observation fired in his blood and stood up just as one of the uniformed officers stepped into the foyer.

“Detective Beckett. There’s something you need to see.”

“Where?”

“Under the window on the back left side of the house.”

“What room is that?” he asked Adelaide.

“It’s my art studio and office.” Her brows pulled together. “That’s where I found my sketches out of place last week.”

Royce moved for the front door, taking the flashlight the uniform handed him as he moved past. He stepped out onto the veranda, noting that the rain had stopped, and dawn was beginning to overtake the darkness.

He turned on the flashlight and took the steps quickly. Hanging a right, he walked around the right front corner of the house, spotting an officer with his light trained just below the windowsill.

“You got something?”

“Yeah. It’s suspect, anyway. Sort of weird.”

Royce stepped in next to the officer and aimed the flashlight beam on the same spot.

“What does it mean?” Officer Jones asked.

“I don’t know.”

The letters were scratched…no, carved into the siding of the house. It wasn’t weathered. It looked fresh.

BEHOLD…and the beginning of another letter. “Is that part of an E maybe?”

“Could be.” Royce slid the flashlight’s beam down the siding and onto the soft earth, where a partial shoe print was pressed into the mud.

“Get Gina on this, see if we can match it to the tracks in the kitchen.”

“Do you think they were made by the same person?”

Royce pondered the officer’s question, but he didn’t have an answer.

“We’ll have to wait for a comparison.” But there was one thing he knew for certain.

Adelaide Charboneau was in real danger.

Chapter Two

Royce paced in front of the chief’s office door.

It had been two days since Adelaide Charboneau’s attack, two days too many as far as he was concerned. Hell, he’d have put half the department shoulder to shoulder around her house if he could have.

“Beckett. Stop it, and get in here.”

Relief would have been his response had Chief Danbury’s voice not held its note of irritation for more than two beats.

He avoided the chair directly in front of the desk and chose to stand. “You heard about Miss Charboneau’s attempted kidnapping?”

“Is that what it is now?”

“Her attacker blindfolded her and restrained her with duct tape. He was dragging her across the lawn when I got to the scene. We have to assume he planned to take her if I hadn’t intervened. For what purpose, we don’t know.”

Danbury grunted, motioned to the chair and rocked back in his own.

A sit-down was a good indication he’d at least hear him out, up until the word “stake-out” came up, anyway.

“I’ve read the report, Beckett, and you know where we stand on manpower. I’m up to my armpits in shortfalls. The mayor is having a hissy fit because the knucklehead who snatched his mother’s purse hasn’t been apprehended yet. Three cruisers in the motor pool have been vandalized in the last week, and this department is stretched as thin as my momma’s gray hair.”

“She’s one of our own, Chief.” If his statement registered with Danbury, it was in the way his eyes narrowed for an instant and his shoulders sagged. “Spill it.”

Royce sat forward, feeling tension crank the muscles between his shoulder blades. “I know this guy is coming back for her. I don’t know when, I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I just know he is.”

“Cut the drama, Beckett. How much time?”

“Three days, more if necessary.”

Chief Danbury let out a puff of air and eyeballed him with skepticism from across the desk. “The report says the word behold was carved in the wood under a window. Any idea what it means?”

“No.”

“Did you ask Miss Charboneau?”

“I didn’t get the chance—”

“Then you better get cracking. You’ve got three days.”

Had he heard correctly? Three days to prove a theory that had churned up from somewhere in his gut?

“Thanks, Chief.” He stood up and hustled for the door.

“Don’t thank me yet. If anything comes in, I’m pulling you off this.”

He nodded and didn’t turn around. He couldn’t risk giving Danbury a chance to renege. It was going to be tough enough to hope another case didn’t come in and push hers down on the priority list.

Hanging a left at the end of the hall, Royce headed for Gina’s office, almost running into her as she stepped through the doorway.

“Hey, Ice Man, you better pull your head out of the clouds before you get hurt.”

Royce stopped short and glanced up, irritated with himself for not paying attention. “The Charboneau case.”

“Hmm. I don’t suppose you’d be this mushy-brained if she were, let’s just say, less than attractive.”

