The Seven-Day Target (6 page)

Nick glanced around the house. Her countertops practically glistened; the window treatments were arranged just so. She’d placed fresh flowers in a vase on the kitchen table, an arrangement of pink-and-yellow tulips. He opened his mouth to compliment the selection but then halted, because those flowers were probably from David. Her new beau. He turned his back to them.

“Your home is beautiful, as always.”

She grimaced and hurried to place a stray coffee cup in the dishwasher. “Where are we going if we’re not staying here? A hotel?”

“I thought we’d go to my place.”

She froze. “In Pittsburgh?”

“I meant my parents’ place. My mom and stepdad are in Florida. They won’t be home until the middle of May. You know how it is. The temperature has to reach a consistent seventy degrees before my mom will set foot in the Northeast.”

Libby nodded slowly. “Your mom is doing well, then? And your stepdad?”

“Yes, they’re well.” He walked to a cabinet and helped himself to a drinking glass. “And Bio Dad has been sober for a while now. We talk sometimes.” A real father was a supportive role model to his children. A biological father contributed DNA. Nick had a strictly biological father.

She filled Nick’s glass with water and handed it back to him. A silence settled between them. “I guess I’ll pack.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. I don’t need you to watch. I have to pack personal things.” Her cheeks flushed and she looked down demurely.

“I’ll stand outside your door, then. I won’t look.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—”

She was interrupted by a knock on the door followed by the chime of the doorbell.

* * *

Cassie. She’d completely forgotten that she’d promised her dinner. Nick made a macho show of looking out the window, one hand on his gun, before giving Libby the nod to open the door. She tried not to roll her eyes at him.

Cassie’s normally wild blond curls were even wilder, if such a thing was possible. She was bouncing on her toes as she held Sam, who was crying impressively. “I swear I’m going out of my mind,” she said. “He’s been crying for the past half hour. Babies are supposed to sleep in the car, right? Well, not Sammy—” She froze. “Oh, my God, Nick!”

Cassie gave him a one-armed hug. Libby had almost forgotten how close they were, but Nick had been part of Cassie’s life for so long that he’d been like an older brother to her.

“Cassie. And this is Sam? Congratulations.”

She made a noise like a severed laugh and handed the baby to Libby. “Thanks. I’m so overwhelmed right now. Sleep deprived. I don’t know what I’d do without Libby.”

Libby held the bawling infant closely and bounced gently on her toes with him. “He looks even bigger than he did yesterday,” she told Cassie, knowing that her sister worried incessantly about his weight. Sam had been premature and had spent his first two weeks in the neonatal ICU.

Cassie half listened as she babbled excitedly to Nick. Libby took the opportunity to walk back into the house with the baby. She nuzzled her nose against his scalp, inhaling his sweet scent of powder and warm milk. She loved the way he grasped her finger tightly when she held it out to him. She loved everything about him.

A pang struck her under her rib cage. Didn’t it figure that Cassie would get pregnant unexpectedly, without even trying, while Libby, the sister who’d always loved babies, was still reeling after learning that chemotherapy had left her infertile? Libby had been so filled with rage at the universe that she hadn’t fully accepted her nephew until he was born. Then, the first time she saw him in the incubator, the tubes and monitors covering his body, she’d talked to him and he’d turned to her. It had taken her until that point to realize that he wasn’t some cosmic irony. He was a miracle. And he was quieting in her arms.

“He had to burp. Now he’s feeling better.” She placed him in the little swing Cassie had brought over a week ago.

“Oh, thank God.” Cassie heaved a sigh. “Maybe he’ll sleep for a while.”

Libby took her sister gently by the forearm. “I can’t do dinner, Cass. I need to leave the house. Can you come upstairs to help me pack? I’ll explain.”

Cassie’s eyes widened in concern. “Yeah, okay. Is everything all right? Can Nick watch Sam?”

Nick nodded and sat by the baby swing. He watched the baby drift into sleep, Sam’s lower lip jutting out in a pout. Something sad rippled through Libby as she watched the scene and remembered how much Nick wanted children. His own father had been terribly abusive, and she suspected that to Nick, having children represented a way to compensate for his own father’s failures.

He reached out a hand, tentatively stroking Sam’s cheek with his fingertips and murmuring an apology when the infant stirred. She swallowed a tightness in her throat. Nick would be a great father. She hoped he’d get the chance some day.

