LITMIR.BIZ

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over the threshold, but this wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind.

      “Try to relax,” he whispered over the top of her head. “I’ll get you warmed up in a minute.”

      That was as futile as asking the rain to stop in an instant. She sucked in a deep breath, willing the shaking to cease, but everything about the night conspired against her. She turned her face into his chest and closed her eyes.

      Royce stepped in the front door, worried about the woman in his arms. Was she in shock? He couldn’t blame her if she was. She’d been through a lot tonight.

      He spotted Gina to the right of the foyer, motioning him to the sofa in front of a massive fireplace. Turning her back to them, she flipped the switch on the wall next to the mantel and flames ignited in the hearth, sending a wave of heat out into the room.

      Royce carefully put Adelaide down on the sofa and stepped back. “She’s freezing. Can you tack it up?”

      “Yeah.” Gina was already pulling the digital camera out of her kit.

      “The blindfold, too. She was wearing it when I stopped the unsub outside.” Royce stared at the soaked piece of cloth draped around her throat. “It looks like a kitchen towel.”

      “He must have improvised and grabbed it on his way through the kitchen.” Gina raised her camera. “This won’t take long, miss.”

      “Towels?” he asked.

      “The linen closet in the upstairs hallway.”

      Gina squeezed off a shot of Adelaide’s bound hands, and repositioned from another angle.

      Royce stepped out of the parlor and glanced up the expansive staircase to the second floor. Moving forward, he turned on the light switch, firing up a massive chandelier suspended from the open foyer ceiling. The place smacked of money and elegance. Neither one a bad thing. Big bucks. Was it possible the subject had planned to kidnap Adelaide Charboneau and hold her for ransom?

      Worry sliced through him, drawing him up the stairs to the second-floor landing where the intensity of her struggle against her captor was apparent.

      A vase lay smashed on the hardwood floor, swept from a low mahogany table. A large painting was cocked at an awkward angle above it. All the doors in the hallway were closed save one. Royce slowed his steps, careful to survey the damage for clues.

      He clamped his teeth together when he reached the open door at the end of the corridor. The splintered wood at the kick plate indicated it had been kicked open. Anger jolted him, and he sympathized with the terror she must have experienced, hearing the intruder, knowing he was in her room.

      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

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