Something clinked on the ground out by the pool.
Marnie shot out of bed and stood there, shivering and listening.
Nothing.
She forced herself to walk to the drapes, to pull them back and to look out.
She waited, watching, not aware that she wasn’t breathing until she suddenly and instinctively sucked in a lungful of air.
Run. Wait, don’t run—where to run to? Just go pound on the wall, head over to Bridget’s side of the duplex...
No. She gave herself a shake—mentally and physically. The police were working on the case. She was home, safe.
If she ran now—out of the house, even over to Bridget’s—she would never have the courage again to just live, to be herself, to chart her own course in the world without fear.
There was nothing in the yard. She was still grappling with the idea that she had seen the specter of Cara Barton at the funeral, but her house and yard were ghost-free right now.
She let the drapes drop and lay back down. She stared over at the window.
And then she saw a shadow; it was definitely the silhouette of a person, someone walking across her yard.
She leaped out of bed. Her phone was in the front of the house, in her purse. She had to fly to it, call 9-1-1, get help...
She raced toward the living room.
As she fled her room, she heard the crash of glass as something slammed hard against the window.
4
The man saw him. He was agile and quick, and was back over the little picket fence that surrounded the duplex property even as Bryan made a leap to reach him.
Bryan had noticed the man walking down the street, hands stuffed into the pockets of a dark hoodie—it was actually brown, not black. But that didn’t matter. He’d held his head low—no way to recognize him.
He stood about six foot even and weighed maybe 180 pounds. Bryan took note and had watched him. Then he gave chase as soon as he’d seen the man slip over the fence into Marnie’s backyard, breaking into a sprint when he heard the crash of shattering glass.
The guy was extremely nimble.
Stuntman, maybe?
Didn’t matter during the chase. Bryan hopped back over the fence, tearing down the side street off Barham, heading up the hill where some of the houses were mansions and some of the yards offered too-good places to hide.
Yes, but there were alarms up that way, too.
Bryan could run—he’d kept at it since he’d left the military. Running was a good thing to be able to do well, especially when you knew that you wanted to be in the investigative or law enforcement fields.
This guy had to be Olympic quality. He was gaining distance.
Bryan’s feet struck hard on the pavement; they were moving farther uphill.
He began to gain a little ground. And then, as he swung around a corner, he dropped just in the nick of time. A whoosh of air too close to Bryan followed a loud crack.
The man had fired at him.
He rose, drawing his own weapon, but in those few short seconds, he knew that he’d lost his quarry. Panting, he paused, hands on his knees, looking up at the street and the way it divided. No clue as to which way the man had gone. He slid his Glock back into the small holster at the back of his waistband. As a precaution, he’d applied for a special carry permit as a security contractor working temporarily in California. He hadn’t been sure he’d need it, but now he was glad.
A car whizzed by him. He hadn’t noticed vehicles at all until now, and Barham was a busy street. Down below, there were multistory apartment buildings, with restaurants and businesses scattered here and there. Farther up the hill, the houses became bigger. And more lavish.
Marnie Davante’s house was right between. It was a charming little duplex, not a mansion—nor a multistoried dwelling where the rent was high for little more than broom closets.
He wondered where the hell the bullet fired at him had gone, and if, in the dark, he had a prayer of finding the bullet itself or the casing.
He paused, judging the distance from where the man had fired. He turned on the flashlight feature on his phone and searched the ground. The light glinted off the silver foil wrapper from a stick of gum first, but then it shimmered on something metal: the casing.
He wasn’t walking around with evidence bags, but he pulled off his tie to secure the casing without touching it.
Fifteen minutes later, he still hadn’t found the bullet.
He’d try again in daylight.
At last he headed back toward Marnie Davante’s house and his car. He’d been sitting in it, parked just down the street ever since she’d told him to go away.
He hadn’t been expecting a home invasion.
Rather, he’d hung around because he’d been certain that the ghost of Cara Barton was going to show up again, and whether she admitted it or not, Marnie was going to need his help coping with that.
Bryan was angry with himself.
He should have parked closer to the duplex.
He should have been on the guy sooner.
He pulled out his phone and dialed Grant Vining’s cell phone.
Vining answered almost instantly and told him that a 9-1-1 call had come in. The uniformed cops who had been closest on call had in turn called and informed him about the near breakin at Marnie Davante’s house. He was already on his way.
“You scared the guy off, huh—but didn’t catch him.”
“He took a shot at me. I lost him when he did.”
“Pity. We could have maybe learned something. What do you think the chances are that it was just a run-of-the-mill home invasion and had nothing to do with Cara Barton’s murder? Damn. It’s really too bad you didn’t get him.”
Bryan heard Sophie Manning speak up next to her partner.
“Probably a nice thing he dodged the bullet, too,” she said drily.
Bryan smiled and started jogging down the street.
“I didn’t think he was armed. He didn’t shoot until I started gaining on him. I don’t know if the guy is the murderer, but he is armed and dangerous. After this, I think that Miss Davante is going to need some kind of protection.”
“Miss Davante, Miss Alan...Highsmith and Adair. You know that the city is struggling under budget cuts. I can have patrol cars doing drive-bys, but...they’re celluloid people. They can hire on some private security. I take it you’re on your way back? We’ll see you at Miss Davante’s house.”
“Yep. I’m on my way.”
Empty-handed.
But alive.
And now they knew for sure that a killer was out there, targeting Marnie. Whether she admitted it or not, she needed help.
And the ghost of a dead actress wasn’t going to be enough.
*
“There’s no reason, is there, to suspect that this was anything other than an attempted burglary, right? An attempt that wasn’t very well-thought-out, at that,” Marnie said. “Breaking glass means a ton of noise. Cell phones mean police can be somewhere within minutes.”
Bridget, wrapped in a robe covered with cartoon superheroes, was at Marnie’s side. They stood on the porch, the little expanse of tile and pillars that ran the width of the duplex and led to both front doors.
Detectives Vining and Manning were with them while three crime scene technicians worked in the backyard, and one scanned Marnie’s bedroom amid the broken glass.
Vining stared at Marnie, thinking out his answer.
Manning gave her no such courtesy. “How the hell long do you think it takes to shoot someone, Miss Davante? Perp gets in here, pop-pop, and then he’s gone. Before you can do so much as dial 9-1-1.”
A shiver snaked down her spine.
“Oh, God,” Bridget cried softly. “So what do we do?”
“Detective Manning,” Vining said firmly. “There is no reason to assume that the only reason someone was here was specifically to harm Miss Davante. Sadly, this city is not without crime—ordinary crime, if such a description can be made of crime, period. Breakins do happen.”
Marnie couldn’t help it. She looked at Sophie Manning. “You’ve drawn a possible scenario, Detective. But as Detective Vining just said, the man might have been a burglar.”
“One with a gun,” Vining qualified.