“I wonder if he lived here full-time?” Sam asked.
Xander nodded. “I think so, though it is rather sparse, even for a mountain man. There’s a garden out back. He grew his own vegetables. Used newspapers as mulch, there’s a tidy little stack on the porch. There’s also a smoking shed, but no sign of any meat. This isn’t the interesting part, though. Follow me.”
He went back into the living room and walked straight to the wall where, in a normal house, there would be a television set. He waved his hands, said, “Abracadabra,” and pushed on the center of the wall.
The latch was on a well-oiled spring connected to a damper. It allowed a three-foot-square piece of wall to fall open slowly, giving way to a sturdy and serviceable desk. Inside the cubbyhole, there was a small laptop computer and a wireless router, neither plugged in, and a whole series of pictures, maps, articles and photographs tacked to a corkboard that took up the entire wall inside the small space. When Sam’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she realized she was looking at herself.
She gasped. “Oh, my God. What is this?”
Fletcher spoke through his teeth. “It’s a shrine.”
She shot him a look, saw he was holding back. Fletcher did not like being in the dark, and Savage’s mystery was getting darker and darker.
Xander used a pencil to poke through the detritus. “Looks like a log. Of all the cases Sam’s worked, and everything she’s published. Cases from Nashville—you worked a couple of serials down there, and they were big news. The photos are from the internet, none of them were actually taken and developed. Except this one.”
He pointed to the center of the wall, where Sam was seen in profile, walking in Georgetown. Fear coursed through her as she recognized the landscape behind her. “That’s on our street.”
Xander glanced at her. “It is.”
“How can you be so calm about this?” Her breath began to hitch, and she started rubbing her hands together.
Fletcher touched her arm. “Hey. Chill. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Dude’s dead and gone.”
“Don’t tell me to chill, Darren.” She couldn’t help her tone, bitter and angry, and suddenly she was falling, losing control, and she didn’t care if they saw—this man had been stalking her, and now he was dead, and his lawyer was dead, which meant she was probably next. And she was damn tired of having to be on her guard all the time. She thought she’d left that part of her world back in Nashville. In the top story of a house in Belle Meade, with her blood spilling out onto the floor, the twist of the knife in her gut.
She dimly realized Xander had his arms around her, was shushing her like she was a small child having a nightmare, which she was. The rational part of her mind said, It’s PTSD, you’re having a flashback, you’re okay, you’re safe, and the irrational part was screaming, No, no, no, no, no! Not again, not now, not when everything is finally starting to be all right.
Xander was crooning to her in a singsong voice, “Come on, honey, breathe for me. You’re okay. You’re fine. We’re here. Nothing bad’s gonna happen to you.” To Fletcher he said, “Shit. If I’d known it would spark an attack, I’d never have brought her out here.”
“It’s disturbing as hell, Whitfield. What did you expect, she’d go skipping out happy as a clam knowing some dead guy was stalking her? What were you thinking?”
She heard them snapping at each other, realized she could hear again, and see. Air moved into her lungs. She slumped down to her knees on the floor, eyes closed, focused on their voices. Here, and now. You’re in Virginia, in Lynchburg, not in Nashville. You’re safe.
She opened her eyes to see Xander’s face an inch from her own. She started and jerked back, then laughed shakily. “I’m okay. Sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He wrapped his arms around her and buried his head in her shoulder. “I didn’t think. Fletcher’s right, I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
She glanced up at Fletcher, who should have had his told-you-so face on, but his was etched with concern.
“You okay, sunshine?”
She nodded. Crap. She hadn’t had a full-blown panic attack in months. Her heart was still raw from pumping so hard her chest actually hurt. Her vision was fully back now. She’d gone totally blind for a minute, and that scared her as much as the breathless feeling of overwhelming doom she’d just experienced.
Stupid amygdala. If she could have it replaced, she would.
She got to her feet. Xander held tight to her hand. She took a deep breath and said, “I’m fine. Really. So, what are we going to do about this?”
Fletcher said, “We can worry about that another time.”
“Seriously, I’m okay. What does all this mean?”