Oh, what the hell? He felt like slamming the door in her face. As though he didn’t have enough aggravation, now he had to deal with this chatty Cathy.
“Hi.” Lucas tried to be positive in return, but he couldn’t help being on the defensive. He wasn’t in the mood for company, but clearly this chick hadn’t taken a hint on her previous visit.
“So . . .” She cleared her throat and peeked around his shoulder. Her long brown hair swept across the folds of her billowy poet’s shirt. She ducked her head in an almost coy sort of way. “Is it safe to talk, or is your daughter . . . ?”
“She’s upstairs,” Lucas said. “And honestly, I’m not in the mood—”
“Okay,” she said, cutting him off. “Sure, I understand. But I have something for you.” She lifted the box and shook it enticingly.
“What’s this?” He nodded to the box.
“Consider it a favor.” She casually sidestepped him and slipped inside, then slid her Birkenstocks off her feet and left them neatly beside the front door.
Lucas opened his mouth to protest. Hey, man, just because you’ve come bearing gifts . . .
He wasn’t sure he wanted this stranger inside the house. She was an oddball. Who knew what kind of shit she was into, living way out here on her own. But before he could ask her to leave, she twisted where she stood and gave him a knowing look.
“You’re going to flip when you see this stuff,” she said. “Do you have a place we can sit down for a minute?”
He furrowed his brow but motioned to his study anyway, his gaze not wavering from the box held against her chest.
Echo followed him and stepped into his study. She pulled open the box top, slid the carton across the desk, and pulled her hair back with her hands. Her attention slithered along each of the walls. The slowness in which her gaze traveled across the room was disconcerting, as though she was seeing a completely different room from the one they were standing in. He didn’t like the way she was looking at his things. It almost felt as though she was putting the space to memory, as if she was planning on sneaking in through a window when he and Jeanie were sleeping and didn’t want to trip over a piece of furniture while robbing the place. As though I’ve got something to steal, he thought, giving her a moment to soak the place in despite his own misgivings. Finally, he took a swig of his beer and issued a reality check by clearing his throat. Her attention snapped back to him.
“Sorry, zoned out.” You don’t say. She turned to the box as if about to dig through it, then clasped her hands together, looking back at him. Her temporary embarrassment had dissipated beneath the tight line of her lips. “There are different types of people in this world,” she began. “Leaders, muses, healers. I’m a helper.”
Lucas gave her a questioning look. “A helper,” he repeated, hoping like hell this wasn’t about to turn into some mumbo-jumbo lesson in new age philosophy.
“Yes.” She squared her shoulders. “Like my mother.”
Echo looked almost prideful at the statement, and he could only assume that she and her mother had been close. But it didn’t leave him with much to work with, so he nodded and encouraged her to go on with a plain “Okay . . . ?”
“I’ve been really contemplating this, and I know you’ve been thinking about taking off. You’ve been having a hard time with the writing, yeah?”
Lucas canted his head to the side, not sure whether to admit that he’d been toying with the idea of surrender or to take offense to her astute observation. She was nosy, assertive. She made him feel on edge.
“Like I said before, I’m not here to make trouble,” she told him. “But I can’t help but think that what you’re doing is great. I looked you up.” Her half smile made his skin prickle with nerves. A phantom buzzer went off inside his head. Warning! Was this chick a stalker or what? “That sounds weird,” she said. “I’m not crazy, I swear. I just wanted to see what kind of stuff you wrote. I bought one of your books.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yep.” Here it comes. “Bloodthirsty Times, the one about the Night Stalker. It’s great. You’ve got real talent.”
“Thanks.”
“Anyway . . .” She took a step away from the box and motioned to it with an open palm, imploring him to take a look inside.
Still unsure, Lucas watched her carefully before stepping farther into the room. The wood-paneled walls and green carpet usually gave the place a man-cave sort of feel, especially with his big old desk dominating the center. But it suddenly felt smaller, as if the walls had lost a square foot during the split second he had blinked his eyes.
He sidled up to the desk, placed his half-drained bottle of Deschutes onto the coaster he used for his coffee cup, and peered into the box.
He didn’t know what he expected to see—maybe a quintet of severed fingers despite Echo’s peace-and-love vibe. Some of the world’s most vicious killers came out of the sixties. They slashed throats and dismembered their victims while everyone had their eyes focused on DC, FDR, Vietnam. The most notorious were the ones you’d never suspect. Maybe Echo was an ax murderer moonlighting as a Washington coast hippie. The cops would never think to look for bodies in her vegetable patch.