* * *

Cassie dropped a four-letter word. “My God, Libby. This is like something out of a movie. This can’t be happening.”

“It seems it is.” Telling Cassie about the events of that afternoon left Libby feeling sober, almost as if she were relaying someone else’s nightmare. “But I don’t want you to worry, I just want you and Sam to go somewhere safe. Away from me.”

Cassie threw her hands into the air as she plopped herself onto Libby’s bed. “How can you tell me not to worry? And God, Libby, where is safe anymore? You think he knows where I live?”

“I don’t know, but let’s not take chances. I don’t know how long he’s been following me or to what extent, but I don’t want to make anything easy for him.”

This is where Libby excelled, in the role of patient counselor. She could speak calmly to her sister and assure her that everything would be fine, and she could momentarily forget about her own problems as she lost herself in trying to resolve Cassie’s concerns. Later she would come back down to the reality that someone was stalking her, but now? She could simply focus on Cassie’s wide eyes and the frown between her eyebrows. They were only two years apart in age, but her little sister had always been younger than her years where Libby was concerned.

“Hey, it’s okay, Cassie.” Libby sat beside her on the bed and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “You know I’m a target because of my work. Earlier today a police officer started shouting threats at me because I informed the judge that he’d fabricated his testimony. This happens. The police are all over it,
believe
me, and it’s possible that they’ll find a fingerprint or see something once they review the video surveillance footage from the D.A.’s Office.”

“And Nick is here. That makes me feel better.” Cassie sniffed back tears.

“Yes.” Libby stood stiffly and walked to her closet. She needed to pack.

She flung the closet door wide and selected a few outfits for work. Her fingers grazed the clear plastic bag that held her wedding dress and Libby paused. She hadn’t thought about that dress in ages. The perfect dress for their perfect June wedding: a strapless gown that was fitted to her waist before collapsing in elegant layers of chiffon. The perfect dress to match the perfect cake, the perfect flowers and the perfect meal. She’d thought of every little detail for that day, a hundred ways to announce to the world that she and Nick were in love.

Libby tightened her jaw and closed the closet door. Nothing was perfect.

She turned to her dresser and opened her jewelry box. Libby didn’t wear much jewelry and she didn’t have anything of real value except for a small silver charm bracelet that had belonged to her mother. Even then, the bracelet was more valuable for sentimental reasons and she couldn’t imagine leaving it behind knowing that the killer could come back to her house. She clasped it across her wrist.

As she looked up, she caught Cassie watching her in the reflection of the mirror. “You know, if someone like Nick swore to protect me no matter what, I’d be swooning. Especially if I’d told that person point-blank that I didn’t love him.”

“Cassandra—”

“Do you realize what he’s doing, Libby? He left his job, took a leave of absence, to be at your side. Do you know what I’d give for someone to be that devoted to me?”

Cassie’s voice clipped as she fought her emotion. She’d never told Libby about Sam’s father and Libby had never asked, but more than once Cassie had suggested that the father had rejected her. Libby may have envied Cassie’s ability to have a child, but her heart broke for the circumstances under which it had happened.

“Please keep your voice down. Of course I appreciate all Nick is doing. I hope that when this is all over we can continue to be friendly.” She lifted a stack of light sweaters from her drawer and refolded them before tucking them into her suitcase. “He’s doing what anyone in his position would do.”

“Don’t be so sure. You treated him like crap.”

Libby spun around. “Cassie!”

“He thought you walked on water and you dumped him for your career. How much courage do you think it took him to get into that car and to drive over to meet you, knowing how much you could hurt him again? And knowing Nick, I’ll bet he did it without a thought.”

A raw ache pulsed across Libby’s chest. She’d told Cassie that she’d broken up with Nick because he would have made her leave her job, knowing how shallow the excuse had sounded. She could handle shallow more easily than the pity she would have seen if she’d told Cassie the truth: that Nick was better off without her. Breaking off their engagement had given him a chance to have the family he’d always wanted. She’d done him a favor.

She turned her back to her sister. “Nick left
me.
He moved away and put his own career first.” Libby pursed her lips and continued to fold her clothes. “None of that matters, anyway. I don’t love him, and he doesn’t love me. We’ve both moved on.”

