In Safe Hands (Search and Rescue #4)(4)
“You really are the perfect man, Max,” she said, patting his belly. “I wake you up at two in the morning, beat you to a pulp, and you’re still willing to cuddle. How many men would put up with that?” A certain deputy sheriff came to mind, but she pushed the thought away before she got mopey. Looking down, she made a face as she pulled her sweat-soaked tank away from her skin. “Now I’m disgusting and need a shower. Good night, Max. Thanks for letting me assault you.”
The stairs loomed in front of her, mocking her with their steepness. Daisy wished she’d left a little juice in her leg muscles for the climb. With a whimper that almost made her glad no one else was within earshot, she forced her wobbly quads to lift high enough for her feet to clear each step.
She stopped in her room to get clean pajamas. As she passed the front window, the one she referred to as her “TV screen,” she stopped and moved closer. There was a sheriff’s department SUV parked at the curb in front of the Storvicks’ house.
“Corbin, you budding little psycho,” she muttered. “What did you do this time?”
Forgetting her aching legs, she scurried over to turn off the overhead light and then returned to her window seat. The Storvicks’ place was dark, and Daisy frowned. Had the deputy not gone up to the house yet? She’d been expecting shouting parents and a crying Corbin, not the current sleepy silence.
No one was in the driver’s seat of the SUV, though, so the deputy had to be somewhere. Maybe Corbin hadn’t done anything to his ex-girlfriend after all. Daisy looked around the area. Despite her immediate assumption that Corbin was the reason for the deputy’s visit, the squad SUV was actually parked closer to the for-sale house than the Storvicks’. Daisy thought of the movement she’d seen the previous night, and she wondered if there was a homeless person living there. The deputy could be responding to a trespassing call.
Daisy drummed her fingertips on the wall next to the window, trying to remember when Chris’s days off started. If he was working, then his shift started at seven a.m., so she could call him in a few hours, and he wouldn’t threaten to kill her. If he wasn’t working, however, he tended to sleep late to start getting his body ready for the approaching night shift. She knew from experience that, when woken, Chris was as grumpy as a bear that had been punched in the face.
Besides, his recent standoffishness had pushed her off-center. Daisy wasn’t sure where they stood at the moment. He’d been her friend—her only real-life, in-person friend—since she’d been sixteen. After eight years, they’d developed an easy, comfortable camaraderie, but she’d managed to mess that up in one impulsive second that she’d regretted ever since. It’d been movie night a few months ago, and they’d laughed in unison at some funny line. When she’d turned to look at Chris, she’d caught him staring at her with a strange, almost hungry expression. Her amusement had died, replaced by a longing so intense that she couldn’t stop herself from leaning closer and closer until their lips barely touched. She could have sworn he’d wanted to kiss her as much as she’d wanted to kiss him.
But then he’d jerked back as if she’d given him a static shock. Muttering some excuse, he’d escaped from her house as quickly as possible, leaving her to wallow in regret and humiliation. Ever since that night, Chris had been acting…weird. Except for the day of her mother’s murder, Daisy had never wished so hard for a do-over.
The thought of losing Chris was scary, so she shoved it out of her head and concentrated instead on the scene in front of her. An almost-full moon and a couple of streetlights illuminated the SUV and the yard immediately next to it. If she squinted, Daisy could make out the shadowed impressions of footprints in the day-old snow, leading around the far side of the house. Those must’ve been made by the deputy, she decided.
Daisy tried to figure out why uneasiness was simmering in her belly. Everything was so quiet and still, with everyone sleeping—everyone except for her, at least. The squad vehicle just didn’t fit with that peace. In her experience, cop cars brought action and noise and movement—or at least a visit from Chris. That must’ve been why the empty SUV seemed so eerie.
She shivered and blamed it on her sweaty, quickly drying tank top. Darting across the room, she grabbed the hoodie draped over her desk chair and pulled it on as fast as possible so she wouldn’t miss anything that might happen outside. As she was about to rush back to the window, her cell caught her eye, and she reached for it, sliding the phone into her hoodie pocket.
Daisy curled up on the window seat again. She knew from experience that she wouldn’t sleep if she tried to go back to bed after exercising, plus that odd, uneasy feeling hadn’t gone away. Resting her chin on her up-drawn knee, she watched, waiting for the deputy’s return.
The wind picked up, rushing past her window and making the pine tree branches scratch against the side of Daisy’s house. She pulled the hoodie more tightly around her and tucked her fingers under her arms to keep them warm. Clouds crept over the moon, darkening the shadows surrounding the house.
“No,” Daisy groaned. The streetlights mostly just lit the narrow circle of space around their poles, so it was much more difficult to see anything with the moonlight gone. The encroaching darkness sent her imagination into overdrive, making it too easy to picture all sorts of things hiding in the shadows. She leaned toward the glass, trying to make up for the dim lighting by getting as close as she could to the action—or lack of action.