The weather turned chilly again overnight, and rain had started by morning. Normally I would be going to work early on Saturday, because it was a busy day, but when I talked to Lynn she said that
JoAnn
was working out great and she suggested offering the job full-time. I agreed, because otherwise these next three weeks would kill me.
Wyatt slept late, sprawled across the bed, and I entertained myself that morning by writing his list of transgressions. Like I would forget something that important? No way. I sat curled in his big chair with a throw over my feet and legs, perfectly content to laze away the morning. The rain seemed to do away with any sense of urgency. I love listening to rain anyway, and seldom get the chance to because I'm usually too busy. I felt safe and happy, cocooned with Wyatt, letting the detectives do the legwork in tracking down my stalker. They were on the right track with the rental cars, I just knew it.
I could talk. To my delight, I could actually talk. My voice was very raspy, but at
at
least it worked. I never could have been one of those nuns who took vows of
silence.Come
to think of it, I couldn't have been a nun, period.
I called Mom and talked to her.
Shehad
talked to Sally and was greatly relieved; Sally had already called Jazz and apologized, and they were supposed to meet this morning and talk in person. I wondered if maybe I should wait until tomorrow to take my fabric over, and Mom said yes. I got the picture, having gone through something of
a reconciliation
with Wyatt.
Then I called
Siana
and we chatted for a while. After hanging up with her, I took all of my new clothes upstairs and laid them out on the bed in the guest bedroom. I tried on all my new shoes again, walking in them to make certain they didn't rub my toes. By then Wyatt was up; I heard him go downstairs for a cup of coffee, then he came back upstairs and leaned in the doorway while he drank it, watching me with a sleepy sort of half smile on his face.
My shoes perplexed him, for some reason. I'd bought what I considered the basics: athletic shoes for the gym—three pairs—plus high-heeled boots, plus some clogs, plus some black pumps, a pair of black flats, and, well, the list goes on.
"Just how many pairs of black shoes do you need?" he finally asked, staring at them lined up on the floor.
Okay, shoes aren't a laughing matter. I gave him a cool stare. "One
pair
more than I have."
"Then why didn't you get them?"
"Because I would still need
one pair more than I have
."
He said, "Hmmm," and wisely let the subject drop.
Over breakfast I told him I thought the Sally/Jazz situation was resolved. He looked a little stunned. "How did you do that? You've been evading a stalker and getting burned out of your home. When did you have time?"
"I made time. Desperation is a great motivator." I was a little stunned myself. He truly had no idea how desperate I'd been.
After breakfast I went back upstairs and puttered with my new clothes, cutting off tags, washing what needed to be washed before I wore it, pressing out stubborn wrinkles, then rearranging Wyatt's closet and hanging my clothes in there. Except it wasn't Wyatt's closet now, it was our closet, which meant three-quarters of it was mine. That was okay for now, with my sparse wardrobe that was just for the fall months, but by the time I bought winter clothes, then spring clothes, then summer clothes—well, there would have to be more rearranging.
The dresser drawers had to be cleaned out and rearranged, too.
And the bathroom vanity space.
Again he leaned in the doorway and watched me while I emptied all the dresser drawers, piling all the stuff on the bed for now. He kept smiling a little as if the sight of me working my ass off while he just watched was somehow satisfying to him. Why his conscience didn't kill him, I don't know.
"What's so funny?" I finally asked, a little irritably.
"Nothing's
funny
."
"You're smiling."
"Yeah."
I put my hands on my hips and scowled at him. "So why are you smiling?"
"I'm watching you nest—in
my
house." He gave me a heavy-lidded look as he sipped his coffee. "God knows I've tried long enough to get you here."
"Two months," I said, scoffing.
"Big deal."
"Seventy-four days to be exact, since Nicole Goodwin was shot and I thought it was you.
Seventy-four long, frustrating days."
Now I
really
scoffed. "There's no way a man who's had as much sex as you've had could be frustrated."
"It wasn't sex. Okay, so part of it was sex. It was still frustrating, for you to be living somewhere else."
"Well, I'm here now. Enjoy. Life as you knew it is over."
Laughing, he went to get more coffee. The phone rang while he was downstairs and he
answered,
only to come upstairs a few minutes later to get his badge and weapon. "I have to go in," he said. That wasn't unusual, and it didn't have anything to do with me or he'd have told me. This was more about the police department being understaffed than anything else, which was pretty much a chronic situation. "You know the drill. Don't let anyone in."
"How about if I see someone carrying a gas can and sneaking around the foundation?"
"Do you know how to shoot a pistol?" he asked, and he wasn't kidding.
"Nope."
I was regretful, but I figured that was something I shouldn't fudge.
"By the time I'm finished with you next week, you will," he said.
Great.
Something else to take up in my spare time, assuming I had any. I should have kept my mouth shut. On the other hand, knowing how to use a pistol would be cool.
He kissed me and was out the door. Absently I listened to the rumbling sound of the garage door as it opened, and a moment later closed again,
then
I returned to my sorting and arranging.
Some of the stuff that had been in the dresser could clearly go somewhere else, like the baseball glove (?!), the shoeshine kit, a stack of books from the police academy, and a shoe box full of photos. As soon as I opened the shoe box and saw the contents, I forgot about the other stuff and sat cross-legged on the floor by the bed, looking through them.