He gave her a serious stare. “Yes, she’s beautiful, but I’m only interested in doing my job, and catching the creep who kicked her door down and tried to abduct her.” He pulled in a breath, watching a slow smile bow Gina’s lips.

“Just checking to see if you’ve caught the bug, too, because in case you haven’t noticed, the single men in this department have lost touch with any measure of decorum they may have possessed. It’s Miss Charboneau this, and Adelaide that—”

“You’re jealous?” Royce followed her into her lab and leaned against the counter.

“No. But my date-night calendar for this weekend is empty. Care to disprove my observation? I’ll pencil you in.”

“Busy.”

“I was counting on you to be immune.”

He wasn’t immune, but he opened his mouth to quantify a denial.

Gina held up her hand, and the rebuttal stuck in his throat.

“Yes. I have some results on the Charboneau scene.”

He clamped his teeth together and smiled.

“Men,” she grumbled as she snagged a file from her desk and returned to the counter. “I’ll have you know she has turned every one of them down for a date in the past six months. I have no idea why they keep banging their heads against that wall.”

A measure of admiration circulated in his brain as he watched her open the file and spread out its contents.

“There were no prints on the duct tape, but I did find some fibers, possibly from a pair of gloves, which would explain why we didn’t find any foreign prints on the tape, or anywhere in the house.”

She slid the photo of Adelaide’s bound hands in his direction, exposing the one underneath. It showed the towel used to blindfold her, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the close-up of her lips that had made it into the top of the frame.

Full and supple, slightly parted. Sexy as hell.

The desire to connect them with his own, and part them even farther with his tongue, streaked through his mind before he could pull it back.

“The footprints from the kitchen floor, and the one from under the studio window, do they match?” he asked, more than ready to refocus his thoughts on the crime scene, rather than the crime’s beautiful victim.

Gina flipped the tantalizing photo over with a decisive slap. “No. We’re looking at two different sets of footprints. Two different subjects.”

“There’s no way to tell if they were made on the same night?” Concern laced through him.

“Not unless you’re some sort of human surveillance camera. It’s just the toe of a shoe, and the only reason I was able to cast it at all is because the overhang protected it from the downpour. Otherwise, it would have dissolved.”

Royce straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. “So we’ve got nothing from forensics except the revelation that there are two subjects out there who are focused on Miss Charboneau. One a brutal assailant willing to kick her door down and take her, and the other a Peeping Tom?”

“I’m sorry, Beckett. I wish I had more to give you.”

He tried to calm the frustration that frayed his nerves, and ground worry into his head, but every case was only as good as the evidence left behind by the perpetrator, and the memory of the victim, if they survived the ordeal.

Thank God Adelaide Charboneau had.

“You gave it your best shot. Thanks.” He flashed her a smile and left the lab.

The clock was ticking. One of the subjects would be back, and when he showed up again, Royce planned to be there.

ROYCE RAISED A CUP OF HOT coffee to his lips and pulled in a sip, watching Adelaide from over the brim as she worked her way along the front veranda watering her flower beds.

If she knew he was keeping watch over her, she didn’t respond any differently than she had for the last couple of evenings.

At dusk, she watered, her lights went out at ten and came on at six a.m.

Transfixed, he watched her drop the hose and deadhead a patch of bright pink petunias.

Tucking his finger in the crux of his tie, he pulled the knot down and fingered the top button of his shirt.

Why did observing her always make his temp rise, and his muscles tense?

She bent over, snagged the running garden hose, straightened and flipped back a mass of wavy brunette hair that fell well past her shoulders. Once again she aimed the stream of water and continued to move along the edge of the flower bed.

Royce’s mouth went Saharan. Who knew a simple chore could incite the kind of heat he felt assault his body and sink into his bones. At this rate he was no less crass than the boys back at the station, who’d give their pension to be working this case.

Taking a hostile gulp of coffee, he burned the hell out of his tongue. Sputtering, he put the cup in the holder and leaned his head back against the headrest, breaking his line of sight on her while he tried to get his head screwed on straight.

Night couldn’t come fast enough, he decided, but it did, and three hours later he watched the lights go out one by one all through the big house.

