Make Me Melt(38)

“Okay, let’s canvas the area,” he said to Colton. “Check with the neighbors—see if they noticed any activity here today.”

As he and Colton circled the house, Jason put in a call to the local police. He didn’t know if the intruders were still in the vicinity, but he knew the extra police activity would deter them from hanging around.

Once they had cleared the perimeter of the property, he called Deputy Mitchell and let him know it was safe to bring Caroline back to the house. By the time they arrived, two cruisers were also on-site. Jason walked over to Caroline, intercepting her before she could even step onto the walkway.

“The house is clear,” he said quietly, not wanting to alarm her any more than necessary. “But there’s been a break-in. Someone disabled the electrical at the service drop, which is likely why the alarm wasn’t triggered.”

“If they wanted me, they could have waited,” she pointed out in a calm voice. “But they didn’t. They just wanted to scare us.”

“Maybe,” Jason muttered, but he knew he wasn’t being truthful.

He had a pretty good sense that whoever had done this was also responsible for the shooting. The implications were frightening, and his mind raced with all the possible scenarios. Had Eddie Green been involved, after all? It seemed more than coincidence that Caroline’s beach house had been tossed only hours after he had confronted Eddie.

Or was someone else responsible? One thing was certain: they were being watched. Whoever had broken into the beach house knew that they were staying there. This was a deliberate attempt to frighten them off. Instead of scaring Jason, it only pissed him off. Nobody would hurt Caroline while he was alive to prevent it. He’d protect her with every resource he had at his disposal, and no sacrifice would be too great.

“Listen, I want you to stay in the vehicle with Deputy Mitchell until I’ve finished talking with the police,” he said, rubbing her arms. Despite the warmth of the evening, she was shivering. “We won’t stay here tonight. We’ll find a hotel.” He gestured toward the house. “I’m just going to grab our gear, and I’ll be right out. Ten minutes, tops.”

“What about my father?”

“I’ve already taken care of it. Extra men are being assigned to protect him. Trust me—nobody is going to get within a hundred feet of the judge, okay?”

“Okay.” She retreated to the cruiser, but she looked shaken and pale. “Be careful, Jason.”

He crouched down on the pavement beside her open door and took her hands in his. “Whoever did this is long gone,” he assured her. “This was done as a scare tactic, nothing more. That means that we’re getting close to finding out who did this, and they know it. They’re getting desperate.”

“Which makes them more dangerous,” Caroline said urgently. “Just watch your back, okay?”

“Always.”

He left her under the protection of two deputy marshals while he returned to the house. Inside, the police were inspecting the damaged French doors.

“We’re not going to be able to do much tonight,” the lieutenant said. “We’ll have to wait until the electricity is restored, or at least until tomorrow, when we have some light. We’ll secure the house and leave a cruiser here overnight.”

Jason nodded. “Get a team in here in the morning to dust for fingerprints, and check the area around the house for footprints, especially where the electrical input was damaged.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jason made his way upstairs. In Caroline’s room, he gathered up her clothing from where the intruders had strewn it across the floor and bed and packed it quickly into her small suitcase. As he was leaving the bedroom, his shoes crunched over broken glass, and he bent down to inspect the floor.


He’d stepped on a picture frame. Turning it over, he saw it was a photo of Caroline and her father, taken one summer when she was just a teenager. He wanted to think that the broken picture was just collateral damage, and that the intruder hadn’t deliberately smashed this particular photo. But someone had used a fat black marker to draw an X over both of the judge’s and Caroline’s eyes, reminding Jason of the stupid cartoons he used to watch as a kid. You knew when a cartoon character was dead because his eyes were crossed out. The home invasion had been personal, and if Caroline had been alone in the house, she’d likely be dead right now.

The thought chilled him.

Swiftly, he returned to his bedroom and gathered up his own discarded clothing, stuffing items into his duffel bag with no regard for whether he wrinkled them or not. He just wanted to get Caroline the hell away from the house.

It wasn’t until he had her in his own car and they were speeding away from the beach house, with the flashing lights of the police cars receding in the distance, that he began to breathe easier. The car carrying Colton and Deputy Mitchell was somewhere behind them, and they’d agreed to rendezvous at a hotel about fifty miles south of San Francisco. Whoever had attacked Judge Banks had sent a clear message: they wanted Caroline, too. It took all Jason’s training and restraint not to slam the palm of his hand against the steering wheel. He was pissed off on a level so deep that he had to shut that part of himself down or risk losing focus on what was important—Caroline and her safety.

“Are you okay?” she asked softly.