Connie and Tony didn’t move. Just looked at each other.
“Maybe your husband would like something hot to drink.”
“No.” Connie said this so quickly that Nikki stopped in her tracks.
“I can wait for them,” Pete called from the back door, annoyance leaking into his words.
Tony watched his mother.
After a long pause, Connie set her mug on the coffee table and stood to leave. “Time to go, Tony.”
The disappointment in the boy’s face prompted Nikki to tell him to wander over anytime. “Come to dinner tomorrow, if you like. All of you. I can make a pot of spaghetti.” The invitation was in the air before Nikki thought about it. It might be a good opportunity to dispel any theories she was tossing around about Pete being an abusive husband who’d just had a warning from the police.
“I don’t think tomorrow works.” Connie patted her synthetic hair.
“I love spaghetti!” Tony was at the window again and Connie waved him back.
“Maybe the next night?” Nikki shrugged.
“I’ll check with Pete, but I don’t think we can.”
Nikki leaned in to whisper, “You could come without him.”
Connie took her mug to the sink where she rinsed it and set it on the counter. Her delicate hands were so graceful. They were hands that would never provide protection against a man as big as Pete.
At the back door, Connie glanced at her husband holding out her rain slicker. “We’ve been invited to dinner tomorrow, Pete, but I told Nikki I didn’t think we could.” She didn’t make eye contact with her husband.
“Sorry.” Pete’s look of annoyance was barely masked. Why was
he
mad?
Nikki threw him Burn’s bush coat. “Return it later.” She didn’t give him a chance to refuse. “How’s your writing going?”
Pete didn’t miss a beat. “Good.” He looked at Connie. “Ready?” He opened the door and stepped out before his wife, which Nikki thought strange until she saw him scanning the forest.
Nikki wanted to offer help, but for what? And she wasn’t even sure they needed it. She and Connie had only exchanged a look that verified something was going on.
“Connie.” Nikki touched the woman’s sleeve as she passed. “You can always come here.”
Pete stood on the deck with the boy. Hearing Nikki whisper, he spun around.
“Thank you, Nikki, the tea was just what I needed.” And with that, the Bayers set off down the road through the rain without looking back. Pete’s arm around Connie’s shoulders looked stiff and assertive.
Nikki had to remind herself to not judge their relationship based on what she saw. Pete and Connie could be perfectly happy even though they seemed different in every way. The only thing Nikki was sure of was that there was no squirrel in their house. Something had chased those two out fast enough that running to Nikki’s place was a better choice than staying in the house with Pete.
Nikki was reminded of a documentary she’d once watched on killer whales. The cameraman had filmed a seal jumping into the research boat to escape the attack from its predator, the whale. The seal’s fear of humans was less than its fear of the whale and weighing that out, had chosen the boat. In this instance, Connie and Tony were the seals.
With her back to the wall and Elvis beside her, she read Shakespeare’s latest letter:
My Dearest One,
Why have you forsaken me? I am in waiting for your return. Or are you close and teasing me? Have you followed Quinn to Seattle, my love?
Wherever you are, you must return and we must finish this. You will succumb. Your blood will run freely over my trembling body.
The courses of true love never did run smooth.
Your Beloved
It was short, not as graphic as usual, and his words indicated that he was going to wait for her return to L.A. His question of her whereabouts was a good sign. Just as Nikki closed her laptop, her cell phone rang. Caller ID indicated a name she knew to be Agent Gateman.
“Nicole Crossland?” he asked.
“I got the letter, Ted, and it’s not as bad as all the others. Isn’t that a good sign?”
“Nikki, listen carefully. In the last hour, a man was apprehended on your property, and the local police have taken him into town for questioning. I’m sending someone to Louisa Lake.”
“Oh, God!” Nikki hadn’t locked the door or set the security alarm behind the Bayers. Running to the back door, she bolted it and punched in the numbers to the security system.
“It doesn’t mean we got Shakespeare,” the agent continued, “but a Caucasian male was coming through the trees from a parked rental car, big guy, 40ish, with a gun.”
“He was here at Louisa Lake, just now?”
“Affirmative.”
“And Harold caught him?” It didn’t seem possible. Harold was all doughy and smiles, close to retirement.
