Running Blind (2 page)

Damn it. He couldn’t replace Libby. Someone else might do her job, but no one could replace her.

You’d think with the economy as tough as it was, hiring someone would be easy, but folks were leaving instead of digging in their heels and fighting to keep their lives intact. Battle Ridge was full of empty houses, most of them with “For Rent” or “For Sale” signs on them, and not a sign of any renters, much less actual buyers. Businesses were closing, families were pulling up stakes and heading south, where the brutal winters didn’t hammer at you, where you might still be unemployed, but at least you wouldn’t be freezing.

He’d try. So far he hadn’t really put his mind to it, because up until the last minute he’d thought Libby would back out of her plans and stay. It galled him to think he might not succeed, but he was enough of a realist to know that right now, the deck was stacked against him.

Getting a woman to come out to the middle of nowhere for a lot of hard work and nominal pay—he wasn’t a miser, but no one was going to get rich working at the Decker ranch—wasn’t as easy as she seemed to think it would be. Things didn’t always work out. When God closed a door He didn’t necessarily open a convenient window. No, Zeke figured he was pretty much fucked.

C
ARLIN WALKED QUICKLY
to her desk, a frown on her face, her heart beating too hard.
Be rational
. She told herself
that over and over, trying to reassure herself. She was just being paranoid; her imagination working overtime. There were thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Toyotas that particular shade of blue in the state of Texas. Just because one had
appeared
to follow her from her apartment to work, and just because the driver—who she’d barely been able to see when she’d checked her rearview mirror—had dark hair, that didn’t mean Brad had tracked her down. No way.

The frighteningly familiar vehicle had kept going when she’d turned into the building’s parking garage. No one had followed her. She was perfectly safe here. Damn it, she had to stop letting that psycho get into her head! Hadn’t he already done enough?

She’d completely uprooted her life because of him. She’d quit her job, moved to Dallas—which was more than a four-hour drive from the Houston suburb where she’d lived for almost a year—and left her worries behind … she hoped. She’d been working here for three months, and Brad hadn’t so much as called. He sure as hell hadn’t shown up at her apartment time and again without warning, the way he had before she’d moved.

No way did he know where she lived or where she worked. She kept telling herself that.
No way
.

She’d taken precautions when she’d moved, paying all her outstanding bills before leaving town and not telling anyone where she was going, not even her coworkers at the kitchen supply company where she’d been in charge of billing. Her mail was being forwarded to a post office box on the other side of Dallas, rather than to her new apartment. She’d left in the middle of the night—literally—taking only what she could fit in her car. She wouldn’t say that Brad couldn’t possibly find her, but she’d been very careful and she’d hoped—and prayed—that once she was gone he’d turn his attention elsewhere. She felt a little guilty about that, because what woman deserved Brad?
She wouldn’t wish him on her worst enemy … well, maybe she would, if she had a worst enemy, but right off the bat she couldn’t think of anyone she disliked that much.

If anyone had listened to her, if even one cop had been on her side, she might still be working in Houston. She had been so naive! She’d been sure that once she filed a complaint, the authorities would take care of Brad. But when a cop decides to stalk a woman and he knows how to cover his tracks, when everyone is so quick to take his word over hers, there’s not much to be done except start over, which was what she’d done.

From the window she saw a line of clouds on the horizon; it hadn’t started raining yet, but according to the weatherman rain was coming. Carlin slipped off her red raincoat and hung it on a hook at the edge of her cubicle. She loved that raincoat so much she almost looked forward to the occasional fall shower just so she could wear it. Now her nerves were so unsettled she didn’t want to deal with rain, or traffic, or even a phone call. If her phone rang now … what if it was Brad? What if he’d not only found— No, she needed to stop thinking about him. She’d seen someone who reminded her of him, but that was all. Nothing had happened.

Jina Matthews, who worked at the cubicle directly beside Carlin’s, wasn’t having a good day, either. She was on her phone, her expression tense. She and her boyfriend had been fighting a lot lately, and it looked as if Jina was at the end of her rope. She said a few choice words, then thumbed a button on her phone. Looking across the aisle at Carlin, she made a wry face.

