Blackbird Lake (28 page)

Melanie would still be alive today if he’d kept his promise….

A leaden weight settled directly over his heart.

After dropping Emma off at Martha’s for her sleepover, Carly let herself into the house as the sun glimmered in a dusky lavender haze over the peaks of the Crazies.

The weather report promised a warm-up for tomorrow. The temperature would hit the upper sixties, and there would be plenty of sun. It might be one of the last gold-tinged days of autumn before winter came blasting hard and fast through Montana.

Maybe she’d ask Martha to bring Emma to the shop at lunchtime tomorrow and they’d all walk to the park for one final picnic before the first snow came.

For tonight, she planned on paying some bills, emailing Sydney, and getting to work on the Tinkerbell costume she was sewing for Emma to wear on Halloween.

She hung her jacket in the hall closet and made a beeline for the kitchen. As she began sorting through the stack of mail on her writing desk, she noticed Annie’s pumpkin pie recipe paper-clipped to a message pad beside her laptop and suddenly remembered she needed to write a list of ingredients she’d need for the pie.

Annie had also served a special Thanksgiving punch, she remembered. That might be nice for the big fund-raising dinner dance to be held in Lonesome Way High School’s gymnasium. Of course she’d have to run it by Georgia Timmons first.

The fun never stops,
she thought wryly.

She was just about to get to work at her writing desk when she paused, noticing that the kitchen felt cold. Much colder than the front of the house and the hall.

Odd.

She swung toward the sliding door leading out to the wraparound deck and yard, and froze.

The door was open. Not wide open…but several inches open. So was the screen.

A prick of fear stabbed her. That door had been closed when she left for work that morning, and it was closed when she checked again a short while ago before bundling Emma into her jacket and driving her to Martha’s apartment.

Now as she moved toward the open space her breath seemed trapped in her throat. Chilly air wafted into the room. She shoved the door shut, fastened the lock, then whirled around to glance uneasily around the kitchen.

Had someone broken in? Was anything missing or out of place?

Her desk drawer was closed. Nothing looked disturbed. She hurried into the hall, checking each of the downstairs rooms, then rushed up to Emma’s room, the third bedroom, her own bedroom…

Her bureau drawers were all closed. Her nightstand drawer…

Open.

Only a few inches, but she always closed every drawer tight, worried that Emma might accidentally catch her fingers in one.

And that wasn’t all….

She suddenly noticed the overhead light glowing in the small closet Denny McDonald had built for her in the corner of her big, airy bedroom.

She was certain the
only
lights on when she’d left with Emma had been the living room light and the porch light.

Her heart thumping, she edged toward the closet and peered inside.
Calm down. Everything is in order….

Except…it wasn’t.

The vintage hatbox on the top shelf. A gift from Annie. It was where she stored scraps of fabric, photos of quilts she loved, notes Annie had written her while she was in college, and poems she’d collected over the years, copying favorites onto stationery and storing them in the box to keep. The hatbox was now turned sideways on the shelf, the front portion of it nearly teetering over the edge. Seizing it with cold fingers, she took it down and peered inside.

On first glance, it didn’t seem as if anything was missing.

But someone had been here and moved it. Had they been searching for money?

Only one name popped into her mind.

Phil.

Icy fear slid through every inch of her body as she tried to fight off panic.

It had been over a year since he called. Was he so desperate for cash that he’d actually tracked her down after all this time, come after her, all the way to Montana? Had he broken into her home, trying to grab whatever cash she had lying around, figuring she wouldn’t call the police on him, that she’d still be that scared, timid little girl who didn’t want to cross him, who cried and begged him to let her out of that tiny hall closet?

If that’s what he thinks, he’s dead wrong
. Taut with anger, she left the hatbox on the closet floor and darted back into the hall and down the stairs toward the tiny room—an alcove really—that served as her sewing room. The childproof hook at the top, which she used to keep Emma from wandering in there alone, was unlatched.

Bursting inside, she pushed the oval embroidered rug in the center of the little sewing room aside, then knelt and curled her fingers around the single loose floorboard.

Beneath that floorboard was the metal box where she
kept five hundred dollars cash hidden in case of an emergency. Copies of her passport and driver’s license were stowed there, too, as well as her birth certificate and Emma’s, a copy of her will, and the title papers to her home. The originals were in a safety deposit box at the bank. In Annie’s old neighborhood in Boston, there had been occasional break-ins, and Annie had taught her to store her personal valuables and copies of her really important documents beneath the floor and to cover it with a beautiful rug.

Everything’s here,
Carly realized with relief, still kneeling beside the box.

But everything wasn’t all right.

Someone had broken into her home.

They’d invaded her privacy, her peace of mind, her safe, calm life here with Emma. For a moment her throat closed up and she felt panic bubbling from deep inside, but she pushed it back and raced toward the living room where she’d left her purse and her cell phone.

She had to call Jake—

No.
No.
Skidding to a stop, she drew in a shaky breath. What was she thinking? She needed to call the sheriff, not Jake. She couldn’t let herself start turning to Jake whenever something—anything—happened. She couldn’t let herself think she could rely on him—

Suddenly someone banged several times on her front door, and she gasped.