“Yes.”
Was that what the last hour was all about? Had Connie and Tony been threatened somehow with someone who was coming through the trees? “I saw the police car pass my house.” Nikki was frozen to her spot, imagining what could have just happened. The only way Harold Gaines could take down a man running through the woods was if the stalker was in worse shape. “Did Harold shoot him?”
“No shots fired.”
Agent Gateman took another call, and Nikki waited. Pete must’ve been the brawn in that operation. What the hell?
“I recommend you get a bodyguard, Nikki, until we verify the identity of the perpetrator. I’ll get in touch, within the hour. And don’t open your door to anyone until you talk to me.”
When the call came from Gateman twenty minutes later, Nikki and Elvis were sitting in the great room, waiting to hear the rest of the story, her handgun on the table in front of her. Nikki hadn’t expected what came next.
“Nicole Crossland?”
“Hi, Ted. What’s going on?” She imagined the FBI team searching a stinking North Hollywood hovel, sifting through incriminating evidence, thumbing through photos of her and copies of the horrific letters Shakespeare had written her.
“This is Agent Gate—”
“What’s happening?”
“Do you know a Dwayne Capleoni?”
She froze. “Yes, he’s my daughter’s bodyguard in Seattle.”
“He’s not in Seattle. He’s the man in the Louisa Lake jail right now, waiting to be questioned on charges of armed trespassing.”
****
Fuck. Living beside Goldy was not as safe as Pete had originally hoped. When the signal alerted him to a visitor on the road, he ran to the bedroom where all visible points of approach were being monitored. A black sedan drove slowly along the dirt track. He hit “zoom” on the keyboard and saw it was one man driving, alone.
Connie was making peanut butter cookies—Tony’s favorite. “Connie, someone’s on the road, approaching the gate,” Pete shouted above the video game noise. The road in was long enough that it would take at least three minutes to make it to the gate and several more to run through the woods. Pete could find this guy in five minutes. “Get under the bed. Both of you. Now! Lock the door behind me.” Running through the kitchen, Pete fingered the gun in his holster and bolted outside into the pouring rain.
He cut through the forest to where he’d intersect the intruder on the road. One minute later, he was close to Nikki’s house in the trees and caught sight of Connie and Tony in yellow rain slickers knocking on her back door.
Shit. Didn’t Connie know it was dangerous for her to run around outside like that? Her stupidity was going to get her killed. And Tony. No matter what he told her to do, she found her own plan. He’d have to chew her out after this one.
When Pete saw the perp exit his car at the gate and sneak through the brush, he anticipated his path. The man did not have a weapon in either hand. Pete slipped behind a big tree. As the man plodded through the woods, Pete readied himself. Just as the perpetrator passed, Pete crept out silently. Undetected, he closed the distance between them in two strides and grabbed the man in a choke hold. Good resistance made it a challenge but the forest creeper didn’t have a chance. He brought the intruder to the ground and dug the gun into the man’s side. His victim stopped squirming.
“This is private property,” Pete said quietly. “Hands behind your head.”
“Don’t shoot. I’m just looking for my friend’s house.”
“Who’s your friend?” Pete found a gun holster and a nice Glock inside it.
“Female, long blonde hair, named Nikki.”
He was after Goldy. Pete should’ve known. This man was not looking for them. Wearing a fancy pair of cowboy boots and a satin bomber jacket, he could’ve been a Goldy roadie but Pete wasn’t taking chances. “Then why are you sneaking through the trees, buddy?” Pete cuffed him.
“I was going to surprise Nikki.”
“With a gun? Ha! Why would someone’s friend have a gun if they’re on a social call?” Pete pulled the guy to his feet and pushed him in the direction of the log house.
“I have the gun in case I see a bear.”
Pete laughed. “And I was born yesterday, pal. You’d have surprised her all right with that Glock.” He’d run a check on him just in case, verify he wasn’t looking for Connie.
“Are you taking me to Nikki?” The man slowed down at the turnoff to Birch House.
“Indirectly. First to that house, then to the sheriff in town, then you might see your friend Nikki at the hearing.” He couldn’t march this scum to Nikki’s door to see if she knew him. Connie and Tony were there.
