LITMIR.BIZ

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chair back for support. Voice shaking, she said, “I don’t appreciate you scaring me this way. Maybe Andrea has been stealing from renters in every house she has keys to. She could have a partner that...that she betrayed somehow. Or a lover. What if they met in other people’s homes during the day? Do you know anything about this woman?” She put everything she had into this scathing speech. “Or did you decide right away that I must be some kind of...I don’t know, ex-CIA agent on the run, or a femme fatale with cast-off lovers hunting for me?”

      Standing stiffly, she defied the detective’s continued contemplation.

      Seemingly unmoved by her defiance, he said, “I really hadn’t gotten that far in my thinking. And of course my first assumption is that Ms. Sloan was the intended victim, not you. My hope was to get you thinking, in case there’s something you’re not telling me.”

      She pretended that wasn’t a question. “This has been an upsetting day. I’d like you to go now.”

      His eyebrows flickered, but he bent his head in acknowledgment and rose to his feet as casually as if he’d made the decision himself. As he strolled to the door, he said, “I assumed you were already asking yourself these same questions, Ms. Boyd. You’re smart enough to have been scared. It wasn’t my intention to make it worse.”

      Helen didn’t hold back a snort.

      Almost to the door, Renner turned, expression inquiring.

      “Of course you meant to scare me! Congratulations, you did a great job.” At least that wasn’t a lie.

      “You’re wrong,” he said quietly. “Lock the door behind me.” He wasn’t all the way out into the hall when he added in a much harder voice, “I’ll expect you not to leave the area. Do you understand?”

      “Yes!” She felt herself vibrating with tension. No chance he wouldn’t be able to see that.

      “As long as you’re not her killer, I’m on your side, you know.” He nodded and closed the door behind him.

      Helen leaped forward and, with shaking hands, turned the dead bolt and hooked on the probably useless chain. Then she stood still and strained to hear any sound from the hall, with no idea whether he still stood there or was walking away.

      In listening to that silence, she had a horrifying thought. If Richard had killed Andrea, where was he now? Had he been somewhere he could watch when she arrived home and the police responded? If he had, he’d know where she was—and he’d have seen Jacob. And that was assuming the private investigator who’d trailed her in Southern California hadn’t seen Jacob.

      A dry sob escaped her. Who was she kidding? To know she had a child, Richard had only had to step inside her house. The high chair at the table alone would tell him.

      Most of her desperation to escape him had been to ensure he never knew she was pregnant. There was no possibility that he was capable of being any kind of parent. He was the kind of man who lashed out without warning, both verbally and physically. He could smile, wish their dinner guests good-night, close the door and knock her to the floor because she’d done or said something earlier that had displeased him. Even with his housekeeper and a nanny as a buffer, an active boy would try his nonexistent patience. He’d search for her qualities in Jacob and determine to eradicate them, along with Jacob’s every memory of her.

      This kind of terror was like being shaken by a vicious earthquake. Even though she’d been sure he had found them once before, she’d let herself get complacent since she moved to Lookout. She liked her job, and Jacob was a happy boy. Their little house had felt safe.

      They would never be safe. She couldn’t forget again. He wouldn’t give up; she knew that. Monsters didn’t. The best she could do was stay a step ahead. Which meant leaving, as soon as she could figure out how.

      Oh, dear God. What if Richard, too, was staying at the Lookout Inn.

      With a muffled cry, she darted across the room to test the lock on the slider that led out onto a balcony.

      * * *

      SETH LAY AWAKE for long stretches that night. Every time he dozed off, he’d find himself starting awake, adrenaline firing through his body like an electrical shock.

      Gritting his teeth and punching his pillow into a new shape, he had to convince himself repeatedly that there wasn’t anything else he could have done before morning.

      Except, maybe, sleep in the hall outside Helen Boyd’s room at the inn to make sure she didn’t disappear—and that a killer didn’t get to her and that cute kid of hers.

      He groaned and rested his forearm over his eyes. Damn it, the woman was right; his initial focus should be on the actual victim’s life, her character, her husband, friends and acquaintances. And it was—he’d talked to her husband for the first time this evening, but he’d go back as many times as he had to. Tomorrow, he’d talk to her boss and coworkers, get the names of friends. Find out if there was even a whisper suggesting she had a lover or might be up to something illicit.

      But he’d always paid attention to his gut, and while Helen was trying hard to play the outraged innocent, she wasn’t a good liar. And she was lying; he had no doubt about that. All he had to do was look at the turmoil in her eyes that should be transparent instead of clouded with a darkness he didn’t think was entirely caused by her discovery today of a dead body in her house.

      He couldn’t see her as a killer, but he had to be damn sure he was thinking like a cop, not a man drawn to a woman. He couldn’t afford to let himself have even a momentary thought about her as an attractive woman.

      Damn. Seth sat up in bed and swung his feet to the floor. He remained there for a minute, head hanging. If he fell asleep with that picture in his head, he risked having an erotic dream involving a woman he would almost certainly interview again in a murder investigation. A woman who’d looked like she hated him by the time she insisted he leave her hotel room.

      Not happening.

      Even though he wasn’t hungry, he scrambled eggs and ate breakfast to fill the last dark hour before dawn. Then he showered and drove to Hood River to attend the autopsy.

      The medical examiner didn’t come up with any surprises. Andrea Sloan was in good health generally. She had been killed by a blow to the head. The ME thought the weapon used was a short length of pipe, considerably fatter than the tire iron in the trunk of Ms. Boyd’s car. The victim had also taken a blow to her side that had broken ribs, probably postmortem. A kick, the ME suggested.

      Seth would walk through the house again today now that he had a warrant, but felt sure he wouldn’t find the weapon. The garage was his best possibility, but he’d looked in the window and guessed Ms. Boyd, at least, went in there only to retrieve the lawn mower and return it when she was finished cutting the grass.

      He was at the real estate office when it opened, where he started with the victim’s coworkers, all horrified by the news of Andrea’s death. He was assured that she was likable, charming, energetic, with the best sales record in the office. He also learned that she didn’t work on the property management side of the business.

      The owner of the office, a woman in her fifties, explained that Andrea had sold a couple of properties for a man named Dean Ziegler, as well as a house to him, and as a favor had agreed to manage his rentals. At Seth’s request, Tina Daley dug in the records, reporting that Ziegler owned an apartment house with ten units and three rental homes.

      The only key to any of those units missing was the one Seth had collected as evidence.

      Andrea’s assistant, a young woman in her twenties named Brooke Perry, insisted she’d have known if Andrea had received a phone call about a problem at one of the rental homes.

      “The only reason I can imagine she’d have been there was if the renter had asked to see her.” Her forehead creased. “Or if Mr. Ziegler wanted to meet her, or insisted she inspect the house, I suppose. But I really think she’d have said if he’d called.” She hesitated.

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