In This Life (4 page)

I spied the slit in the window screen. The hole, I realized, looked big enough for someone to get into. Or out of.

“He was here,” I said again. “Logan’s alive and his mother knows it, David. She’s playing me but I don’t know why.”

“Lottie — ”

“Please, David, don’t. I’m
not
losing my mind.”

His features and body language began to soften. I’d managed to get through, if only a little. “I’m helpless here,” he said. “In all the years I’ve known you — and that’s been a lot of years — you’ve never, ever behaved the way I saw you behave this morning.”

I pressed my hand to his chest and felt the comforting, rhythmic beat of his heart. He was worried and only trying to help, and that made me want to find a solution that would make us both happy.

“If I have one of these episodes again, I’ll see someone. Okay?”

“I want you to see someone now. You’re losing moments of your life. You need help.”

“David — ”

“I don’t understand, Lottie. Why are you so afraid?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Then why wait?”

“You don’t understand.”

He took a step back. “I don’t understand?
I
don’t
understand
?”

“Why are we arguing?”

“I’m not arguing — ”

David stopped when he realized we were.

“I’ll talk to Paul,” I told him. “If anyone can help, it’s him.”

The look in David’s eyes said everything I needed to know. The last person he wanted me to spend time with was Paul, but Paul was my friend who was also a psychiatrist. A friend who, when things were at their worst between David and me three years ago, had been something more.

David muttered a curse but didn’t push the issue. He took my hands in his and steadied me with a probing gaze, peeling away every layer of defenses to get to the heart of me. The part only he understood and knew.

“You’re going to make me insane,” he said over a heavy sigh. He brushed a hand over my cheek and cupped it, and the heat in his touch seeped into my skin.

I wrapped my hand over his. “Then take comfort in the knowledge that you’re shacked up with a therapist who can help you when that time comes.”

“It’s why I wake up every morning,” he said. “Pity I won’t be competent enough to know it when it happens.”

The ride home felt strange. David and I sat in awkward silence, and for very different reasons. I knew he was thinking about the two episodes I’d had that morning, and I was thinking about Logan and his mother. I’d called Mrs. Reynolds twice after leaving Amrose but with no luck. I ended up leaving a message but didn’t think she’d call back.

As David navigated our SUV up the driveway, I considered how I’d handle my next weekly appointment with Logan, if there were one. I had the feeling he was going to be true to his word and leave for good. And if he did, then what? Would his mother continue to believe he was dead? Would she come after me for telling her what she believed were lies? Or would this all go away with my questions unanswered?

We got out of the SUV and I was aware of David behind me, watching. He let us inside and dropped the keys on the small table in the foyer along with the mail he’d picked up on the way, and went for the kitchen at the back of the house. He didn’t say anything but I didn’t read his silence as anger. He was troubled, and I let it go. He’d talk to me when he felt ready, and by then I’d probably feel ready, too.

I went to the den that adjoined the kitchen and settled into the leather sofa by the fireplace. I heard the faucet turn on, cabinet doors open and shut, then water filling a teapot. I looked at David and he looked at me.

“I assume you want a mug,” he said, holding up my favorite. It was bright yellow with a smiley face. My feel-good mug.

I nodded.

While David worked his way around the kitchen, I turned my attention to the mail. In the pile, I found two solicitations for credits cards with limits large enough to buy a car, along with several trade magazines. I leafed through those and dog-eared articles that I intended to read over the weekend. In the last magazine, I found a manila envelope addressed to me in handwritten block print tucked in between the middle pages. I flipped it over. No return address.

I opened the envelope and thought it was empty at first, but after shaking it upside down, strands of long black hair fell onto my lap. Long black hair that looked like mine.

David set the mug on the dark wood coffee table, sat beside me and looked at the strands on my lap. “What’s that?”

“I think it’s my hair.”

I held them up and in one short breath, my chest wrenched into a tight knot until I couldn’t breathe. I dropped the envelope and the hair on the table and folded my arms over my chest, wanting as much distance from them as possible.