“You’re making a big mistake. I know Nikki. She’ll tell you.”
“Shut up and march.” Pete pushed him forward.
After handcuffing him to a post in the log house kitchen, he stuffed one of Tony’s dirty socks in the guy’s mouth and grabbed his wallet from his back pocket. Nothing showed on the background check except that he was from Los Angeles and had never been arrested. Pete called the sheriff.
“Harold Gaines here.”
“This is Pete Bayer at the Dickerson house. I just found someone roaming around the woods out here with a Glock who says he’s on a social call looking for someone named Nikki.”
“Well, well, well…we better talk to him.” Harold sounded amused.
“Probably should.”
“I got a deputy on that side of the lake. I’ll radio him to come get our visitor.”
“I’m holding him at Dickerson’s.”
Forcing the intruder outside to the driveway, Pete motioned for him to sit on the wet ground. He didn’t want him in the log house any longer than necessary, looking around, dripping on the floor. “Looks like you can tell the sheriff your story and see if he believes you.”
The squad car pulled up minutes later, and Pete handed the guy over. Let the police do their job. He had enough to worry about and didn’t exactly want the local cops sniffing around inside the Dickerson’s house. This was bad enough.
As the squad car passed Birch House, Pete hoped that Connie and Tony weren’t standing at the back door in full view for the deputy.
The clouds above the lake grew heavy, and sheets of rain pelted the ground like heavy bullet fire. God damned trespasser putting him through all this. Pete sprinted toward Nikki’s house. He imagined Goldy had endured her share of deranged fans over the years. This guy was probably one of those. But a gun? And why hadn’t Connie and Tony hid under the bed like they’d been told? Now Pete was mad. He had rules, and if they weren’t going to follow them, what was he doing with these two?
He waited in Nikki’s back room, listening to the muffled conversation down the hall, dripping on Nikki’s floor. The coats that hung on hooks indicated one adult man’s, two smaller jackets, and a sweatshirt he assumed was Nikki’s. Who owned the man’s jacket? Her ex? Somehow a plaid quilted jacket didn’t suit the rock legend, Burn Burnside.
This was bullshit, all this drama. It proved they had to cut ties with their next-door neighbor. She was a magnet for attention, and this remote location wasn’t secure anymore.
Thinking about his sailboat, he considered the possibility of taking Connie and Tony there. A live-aboard, in the middle of the ocean had to be better than being next door to a goddamned rock star.
“Dwayne Capleoni!” Nikki stared at the phone in disbelief. Hadn’t he been with her in every city on tour last year? He wasn’t some stalker, writing and mailing letters from L.A. He was the best bodyguard she’d had. “I think you must be mistaken, Ted. Dwayne works for me on security. He’s a good guy.”
“He was apprehended on your property with a gun. The town sheriff is holding him until our agent arrives.”
Why was he running through the woods at the lake and not with Quinn in Seattle? Another thought struck like a lightning bolt. If Dwayne was Shakespeare, was her daughter safe? Or even alive? “Who’s with Quinn?” Nikki’s heart was in her mouth.
“I’m waiting for a call to confirm that the agent has arrived.”
Nikki dialed Quinn’s cell number from the house phone, keeping Agent Gateman on the line. It went to voice mail. “Call me, as soon as you hear this, sweetie.” Nikki returned to Agent Gateman who was talking on another line.
“Keep me posted,” he said to someone. “Okay Nikki, we followed Quinn and her boyfriend, a Jarrod Creeley, walking to class ten minutes ago and are now waiting outside her classroom door. Can you verify that’s the boyfriend?”
“Yes.” Nikki described her daughter’s boyfriend from what Quinn had told her. “I can’t figure out why Dwayne came to the lake. Quinn isn’t supposed to tell anyone where I am.” Nikki paced the room with the phone to her ear. “I won’t feel better until I hear from her.”
“Remember, Nikki, we haven’t found evidence that this guy is Shakespeare.”
It was hard for Nikki to believe Dwayne could be the deranged stalker when she’d had so many dealings with the guard in the last year. He’d always seemed friendly, harmless. Nikki swept through her address book to find the phone number for Steve. He’d hired Dwayne.