LITMIR.BIZ

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as Brent started for the stairs at a sprint. “Wait here,” he said.

      “Not likely.”

      He flashed her a roguish smile that made her want to smile back and then eased open the door. The stairwell was dark. She listened, her hand finding his back, reading the tension coiled in his shoulders.

      “Is this the only way in and out?” she whispered, catching the fragrance of his aftershave.

      “Two basement windows,” he answered. “They open onto the backyard. A small bathroom window, too.” Below them, the sweep of a flashlight beam cut unsteadily through the darkness.

      He paused, fingers on the light switch. “Here we go,” he whispered. Snapping on the light, he hurtled down the stairs.

      Donna figured they had the advantage. Their eyes were already adjusted to the light. She heard a crash as they emerged into the paneled space, boxes arranged into neat stacks that reached the low ceiling. In the dim light she made out a small table covered with balls of yarn. Three bags of dog kibble were piled nearby. The room was dim. A door slammed.

      “Come out of there,” Brent shouted.

      It took her a moment to realize the intruder had rushed into the tiny bathroom. Brent was at the bathroom door in a moment. Finding it locked, he kicked at it. The cheap wood began to give way almost immediately.

      Donna looked around for something to use as a weapon. Broom? Tennis racket? She found nothing until she noticed a small hatchet next to a neatly stacked pile of wood. She snatched it up, the cold metal seeming to leach into her nerves, freezing her fingertips. The door splintered with a shriek of the metal hinges under Brent’s feet. From inside the bathroom came the sound of glass exploding.

      Without a breath of warning, the noises catapulted her back to the memory of her own accident, flying off the seat of Nate’s motorcycle, a vehicle her father had forbidden her to ride with a man whom he had tried his utmost to warn her about. He’d been right, she’d realized when she’d woken up temporarily paralyzed with Nate nowhere to be found. Bruce Gallagher had been dead-on correct, and she’d raged at him for it.

      Swallowing the guilt, she regripped the hatchet to rally her senses just as the door failed. Brent shoved it open.

      They stumbled through in time to see a pair of legs disappearing through the small window above the toilet. Brent grabbed at the feet, a moment too late. One shoe made contact, smashing him in the cheek, sending him stumbling.

      Donna was already racing back up the steps by the time Brent recovered and followed. They sprinted through the house and out into the backyard. Donna almost tumbled into the pool. Brent snatched at her T-shirt as she teetered on the edge, pulling her tight against his chest for a moment.

      She felt his heart hammering, or was it her own? “Thanks,” she whispered, pulling away.

      Skirting the water, they made it to the short stuccoed retaining wall that enclosed the yard, fringed with delicate flowers and shrubbery.

      On the other side of the wall was a smooth paved path that led down to the beach in one direction and back to the main road in the other. The moon showed silver white on the pavement.

      No movement. No sound except the waves.

      Brent jogged toward the beach until she lost sight of him. She made her way cautiously in the other direction, ears straining for any sign, any sound. Nothing. She scanned the thick shrubbery that lined the road, part of the charm and ambiance of Coronado Island.

      Was the intruder hiding somewhere? Watching? Was it the same man who had held a knife to her throat at the office? Shivers erupted through her body and she wished she had stayed put. She realized she was gripping the hatchet so tight her fingers were cramping. A few more paces and something crackled in the branches. Shivers surged up her spine.

      “Come out,” she ordered, forcing the words. Every muscle in her body tensed. What if he did emerge? Would she really have the fortitude to use a hatchet to defend herself?

      Her lungs wouldn’t work properly; blood pounded in her temples. She caught a glimpse, the quickest flash of a feline face regarding her, before the cat retreated back into the bushes.

      “Nice work, Donna,” she muttered to herself. “Way to scare off a cat.”

      Running feet made her breath catch. Brent jogged up to her.

      “Anything?” she said.

      “No. Whoever it was, I give them points for speed. And I thought my eight-minute time on the mile-and-a-half run was good.” He shook his head. “Not good enough.” He eyed her hands. “Hatchet?”

      “There wasn’t a stun gun handy.”

      He smiled, but now it was strained, pinched around the edges with worry.

      “Let’s go look in the basement and see if we can figure out what the guy was after,” she said.

      He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you really are a detective.”

      “Don’t make fun of me,” she snapped. “I never said I was anything but a vet.”

      “I wasn’t making fun.”

      “Yes, you were.”

      He held up his palms and let out a low breath. “Sometimes I try too hard to be witty and it just comes out like I’m a smart aleck. I’m sorry. Character flaw.”

      There was an earnestness in his tone that quenched her fire. “It’s okay. Sometimes I take offense when I shouldn’t. My character flaw.”

      “Truce, then.”

      She allowed him to take her hand and help her back over the stucco wall. His fingers were strong and warm. It had been a long time since she’d held a man’s hand, and the touch reassured her. But she didn’t need reassurance, not from a man, not now. With the memory of Nate threatening to surface, she pulled away and tried to focus her thoughts.

      What was she hoping to find in the basement? Her father would know. Grief welled afresh in her heart. You don’t have to be a detective, she chided herself. You just have to be observant and you’ve had plenty of training for that. With canine clients, she’d learned to watch every detail, every nuance of their behavior, to ferret out answers. She’d do the same in this situation.

      Her foot clunked against something hard as she walked through the darkened yard. She stopped to check.

      “Brent?”

      He was almost to the door. “Yeah?”

      Her mind knew what she was seeing, but somehow she could not make sense of it. “I think you’d better come take a look at this.”

      * * *

      Brent stared at the small suitcase. He knew every crack and scrape on the old leather. It was his father’s. Before he died of liver cancer when they were in grade school, they’d seen him pack and unpack that case hundreds of times. Neat, precise, deliberate, right down to the socks nestled inside his extra pair of shoes. Brent packed the same way.

      “Daddy has to go where the bridges are,” his mother would say of her construction foreman husband.

      Pauline used to cry. Every time. Brent couldn’t see the sense in the tears. His mother said God would bring Roger Mitchell back safely, and Brent had trusted in that. Turned out that God took their father a different way, through the tumors that ate up his liver. The disease had taken his mother, too, when Pauline and his sister were nearly through high school. Not cancer, but the lonely silence of an empty house that abraded her will to live. God wasn’t enough to fill that void. He wasn’t enough to fill Brent’s, either.

      He realized Donna was speaking.

      “We shouldn’t touch it. I’ve called the police.”

      No more waiting. Pauline was in trouble, he could feel it. He bent down and shone his cell phone light onto the case. Using the

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