He glanced at his watch. Ten p.m. on the dot. No wonder the guys couldn’t get a date with her—she was a creature of habit, and probably didn’t like to break her routine. For anyone.

Relaxing back, he stared up at the headliner in the car and squeezed his eyes shut tight, then opened them again, blinking away the grit.

The pop of the door handle on the passenger side snapped his head around, just as the dome light came on inside the car. He went for the weapon at his side, and his pistol was halfway out of its holster before he recognized the woman who’d climbed into the car and shut the door.

He dialed back a surge of adrenaline from his veins, reached up and turned off the dome light switch, hoping the unsub wasn’t watching from somewhere in the dark. If so, he’d just been made. “Miss Charboneau.”

She smiled. An innocent grin he could just make out in the shadows. “Sorry I spooked you, Detective.”

So much for a macho response—he didn’t have one—but if it had been anyone else but her, they’d be picking their teeth up off the floorboard right now.

“When did you discover I was here?”

“This afternoon, at the station. I went in for a sketch session and overheard the chief ratting you out.”

“Yeah, voices carry over there in the marble halls.” The air between them was charged, and he glanced over at her in the filtered light coming in from a streetlamp a hundred feet to the south. “I should have told you, but I didn’t want you to alter your routine.”

“I know.” She thrust a brown paper bag toward him. “So I made you a chicken salad sandwich.”

Royce caught a glimmer of pride in her green eyes. As he reached for the bag, their fingertips brushed. “My favorite.”

She stared at him for a moment, licked her lips and pulled her hand back. “It’s the least I could do, considering you’re out here watching over me, keeping me safe.”

Royce opened the bag, bent on satisfying his hunger, but realized it wasn’t for food. He rolled the top of the sack down and set it on the console. “I’m doing my job, Miss Charboneau.”

“Call me Adelaide, please.”

“Okay. Adelaide. This is a nice break from the action, but you’re safer inside your house. I’ve got a feeling he may be watching right now, and you’re here, where he could discover me before I can catch him.”

“You’re right…of course you’re right.” She glanced away for an instant and stared into the darkness before refocusing on him. “If you need anything, the key to my door is under the mat on the front porch. Help yourself.”

“That’s not safe.” Worry rocketed through him. “It could be discovered, and he won’t break a window to get in next time. You might not have time to dial 911 before he gets to you.”

“Don’t worry.” She reached out and put her hand on his arm for an instant. “I move the key discreetly every couple of days.”

A measure of relief coated his nerves, but his worry remained. “How’s your ankle?”

“Much better. I’m getting around on it, and it’s almost back to normal.”

“There’s something I forgot to ask you the other night.”

She turned her full attention on him.

He pulled in a breath, awed by how beautiful she looked in the shadowy darkness. Shocked by the level of arousal taking his body one degree at a time. Why was he drawn to her with such an unreasonable reaction? A reaction he wasn’t able to control? “The word behold was carved in the siding under your studio window.”

Her features changed, her eyes narrowed, her lips pulled into a frown, before the look of concern evaporated.

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“No…nothing.”

She reached for the door handle. “I’ll leave you to it, Detective Beckett. Sorry I disturbed you.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she was already out of the car and vanishing into the deep shadows. Pulling in a breath, he stared at the route she’d taken and watched her cross the street. Real or imagined, he knew he’d upset her. But her reaction to his question was suspect. So why would she hold out on him? Why would she prefer a lie over a truth that could save her life and help him catch her attacker?

The unanswered question pestered him well into the night and right up until the moment a light flickered on in a downstairs window.

Royce straightened in his seat and glanced at his watch. Almost 3:00 a.m. Close to the time her home had been invaded almost a week ago.

Caution tightened the pit of his stomach as he stared at the blade of light slicing through the darkness from the window of her studio.

What could she possibly be doing in there at this time of night?

Movement at the edge of the light sawed through his attention. His heart rate picked up and thrummed in his ears. He could just make out the silhouette of a man, pressed against the side of the house.

The unsub? Had he been there the whole time?

