They were the only two people in the house.
Gun still in his hand, he walked back to the master suite. “We’re clear, Cady,” he called.
A sharp snick as the bathroom door unlocked, then the bedroom door. She peered around the doorframe. “There’s no one here?”
“No,” he said. “From here on out, you stay in the garage while I clear the house. When did you last have the notebook?”
She was opening and closing the drawers, then the cabinet doors. “In my studio,” she said, gathering her hair into a coil to keep it out of her face as she searched. “I think. I don’t know. Most of the time I take my notebook with me when I go out, but I don’t think I did this time. I just don’t know. Maybe it fell out last night at the airfield? Oh, God. What if someone found it?”
“Hey,” he said, catching her by the wrist. “I don’t remember you having it in the car, so it’s in the house.”
“How can you be so sure?”
The catch in her voice meant she was near tears. “That’s my job, to observe. We’ll find it.”
They didn’t find it. They reached the crazy search point, where they were looking in drawers she’d never opened, in cabinets that held a collection of vases and a turkey pan used once a year. Finally they met up in the kitchen.
“Wait here while I search the yard.”
“For my notebook?” she gave a laugh that was probably supposed to be lighthearted but reached into hysterical territory. “I’d remember if I took it outside.”
“For footprints,” he said.
He snagged the Maglite from his duffle and went out the sliding glass doors to the deck. The beam was bright and powerful, but in the end gave him nothing. The snow had melted, then frozen again, giving him nothing more than a surface to slip on as he walked the perimeter. No new footprints, no conveniently dropped wallet with ID and an incriminating note. Even the possum stayed inside, where it was warm.
He stopped and looked back at the house. Cady was in the kitchen staring at the spot on the counter where her kettle lived, probably waiting for it to boil. The house looked so homey, warm light spilling onto the snow, big comfy chairs snuggled around the fireplace, the tree stretching its branches to the ceiling, all ready to be decorated by Cady’s family.
Maybe he’d be there for that. If he didn’t catch the sick bastard fucking with Cady’s mind, he’d be in the family room, listening to Christmas carols and drinking hot cocoa or mulled wine, watching Cady, her volatile sister, and her tough-love mother decorate a tree. It was a familiar scene, standing on the perimeter watching a family celebrate a holiday or a family event. He’d gotten used to feeling like an outsider. As close as he was to all the McCools, as narrow as the gap was between close friend and member of the family, he couldn’t quite bridge the gap.
There was a holy, profound power to someone pointing at him and saying not, Yeah, sure, you can come and stay for a while but rather You. I want you. You get to stay forever.
There was no point in longing for what wouldn’t happen. Eventually Cady would either go back on the road, or they’d catch this bastard, and she wouldn’t need protection anymore. Either way, once she found out he’d put security cameras on her house without her permission, he was back where he started, where he’d been almost happy for most of his life.
Before he’d seen what he could have, and never knew he wanted.
Resolve shot down his spine. He was going to get some fucking answers for Cady, and for himself. Enough of this hiding-out, stay-out-of-everyone’s-grill bullshit. He was going back to what he knew worked, getting in people’s faces and being a scary motherfucker until somebody talked to him. Because maybe, just maybe, if he did that, he wouldn’t have to tell Cady he’d violated her trust.
He climbed the stairs to the deck and let himself back into the house. Cady was on the phone. “He just came back inside,” she said, and put the phone on the island. “It’s Chris,” she said, muting the conversation. “He’s got details for the album’s promotional tour.”
An idea hit him. Let’s start with Chris. “Do you have the Find My Friends app?”
Puzzled, Cady frowned. “Yes.”
“Are you and Chris friends?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have no idea how to characterize my relationship with Chris,” she said.
Chris was listing off cities. “… Baltimore, not ideal but I think we can pick up a pretty good–sized crowd from D.C., where you’ve got that big fan community, then New Jersey, then Philly, then State College, then Pittsburgh, I know, I know, Pittsburgh, but you have to do it…”
Conn picked up her phone and handed it to her. “Pull up the app.”