Men don't care much for photographs, which is why these were dumped into a box and forgotten about. Some of them, obviously, his mother had given him: school pictures of both him and his sister, Lisa, at various ages. Six-year-old Wyatt made my heart melt. He'd looked so innocent and
fresh
, nothing at all
like
the hard-as-nails man I loved, except for those glittering eyes. By the time he'd been sixteen, though, he was already getting that cool, piercing expression. There were pictures of him in his football uniforms, both high school and college, and then other pictures of him as a pro, and the difference was obvious. By then, football hadn't been a game
anymore,
it was a job, and a hard one at that.
There was one picture of Wyatt with his dad, who had been dead for quite some time. Wyatt looked about ten, and he still had that innocent look. His dad must have died soon after the picture was taken, because Roberta had told me Wyatt was just ten when it happened. That was when his innocence had begun to go; all of the pictures taken after that showed
an awareness
that life wasn't always safe and happy.
Then I found the picture of him and his wife.
I saw the writing first, because the picture was upside down. I picked it up. In a pretty feminine handwriting was the inscription:
Wyatt and me, Liam and
Kellian
Greeson
, Sandy Patrick and his latest bimbo
.
I turned the picture over, looking at Wyatt's face. He was laughing into the camera, his arm draped carelessly over the shoulder of a very pretty redhead.
A pang of very natural jealousy shot through me. I didn't want to see him with any other woman, especially one he'd been
married
to. Why couldn't she have been someone either plain or hard looking, someone obviously unsuited to him, instead of being so pretty and—
—my stalker.
I stared at the photograph, not believing my eyes. The photograph was easily fifteen years old and she looked so young, not much more than a teenager, though I knew she'd been just a couple of years younger than Wyatt. The hair was very different, of course: 1980s big hair, carried forward into the nineties.
Too much makeup, not that I was judgmental or anything.
And those long, long eyelashes that made her look as if she were wearing artificial ones.
There wasn't any doubt.
I reached for the bedroom phone.
No dial tone.
I waited, because sometimes it takes a few seconds for a cordless unit to get a dial tone. Nothing happened.
Now, there have been more than a few times when I've been unable to get a dial tone and it's no big deal, but when a homicidal stalker is after me and there's no dial tone, yeah, I automatically assume the worst. My God, she was here! Somehow she'd cut the phone lines, which can't be easy.
That's when I noticed how still and quiet the house was. There was no background hum of the heating unit, electrical lights,
refrigerator
.
Nothing.
I looked at the digital alarm clock. Its face was blank.
The power was off. I hadn't noticed because the bedroom had enough windows to let in sufficient light to see, even on a rainy day, plus I'd been engrossed in the pictures.
The power had been on when Wyatt left, because I'd heard the garage door. He hadn't been gone more than fifteen minutes, so it couldn't have been off long. What did that prove?
Anything?
That she waited until he was out of the house before she came in? How could she even know where he lived? We'd been very
careful,
no one had followed us here.
But she knew where he worked
. Knowing that, all she had to do was
wait
there and follow him home, probably even before she started following me. Following him would have
led
her to me.
Silently I got to my feet and retrieved my cell phone from where I'd tossed it on the bed. I'd taken it upstairs with me because so many people call my cell if they want to reach me. The lack of electricity wouldn't affect my cell phone, unless it was an area wide problem that took out the cell towers, too, but if it was an area-wide problem then I didn't have anything to worry about. It was the localized-to-this-house scenario that scared the crap out of me.
I was shaking as I punched in Wyatt's cell number, my hair lifting from my scalp. No doubt about it, I was spooked. As quietly as I could, I crept into the bathroom and closed the door, to muffle the sound of my voice.
"What's up?" he said in my ear.
"It's Megan," I blurted. "It's Megan. I was looking through your old pictures, and… it's her."
"Megan?" he repeated, sounding astounded. "That doesn't make—"
"I don't care what it doesn't make!" I whispered frantically. "It's her! She's the stalker! And the power has gone out. What if she's here, what if she's in the house—
"
"I'm coming back," he said after the merest hesitation. "And I'm calling in for the nearest patrol car. If you think she's in the house then
you
get out of it, any way you can. You got that? You've been right too many times, and you've had too many close calls. If you have to go out a window again, do it."
"Okay," I said, but he'd hung up and there was only dead air.
He was coming back. He'd been gone about fifteen minutes, so it should take him about that to get back here, unless he drove like a bat out of Hell. There might be a patrol car that was closer.
Oddly, his assurance that he trusted my instincts calmed me down. Maybe it was because I didn't feel so alone, because help was on the way.
I set my cell phone on silent mode, and slipped it in my pocket. At least this time I wasn't caught wearing flimsy pajamas and no shoes. A long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of cargo sweatpants offered much more protection. Well, I still didn't have on shoes, but at least I was wearing socks—and even if I'd had on shoes I would have pulled them off, in the interest of silence.
I was probably letting my nerves get to me, I thought, but the last time I'd reassured myself of something like this, she'd burned down my home. I seemed to have some sixth sense for her that let me know when she was near, and I intended to trust it.
At least I no longer had to wonder why, what I'd done that someone would try to kill me. I knew now. It was Wyatt. Wyatt loved me, and we were getting married. She couldn't stand that.
Roberta had told me how, when Megan filed for divorce, Wyatt had simply walked away. He hadn't cared enough to try to make their marriage work, or enough to rethink his decision to become a cop. She hadn't been important enough to him. How that must have eaten at her through the years, that she hadn't been enough for the man she loved. I knew something of how she'd felt, not that I was sympathetic toward her or anything stupid like that. Please. The psycho bitch had tried to
kill
me.