Tension twisted his muscles into knots. Stealth was his only option. He needed to catch the creep. Now…tonight, before he tried to hurt her again.

Reaching down, he snagged his radio and called for backup. He picked up the mini-mag flashlight from the seat next to him, shoved it into his pocket and clipped the portable radio on his belt.

Keeping his focus locked on the subject, he opened the car door and climbed out. He didn’t shut it, but instead left it open a crack. If the subject heard a car door latch, he’d take off like a shot.

He took a low profile, crossed the street and sagged into the shadows next to the sidewalk.

Pausing at the head of the alley, he took cover next to a fence. Royce eased his head out and stared into the darkness. At the other end, a block away, he spotted a car parked at an odd angle under a streetlamp. Did it belong to the Peeping Tom?

Agitation rocked his body and coated his nerves. He pulled back, took the radio from his belt and relayed the location of the vehicle to the uniforms in a low whisper. If it did belong to the suspect, they’d have him before he had a chance to run, or they’d have a plate number to track him with.

Somewhere in the thick night air, he heard an engine turn over. He listened, but couldn’t dial in its location as the hum mingled with the tune of the city streets.

The hair on the back of his neck bristled. Warning bells sounded in his head, but it was too late, he’d already stepped out into the open mouth of the alleyway.

The roar of the speeding car’s motor sliced into his awareness just as he caught a glimpse of its dark, sleek body fifty feet from where he stood and closing in like a rocket.

Royce lunged for the other side of the alley, the forward momentum driving him onto the asphalt inches from the kamikaze car.

It passed close by, so close it ruffled his hair.

Royce rolled over, pulled his gun and took aim just as the driver of the car tapped his brakes, released and barreled into the distance and out of range.

He’d like to believe that was random, but it didn’t stick. Frustrated, he lowered his weapon and came to his feet. He’d gotten the first two numbers on the licence plate, 32, and he recognized the taillight configuration of a Mustang.

He radioed the car’s direction of escape and the partial plate number before turning his focus on the lit window as he came around the end of the fence and stepped into the yard, staying in the cover of the bushes.

Surprise rippled his nerves and rooted him in place. The subject still stood in the same spot peering into Adelaide’s studio window, his forehead resting on the bottom right-hand pane.

How was that even possible? How did he not hear the commotion from the alley seconds ago and get spooked? He’d heard of fixation, that locked-on tunnel vision in which nothing exists outside the focus, but he’d never seen it in action, not until tonight.

Damn scary. He raised his weapon and edged out of the trees. “Police. Turn around and show me your hands.”

The startled subject raised his hands and took a couple of calculated steps back.

Caution ran along Royce’s nerves. Only seconds existed between surrender and pursuit, with nothing in between but bullets and mayhem.

Was the Peeping Tom armed and dangerous? He couldn’t be sure. “NOPD. Turn around.”

The man bolted.

Royce rushed toward him, closing the distance in quick strides, but the suspect dove for the ground at the corner of the house, crawled around it and disappeared out of sight.

He reached the side of the house and flattened against it. Gun raised, he slid along the wall, stopping only briefly to glance in the studio window at what the subject had seen moments ago through the two-inch crack at the bottom of the window shade.

Adelaide was lying on the floor of her studio among a smattering of sketches. He looked for blood, and saw none.

Somewhere in the dark, he heard bushes rustle, followed by running footsteps. Royce pushed away from the house and charged for the backyard. There he found an opening in the foliage and stepped out into the alley. A block over he heard a motor start up and the engine rev.

He bolted to the corner in time to see a flash of the car’s taillights, and then it was gone. Pulling the portable radio off his belt, he alerted the squad car to the vehicle’s exact direction of travel. With any luck they’d get the plate number and a description of the car.

Royce hurried for the house. Had Adelaide somehow been injured while he sat outside in his car? If so, the subject would have had to be able to walk through walls.

Key…key…under the front mat.

Hurrying up the steps of the front porch, he flipped up the mat and picked up the key. He shoved it into the lock and opened the door.

Was she okay? Had he somehow blown his mission to keep her safe? The string of unanswered questions all ran together in his brain as he rushed down the hall and into the studio.