Daisy passed the time from the sheriff’s departure until noon alternating between pacing, one-sided conversations with Max, and chewing her thumbnails down to nothingness. Since Chris would be on duty, working the six-to-six shift that night, she knew he’d try to sleep as late as possible. It probably would’ve been safer to call him midafternoon, but Daisy was afraid she wouldn’t have thumbs left if she had to fret for another three hours.
“What’s up, Dais?” he asked, sounding awake and fairly cheerful, thankfully.
“I’m not crazy, right? I mean, I am about the whole not-going-outside thing, but I’m not loony tunes, seeing-things-that-aren’t-there, get-thee-to-a-nuthouse type of crazy, am I?” After the words rushed out of her like verbal vomit, Daisy rested her head against the training room wall. Even if she had planned the most insane way of starting the conversation with Chris, she couldn’t have sounded more cracked.
“What’s this about?”
Her stomach clenched. “Did you just avoid answering the question?”
“You’re not crazy. Now what’s going on?”
The whole story spilled from her. Hearing it out loud made it seem even more insane, and she cringed several times during the retelling. It didn’t help that Chris was silent for a long time after she stopped talking.
“Chris?” Although she’d been determined to let him be the one to speak first, she couldn’t stand not knowing what he was thinking. Daisy could stand up to the sheriff’s suspect-cracking stare, but Chris’s ambiguous silence broke her easily.
“I’ll be over in ten minutes.”
That wasn’t any clearer than his silence had been. “Okay.”
“Dais?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not crazy.”
*
After he ended the call, she hovered by the door. Only seven minutes had passed when she heard his distinctive knock. Once he was inside and the doors relocked, she moved to the coffeemaker. It was as good an excuse as any to avoid looking directly at him.
“Want some?” she asked, already reaching for his daisy cup.
“Sure. Before you make it, though, show me exactly where you saw this kid last night.”
Leaving the cup on the counter, she led the way upstairs and into her bedroom. It was strange having Chris there, and her skin prickled with an odd combination of heat and goose bumps. She firmly ignored both reactions.
Kneeling on the window seat, she felt him behind her, close enough for his body heat to warm her back through her shirt.
“I saw someone move from those trees”—she pointed—“to the far side of the house. He kind of peeked around the corner, like he was checking to see if anyone was watching, and then he must’ve gone around the back of the house. The next time I saw him, he was on that side”—her pointing finger shifted—“looking in the window.”
“Did he touch the glass, could you tell?”
As she nodded, her hair brushed against his chest, catching on the buttons of his flannel shirt. “He cupped his hands on either side of his face, like he was trying to see inside better.”
“Okay.” He gathered her hair and tucked it over her shoulder, away from the snagging buttons. She turned her face toward him in surprise. “I’m going to go check things out over there.”
Daisy nodded again, her voice stuck in her throat. Chris was leaning forward slightly, his head tipped down, his eyes on hers, and he had an unreadable look on his face. It wasn’t the bad sort of unreadable, like the sheriff tended to wear. Chris looked…hungry and sad and the same sort of wistful as she’d felt the day before as she watched the three happy couples. Then he stepped away, and the look disappeared, making Daisy wonder if she’d imagined it.
After all, she’d apparently been imagining all sorts of things lately.
*
As Chris walked around the for-sale house, peering intently at the snow-covered ground, Daisy tried unsuccessfully not to obsess over what he was seeing. After catching herself wandering into the living room to stare at him through the window for the hundredth time, she decided that, if she was going to watch Chris anyway, she might as well have a good view. Taking the stairs two at a time, she hurried to her bedroom window.
While she’d been switching locations, Chris had stopped focusing on the ground and had turned his attention to the window the prowler had been looking through the night before. The distance made it hard to see details, but Chris had some sort of black case, about the size of a shaving kit, open on the ground next to him.