Paranoid(68)

She dropped the phone.





CHAPTER 21


It had been years since Cade had been involved in a stakeout, and here he was at 1:13 in the morning parked a few doors down and on the opposite side of the street from the cottage where Rachel and the kids lived. His old house. He felt a lot more nostalgic about it than he’d ever felt about the massive Victorian where he’d grown up, the home now occupied by his father, Lila, and Lucas.

“Small town,” he reminded himself and sipped from his cup of rapidly cooling coffee. He’d been here for nearly an hour, and so far he’d seen nothing out of the ordinary. His vigil wasn’t official business, just a man watching his ex-wife’s home because he couldn’t sleep and because of recent events that included a murder along with the vandalism and an anonymous text.

Being here wasn’t stalking, he told himself. He was just looking out for his kids’ and their mother’s safety.

The area was quiet, a few street lamps casting pools of light on the roadway, several unoccupied cars parked on either side. He cracked the window and heard the soft hoot of an owl hidden in the thick branches of the fir trees high overhead.

The cottage, like the other homes along the street, was dark, only the faintest glow emanating from the dining room window along one side. He remembered how she’d always insisted on leaving the light on over the stove in the kitchen. Some things never changed. Some things were always changing.

Earlier this evening Rachel had called and told him that Dylan had jerry-rigged the old security system and he could see that Rachel had handled the message on the front door, the cruel message covered by a thick coat of paint.

Still, Cade hadn’t been satisfied that she and the kids were safe. Not with Violet Sperry’s brutal murder unsolved, and the weird text Rachel had received and, of course, the vandalism to her home with the single word: KILLER.

Was someone just trying to freak her out? Get his or her jollies from terrorizing his ex-wife? A cruel prank that preyed on her fears? That was bad enough and it made his blood boil, but it could be the start of something more dangerous, a warning of more dire, perhaps deadly things to come.

He snorted.

He was starting to be as paranoid as she was.

But, he told himself, his eyes scanning the street, with good cause. He saw a movement in the shrubbery, a dark shadow, and felt himself tense until he realized the motion in the leaves was an oversized racoon. Standing on his back legs, the critter stared straight at Cade’s truck with his masked eyes before waddling away, deeper into the shrubbery guarding the fence line.

Cade had spent the day trying to track down the elusive Frank Quinn, who didn’t have a driver’s license or registration for a white Buick, nor did he live on Toulouse Street. Though there were four Frank Quinns in Portland, two on the other side of the mountains, one in Bend, and another living outside of Pendleton, none was the man he’d met on this very street last week. He’d even checked dog registrations in Chinook County—again no Frank Quinn, nor F. Quinn.

He’d thought the name was an alias and kicked himself for not taking a picture of the guy or asking more questions at the time.

He saw a light go on upstairs in the office overlooking the front yard. Her silhouette was visible beyond the shade, and for a second he felt like a voyeur, a teenaged boy trying to gain a peek of the girl next door taking a shower. He watched as the light snapped off, replaced by a blue glow—her computer. And he imagined her in an oversized T-shirt, her hair pulled into a messy bun that was falling loose after hours of restless sleep, a yawn parting her lips.

God, he missed all that.

He missed her.

He missed living with the kids—being a part of his family.

“Get over it.” He’d blown that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

He wondered if she’d gotten another text that had woken her.

Or had it been another one of her nightmares?

Or just her ongoing battle with insomnia?

He’d been such a fool.

“Too little too late.”

Staring at the house, watching and waiting, he remembered the good times . . . and the bad. When he’d married Rachel she’d been pregnant and scared, and he hadn’t realized how deeply scarred she was from the tragedy of the night her brother died. Yeah, it all came back to Luke’s death and that stupid, dangerous game the group of kids had been playing.

She’d always blamed herself.

Despite the fact that most of the people in that darkened cannery had testified that they didn’t think Rachel could have fired the gun. Violet Osbourne and Annessa Bell had both claimed they weren’t sure that Rachel was the killer.

He finished the coffee and saw the computer light dim in the house, but the street remained quiet. He thought of how it had all fallen apart. There had been fights, of course, especially about her ever-increasing paranoia. With motherhood came a whole new raft of fears. She’d overprotected the kids, he’d thought, and the kids had rebelled. Rachel probably hadn’t been able to stop herself and the nightmares had increased. She’d been freaked out that something would happen to a member of their family and hated the fact that he was a detective, as her father had been. She blamed her father’s job for his drinking and the dissolution of her parents’ marriage. She’d been certain the same fate would befall them, and because of that, her fears of divorce, she’d almost put the wheels into motion.