“It was
so
much more satisfying when you could slam a phone down. Pushing a button just doesn’t have the same gratification factor.” Her phone, set to vibrate, buzzed around on the desk as another call came in. Jina picked it up, looked at the caller ID, and jabbed the button again.
“Unless it’s the
off
button.” She leaned forward and spoke to the silent phone. “Call all you want, jackass. I can’t
hear
you,” she said in a singsong falsetto.

In spite of herself, Carlin laughed. Jina smiled, though the anger and sadness and frustration remained clear on her face.

Jina was gorgeous. She was blond, like Carlin, and about the same height, but that was where the similarity ended. Carlin knew she was acceptable, even above average, but she’d never be a knockout. Jina was. Men literally turned around in the street to stare at her. Unfortunately she had terrible taste in men, a strange and self-destructive attraction to the bad boy. She’d probably have a new boyfriend by the end of the week, and maybe this time she’d choose more wisely. God knows she had her pick of men, so why she went for the jerk instead of the straight-up guy was anyone’s guess.

Jina’s phone buzzed a couple more times, and each time she rejected the call in favor of work. For a couple of hours they each handled billing for the insurance company that owned this building in downtown Dallas. It was a boring job, most of the time—all right,
all
of the time—but the pay was decent. Carlin figured she was lucky to have the job, considering the general state of the economy. She wasn’t in charge, like she’d been in Houston, but this was a much larger company than the one she’d left behind and there were opportunities for advancement, if she stayed for a while, kept her nose clean, and didn’t screw up. When she put her mind to doing something, sheer stubbornness made her keep at it until she could do a good job. Working in billing wasn’t glamorous, but so what? It paid the bills. Now and then she’d think about going back to school, but until her mind settled on one career path, what was the point? She needed a job; she didn’t have a calling, and
that was okay with her because that made her more flexible, instead of being focused on one thing.

Jina was antsy, up and down from her desk, bringing Carlin—and herself—coffee a couple of times. Just before lunchtime, she jumped out of her chair and crossed into Carlin’s cubicle. “Did you bring your lunch?”

“Yeah. A sandwich and a bag of chips.” Cooking wasn’t her thing. Some of the women who worked in the office brought in little individual containers of homemade soup, or lasagna, or casserole, which they heated up in the break room microwave. Carlin preferred a sandwich any day over going to all that trouble.

The “yuck” face Jina made was almost comical, but then she was into gourmet stuff. “That doesn’t sound very good. I’m going down the street to pick up a veggie pizza. Split one with me?”

Pizza sounded good, and Jina obviously needed company, so Carlin agreed. She pushed away from her computer, stretched out the kinks in her shoulders, and reached for her raincoat. “I’ll walk with you.”

Jina cocked her head and pursed her lips. “I was kinda hoping to borrow your raincoat. I left mine at home, along with my umbrella. And I really do need to walk off some of this … let’s call it excess energy.”

“If you’re sure.” It didn’t seem fair that Jina should brave the rain alone for the pizza, but on the other hand Carlin definitely understood needing to work off some temper.

“Positive.” Jina snagged the raincoat and slipped it on, then rubbed an appreciative hand over the sleeve. “Nice. I wish I could find a raincoat this color! If you ever decide to get rid of it …”

“I’ll hang on to that raincoat until the day I die—but I’ll look online this weekend and try to find one for you.”

“Oooh, shopping. I’m in serious need of some retail
therapy, though a mall is more my style than a computer. It’s more interactive. Plus there are restaurants. We should do that this weekend.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Carlin smiled, glad enough that she didn’t have to go out in the rain. Spending part of the coming weekend shopping with Jina didn’t sound like a bad idea; she could use some retail therapy herself. “I have a couple of Diet Cokes in the fridge, if that suits you.”

“Yep. I’ll be right back!” Jina hurried toward the elevator, dialing the pizza place as she walked. Carlin went on into the break room to get the drinks, paper plates, and napkins. Over pizza Jina could tell her all about this latest boyfriend issue, if she wanted to talk. Maybe she needed a place to stay until she could get the live-in cleared out, if this was a serious breakup and not just an argument. It wouldn’t hurt to offer, Carlin thought.