David picked up the hair and studied it without a word. He followed with the envelope, flipping it over and then peering inside.

“No return address,” he said, giving it a thorough once-over. “No postmark or postage either. No anything.”

“Except my name.”

He pressed his lips together, and when his eyes met mine my heart kicked into high gear. We might not have known
who
dropped off the envelope but we knew
how
they did it. They had hand delivered it right to our home.

Though the windows and slider to the back patio were closed and locked, I felt vulnerable and exposed. For a brief, insane moment, my eyes tracked to the bushes and trees that lined the backyard and the in-ground pool, and I wondered if someone was hiding outside and watching me.

“Do you recognize the handwriting?” David asked.

I kept staring out the slider. “No.”

“Any idea why someone would send this to you?”

My eyes flicked to David. “Send me my own hair? No.”

“Anyone giving you a hard time at the office?”

I hesitated. “No.”

David picked up on my hesitation. “Does it have something to do with Logan?”

There was only so much I could tell him without breaching confidentiality, and I took the time to choose my words carefully. “He knows things, David. Things he shouldn’t know. About us.”

David said nothing and I knew exactly what his silence meant. He still didn’t believe that I’d seen Logan and that he was alive. But he didn’t confront me about it and I took that as a good sign. That meant he was still open to possibilities.

David put the envelope and the hair on the coffee table and faced me. “If this hair really came from you, how would someone have been able to get it? And this much of it?”

My hand instinctively went to my head, searching for something that felt out of place. Or missing. I didn’t know how someone had managed to get it but, “That’s definitely mine,” I said. “And you know it, too. Not too many people have hair as long and as straight and as black.”

“They’re all perfect strands, too,” David said. “They look like they’ve been cut off.”

I shuddered over the thought that someone had gotten that close to me without my even knowing it.

“Can you think of any time that you may have fallen asleep with someone else around?” David asked. “Or a time when you blacked out — ?”

He stopped talking and I stopped breathing, the both of us thinking the same thing.

“Logan was the only person around when I had that episode at the office today,” I said. “But I don’t think he did this.” Logan was many things but this behavior didn’t fit his profile.

David let out a small sigh. “If Logan really is alive, we can’t dismiss the possibility. Along with the possibility that we could be overlooking someone else, too.”

I looked at the backyard again and the thick wall of bushes around the fence that offered us privacy. “If someone’s watching me, what do I do now? Call the police?”

David clasped his hands together and sat in deep, silent thought. “I don’t think the cops can or will do anything, Lottie. Unless you know who’s after you. And even then, what can we prove?”

I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Then David wrapped an arm around me.

“There are a lot of ifs to consider,” I said.

“Yes, there are.”

His cell phone vibrated. He unclipped it from his jeans, checked caller ID, and answered. The call lasted barely a minute and, when it was over, I felt the muscles in his body contract with tension.

“That was Neil,” he said. “He couldn’t find anything on the phone call you got this morning. He also couldn’t find any reason why the call would route back to our land line.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means that someone’s got access to our accounts. Or that they know how to manipulate the phone system. Maybe both.” His gaze went back to the envelope on the coffee table and I understood the connection he was making.

“You think the envelope and phone call are linked?”

“Possibly.” He punched in a call on his cell and waited for the other end to pick up. “That’s why I’m calling Nat. He might be able to find something that Neil overlooked.”

This didn’t surprise me. Nat was one of David’s best friends from childhood and a genius with technology. He was also a contract soldier at PROs.

“Isn’t what you’re doing considered a misappropriation of PROs’ resources?” I asked.

“Not if they’re friends who’ll cover for me.” David’s expression soured. It seemed Nat wasn’t answering. “Look, I know this won’t be easy for you but you don’t have a choice.”

“Choice with what?”