But immediately she realized that whoever had broken in would hardly come back and knock for admittance. Even Phil wouldn’t be that stupid—

Or would he?

Hold it together,
she told herself as she peered cautiously through the living room window on her way to the door. That was when she spotted Jake’s truck parked in the driveway.

Relief made her knees tremble. She practically tore the door from its hinges as she yanked it open and there was Jake, standing on her porch, his hand raised to knock again. Bronco waited alongside him, his scraggly tail wagging with pleasure.

“Thank God!” It came out as a breathless gasp of relief and his gaze sharpened on her.

“What’s wrong? Carly, you’re as pale as the damned moon—”

Clutching his arm, she pulled him inside and Bronco followed as always, right on his heels. “Someone broke in. My back deck door was open when I came home. I had just dropped Emma off for her sleepover at Martha’s and it was closed when I left—I know it was,” she explained in a rush as Jake shut the door behind him and studied her with a frown. “Several things look out of place. Someone’s been in here.”

“They take anything?”

“It doesn’t seem like it so far, but I…I’m not sure.”

She must have looked as distraught as she felt, because he caught her to him and gave her a reassuring squeeze. Leaning against him, Carly felt her breath come a little slower and easier as the burst of panic eased.

“It’s going to be okay. Are you…having a panic attack?”

“No…I don’t think so. Maybe a little, but…this is just so crazy,” she muttered, shaking her head. “We don’t have many home invasions in Lonesome Way. I don’t understand who would break in—but we should call Sheriff Hodge—”

“Let me do it. You sit down.”

When she was settled on the sofa, he yanked out his cell. He didn’t take his eyes off her while he spoke to the sheriff, and after setting his cell down on the coffee table, he took both of her hands in his.

“Do you have any idea who would want to break in here? I won’t touch anything, but I’m going to take a look around. But first there’s something I should tell you. It’s about Madison.”

She went still. “What is it?”

“It’s the reason I came by. Madison thinks someone might be following her.”

Fresh shock bulleted through her. “She never said anything to me. Do you…think this break-in could be about
Madison
? Why on earth…?” A chill rushed all through her body.

“I don’t have a clue. Yet.” Jake’s tone was low, tense.

He must have seen the alarm in her eyes, because he suddenly tucked her close to him again. His arms felt so good. So strong and firm and safe.

“Listen, Carly, I promise you, everything’s going to be fine. I’ll be with you until we find out what’s going on and whoever broke in gets arrested. In the meantime, you and Emma are stuck with me.”

She drew back, stared up at him. “What do you mean? You’re…moving in?”

“Unless you’ve got a problem with that.”

She drew a breath and smiled up at him.

“No problem. If you think I’m going to argue, I’m not.”

“Good. Because this is one argument you can’t win.”

Slowly she relaxed in his arms, her head resting against his chest. Bronco sat on the rug, watching them a moment, then eventually stretched out and closed his eyes.

As a siren sounded in the distance, Jake stroked her hair.

“I just hope you don’t get sick of me before Hodge catches this creep,” he said. “Because until he does, I’m sticking to you like Elmer’s.”

Stick all you want,
she thought and then excised the very idea from her mind.
We’re friends,
she reminded herself.
Emma’s parents and…friends. Be smart for once and don’t mess it up thinking crazy thoughts about anything else.

At four
A.M.
Carly jolted up from her pillow. Thin beams of grayish moonlight seeped through her bedroom window. Shoving her hair out of her eyes, she realized she was shivering.

Of course she was. She’d dreamed that someone was crawling in through that window. She couldn’t see the man’s face…

But as she peered through the dimness, she could see that the window was closed. And the house was silent.

Then she remembered. Jake. Refusing to go home and leave her alone tonight. He was sleeping on the pullout sofa in the third bedroom. Just down the hall from her.

Despite everything, her heartbeat slowed. She felt almost calm. At least, calmer than she’d ever expected to feel tonight, after spending two hours going over every detail of the break-in with Teddy Hodge.

The sheriff had dusted for fingerprints, warning her that if whoever broke in had used gloves, there wouldn’t be any prints to be found.

If it’s Phil,
she’d thought, something hard and determined
knotting inside her,
he’s going to be sorry he ever came near my house.

Her thug of a cousin was dead wrong if he believed he could still frighten her out of her wits. Or extort money from her—or anything else.

She’d been shocked to find someone had searched her home, but he wasn’t going to scare her again. Or push her around.

And she wouldn’t give him so much as a penny. Not a single one. Not ever.

Determination was one thing, but falling back asleep was another. She wasn’t thinking of the break-in any longer. She was thinking about Jake. After several torturous moments of staring at the ceiling, all wound up, listening for any sound, she sat up suddenly, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and padded barefoot to the door.

She wanted to see him, she told herself. Just make sure he was really there. And then she’d go downstairs and make coffee, since she was never going to fall back asleep again.

A moment later she was in the hallway, tiptoeing past Bronco, who looked up at her for a moment, tail beating against the floor, then went back to his snoring. Just as she reached the open doorway of the third bedroom, a floorboard suddenly creaked beneath her feet. And Jake—bare chested—sat up.