They could make plans for shopping. She sat down and stretched her legs out, relaxing. She felt better, and ready to laugh at herself. Okay, not laugh, but at least she wasn’t about to come unglued. That hadn’t been Brad’s Toyota; Brad was in south Texas, and had no idea where she was. She had a new life here, was making friends, and not even Brad Henderson was going to ruin it for her.

B
RAD STOOD ACROSS
the street from the skyscraper and watched the front entrance from the shelter of a green coffee shop awning. He sipped on his second cup of coffee, a tall, hot latte, and wondered which floor Carlin was on. If he knew exactly where she was, he might be able to corner her somewhere inside the building, in a restroom or an empty office, but that was relying too much on coincidence and happenstance. A lot could go wrong; he didn’t know the routine of anyone in the building, didn’t know
the layout or how stringent the security was. He was content to watch and wait—for now.

This was his second trip to Dallas since Carlin had run away from him. Normally he wasn’t a patient man, but being impatient would be a mistake. These things took time, and careful planning. The bitch would pay for what she’d done. She thought she could file a complaint against him and just waltz away? It hadn’t taken him more than five minutes to find her. He’d told her he was good with a computer; she should’ve believed him.

Who did she think she was, blowing him off the way she had? He’d thought they had something special. Instead she’d suddenly started turning him down when he asked her out, and when he tried to talk her around she’d freaked, filed a harassment complaint against him. Thanks to his buddies on the force no one had taken the complaint seriously, but it was on file; if anything happened to her, he’d be at the top of the list of possible suspects.

So he’d planned carefully. Yeah, this was one of his days off, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. Instead he’d looked at the situation from every angle, and he was certain there weren’t any holes in his alibi.

It was laughable that the stupid bitch thought she could outsmart him and get away from him. She hadn’t even moved out of the fucking state. How easy was this? If the opportunity didn’t present itself this time, eventually it would. He just had to be prepared to act, and act immediately. She was going to die. Too bad he couldn’t grab her and take her off somewhere, have some fun with her first, but he couldn’t be out of town that long without setting off some alarms. What fun would it be if he got caught?

The weapon he carried couldn’t be traced back to
him; he’d taken it off a low-life drug dealer who had subsequently been dumped in the bay, and filed the serial numbers off. He’d also programmed his computer to show intermittent activity during the day: chat rooms, Facebook posts, instant messages … it would look as if he’d been on the computer off and on with no eight-hour-plus break to drive to Dallas and back.

Security in the parking garage was too tight for him to try to catch Carlin there. Eventually she’d leave, though. Maybe she’d walk to one of the nearby restaurants for lunch, or she might even head his way for a cup of coffee. Wouldn’t that be a fucking kick? He’d love to see the expression on her face when she recognized him, right before he put a bullet in her head.

All he had to do was wait, and watch. He was good at waiting.

Just before noon, he saw her. She’d been wearing a red raincoat that morning when she’d left her apartment, and she was wearing it now; he actually spotted her before she stepped through the glass front doors and onto the sidewalk, even though the rain was falling hard enough to blur visibility. The hood was up, a silky hank of blond hair peeking out, as she lowered her head against the driving rain and started down the street.

She didn’t cross the street toward him. Well, that had been asking a lot. The possibility had been fun to think about, but he’d known it was a long shot. Instead she turned right, walking fast through the rain.

Brad thought about setting what remained of his coffee on a nearby outdoor table, but thought better of it. DNA was a bitch. He poured it out, and stuffed the paper cup in his jacket pocket.

He pulled his own dark hood up and forward, hiding his face. Thanks to the rain, no one would think anything about it; almost everyone else was doing the same.
He mirrored her movements on the opposite side of the street, and crossed at the corner, his eyes focused on that red raincoat the entire time. He didn’t want to lose her, but he’d have to be piss-poor at trailing someone if he did. The circumstances were perfect; everything was falling into place, as if this opportunity was a gift. Rain kept a lot of people off the streets, and those who were out kept their heads down and their focus on their feet. It wasn’t a day for a leisurely stroll, for checking out the other pedestrians. And with the rain falling as it was and his hood up, even if someone did look his way they wouldn’t be able to see him well. No one would be able to give a description. Eyewitnesses were notoriously unreliable. And even if they did manage a vague description, he had his alibi.