Amarok seemed taken aback. “Sitting down the street?”
Pressing a hand to her chest in an effort to slow her heartbeat, Evelyn leaned out of her house to be able to see where that car had been. It wasn’t there any more. It had driven away ten or fifteen minutes earlier. She’d definitely taken note of that. But the memory alone made her uneasy. “Someone was parked right there.” She pointed to the spot. “They stayed for several minutes, but...I’m pretty sure it was a car, not a truck.”
“It wasn’t me,” he said. “Did you happen to get the make and model of the vehicle?”
“No. It had its headlights shining right on the front of my house. I couldn’t see anything for the glare.”
“When I was driving here, I didn’t pass anyone on this street.” He looked at her with concern, as if he could tell she was badly shaken. “Are you okay? Did whoever was driving that car threaten you in any way?”
She shook her head. “No. To my knowledge, they didn’t even come on to the property. But...my phone’s dead, which seemed significant, since there’s been no storm, no reason for it to go out—especially at the same time I have someone shining their lights into my house so late at night.”
He glanced up and down the street, which was perfectly dark and quiet. “Go back in and lock the door,” he said. “I’ll take a look around.”
She caught his arm. “Wait. How did you know?”
“How did I know what?”
“How did you know to come?”
“I didn’t,” he replied.
“So why are you here?”
When he paused, she didn’t think he was going to answer. But then he lifted her chin with one finger. “I wanted to see you before you left. I was afraid you’d go back to Boston in the morning and decide”—he shook his head as if he wasn’t convinced he should continue, but he did—“decide to carry on as usual, without giving me another thought.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. What she wanted and what she could allow were two different things. But she was glad he’d shown up when he did. She’d had herself talked into all kinds of craziness—that Jasper had finally caught up with her, or one of the psychopaths she’d evaluated over the years had come to kill her. Even with her phone out, that seemed like an overreaction now, but it’d felt incredibly real a few seconds earlier.
When she slipped her arms around Amarok’s neck, she could feel his surprise. But then his hands slid up her back, and he held her against him. She needed the embrace, needed his warmth and the reassuring firmness of his body to help her stop shaking.
“It’s okay,” he whispered as his lips brushed the temple that didn’t have stitches. “I’m sorry you were frightened. But nothing bad’s going to happen. I promise.”
The problem was...she knew that something bad could always happen. “My phone’s out,” she said, going back to that. “Why would my phone be out unless—”
“Don’t assume the worst,” he broke in. “I’ll check it, see what’s going on. But even if someone cut the line, what you’ve been through is no secret. Whoever did it could simply be trying to scare you.”
They’d succeeded. It didn’t take much. Although she hated to admit it, those scars—the ones on the inside—made her so vulnerable. She’d probably always be easy to spook. A lot of times, even when she had her gun with her, she would lay awake at night, listening to every sound. “You think someone wants to scare me away from Hilltop? That it might be...might be the same person who vandalized Hanover House?”
“That, or it’s possible someone just thinks it’s funny. But if I find out who that someone is, I’m going to make them awfully sorry.” He stepped back and told his dog to go inside with her. “Makita will stay with you until I check things out.”
She nodded and closed the door so that Makita wouldn’t be tempted to follow his master.
She would never be without her gun again, Evelyn promised herself, would never leave herself so vulnerable, even if she was going to miss her plane or be gone for only a few days.
As she crouched in the middle of the living room and held Makita against her, she could see the shifting beam of Amarok’s flashlight through various windows as he moved around the house.