He left a quick message and hung up. “I’m thinking of having Nat arrange some kind of surveillance on you, so you’re covered for the times I can’t be with you. Maybe install a tracking device on your Jeep or set up audio in your handbag or some other kind of surveillance for when you’re mobile. OnStar maybe. I haven’t decided yet.”

I pushed away from David. “You can’t be serious.”

“I know you don’t like this, Lottie, but it’s for your own good.”

“How can a leash be good?”

“This isn’t a leash. This is protection.
Your
protection.”

I was about to argue but he spoke right over me. “This isn’t up for debate. Like it or not, you need to be tailed. My biggest concern is having you watched when I can’t be with you, and I trust my men to do that job.”

I launched to my feet. “I can take care of myself, David.”

David launched up to meet me. “Someone cut off your hair, Lottie. Someone dropped off an envelope in person, right here at our house. Someone called this morning claiming to know what you dreamt about. You’ve also blanked out twice. And, in case you haven’t noticed, all of this happened in the space of five hours.”

I’d noticed, all right, but in my denial I was hoping it was just a coincidence. Foolish, I knew, but I couldn’t help the reaction. I just wasn’t ready to mentally deal with all of it yet.

“I still think you’re overreacting,” I said. “I’m a grown woman and I can handle myself.” I’d done it at the office several times before, and I was prepared to do it again.

“What if someone attacks you in a parking lot?”

“I have my mace.”

“What if someone gets into our home and is waiting for you upstairs?”

“I’ll run out of the house. Call 9-1-1. Go to a neighbor’s.”

“What if you have another episode or blank out and someone comes after you then?”

I had no answer.

“Exactly.”

His voice sounded sharp, sharper than I’d ever heard before. And it seemed he realized it, too, but before I could react he drew me into a tight embrace and rested his chin on my head. His heart pounded fast and hard and in time with mine, a byproduct of anger, anxiety, and adrenaline.

When the frustration passed and the knotted tension in his body eased, he spoke again. This time with a lot more sympathy. “One of the most important things I learned in the military is survival, Lottie. And the only way a person can survive is to be as prepared as possible and to be as flexible as possible, because whatever you prepare for is going to change the minute you engage. Not knowing what you’re up against can make you even more vulnerable, and you have to prepare for that, too.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” He pulled away and looked at me, daring me to lie to him. “Do you really know what you’re up against?”

I didn’t.

“See? And that’s what worries me. That’s also why I’m suggesting what I’m suggesting.”

“Those weren’t suggestions,” I told him. “Those were orders.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” He pressed his lips to my forehead. They felt soft and warm and tempting. “I just want you to take as much control as you can. If you don’t and you’re caught off-balance or off-guard, you’ll make an easier target.”

David’s phone buzzed again and he held it up so I could see caller ID. It was Nat.

“We have a situation here that I need your help with,” he said, pulling away, and he went on to explain about my hair and the note and phone call. He didn’t mention anything about either of my blackouts. “I want to set up surveillance on Lottie ASAP. I also want you to check the envelope for prints and do a DNA test on the hair to confirm that it’s hers.”

David listened as Nat spoke, his eyes occasionally cutting in my direction. I didn’t know what to make of his expression because it was so guarded, but I knew that I didn’t like that these decisions were being made without my input. Still, I had to admit that David would never tell me how to do my job because he was no expert in psychology. And considering that my safety might have been at risk, I certainly wasn’t going to tell him or Nat how to do theirs.

Their conversation went on for another ten minutes as they figured out a plan. I was halfway through my tea when their discussion changed to a completely different topic.

“No,” David said. “We’ll have to pass on tonight. Lottie had the flu for the past few days, and now with all this other stuff going on I think we should take a rain check.”

I launched to my feet. I’d forgotten about Lori’s birthday! And we had plans to go out with the two of them to celebrate her thirtieth later that night.

“I know she is, Nat, but Lottie — ”

I snagged the cell from David’s hand and dodged him when he tried grabbing it back. I was halfway to the kitchen before I realized he wasn’t chasing after me.