Cassie paused. “Maybe I’m being unfair to you.” She sat back against the pillows. “But I was sad when you two broke up. You always made each other happy. He makes you better than you are. You do the same for him.”

Libby shook her head. “I’m not having this conversation.”

“Fine.” Cassie rolled onto her side. “It makes no difference to me. Do you think you’ll be packing for twenty minutes? I just want to get a nap in. I can’t handle all of this right now. Any of it.”

Libby didn’t respond. She watched her sister drift into sleep, quickly and deeply.
Me neither,
she thought.
Any of it.

Chapter 4

C
assie shivered as she pulled Sam out of the car and sped toward the little house she rented. The lights were off and the neighborhood was silent. Her fingers trembled as she slipped the key into the front door. Sometime after leaving Libby’s house the reality had struck her: someone was after her sister, and she could be a target. Her blood thundered in her ears.

She locked the door behind her and wondered why she’d never listened when her father had told her she should get a dead bolt and an alarm system. “Dad, we live in
Arbor Falls,
where the most heinous crime is trespass to livestock.” She should know; she’d tipped a few cows in her day. Dad had always been worrying about her and Libby, ever since Mom had died. Mostly he’d worried about her, because Libby was self-reliant. Libby was the daughter who was going places while Cassie...how did he put it? Required a guiding hand
.
She turned her gaze to Sam, still asleep in his car seat.
Well, Dad, maybe I needed more guidance than even
you
thought.

He’d met his grandson before he’d died, at least. He’d held him in his arms and kissed him without lecturing her about how a boy needed a father in his life. She didn’t want to hear it anymore, and she didn’t want to have to tell him that Sam’s father didn’t even know about him. In a way that had been Dad’s final gift to her, to keep his opinions to himself.

She looked at the clock. Sam had been sleeping for about an hour, and she probably had another hour or so before he woke and wanted to eat again. Long enough to get some things packed and head off to God-knows-where. Wherever people go when their sister is being stalked, she supposed. She knew she had to leave, but her legs felt like lead as she wondered if it was always this quiet in the house. Quiet enough to hear your own blood rush through your veins. She listened to the house settle, suddenly afraid to turn on the lights, because what if he was here now? What if she wasn’t alone?

She turned at the sound of gravel grinding as a squad car stopped at the curb in front of the house. The door slammed, a tall figure approached and, moments later, he began pounding on the door. With a quick glance to make sure the baby was still asleep, Cassie cracked the door. “What?”

She didn’t mean it to come across so rudely. Then again, she didn’t care about her manners at the moment.

“Ma’am? I’m Sergeant Domingo Vasquez with the Arbor Falls P.D. I’m here to escort you to a safe location.”

He flashed his badge and Cassie turned on the porch light to get a better look. He seemed official, dressed in a uniform and carrying a gun. Not that she’d be able to tell a fake cop uniform, but she’d be able to tell a fake cop
car,
and the car looked legitimate. She opened the door wider. “My son’s sleeping. Don’t wake him up.”

The sergeant entered through the doorway and Cassie winced at the sound of his loud footsteps. A quick reminder to be quiet, for God’s sake, was on the tip of her tongue, but then she got a full look at him. Six-four, she’d guess. Broad-shouldered and muscular. He wasn’t about to tiptoe anywhere.

“Pack up.” His voice was clipped. “I want you out of here immediately.”

She snorted. Who did this guy think he was? “Look, you may be a big deal at the precinct, but this is my house, Sergeant. I call the shots. And may I remind you that I have an infant, so it’s going to take me longer than ‘immediately’ to pack.”

“Well, I don’t have all night. I’m doing this as a favor, but I’m not running a charity here.” He placed his large hands on his hips, and heaven help her, but Cassie’s gaze followed those hands south.

She snapped her gaze back to more appropriate territory. Dark hair. Olive skin. Full lips, and the top one was edged by a small white scar. Yeah, he was hot all right, and he had a bucket of arrogance to go along with it. “Thanks, Prince Charming. Why don’t you pull up a seat and lose the attitude. Did I mention I have an
infant?
I’m running on hormones and four hours of broken sleep, and I promise that’s a more lethal combination that that gun and your trigger finger. So I’ll be done when I’m done.”

Her heart was pounding and her face was hot as a rush of anger pooled below the surface of her skin. How dare he come in here and order her around! And how dare he eye her like that: coolly, and with a hint of smug amusement as if she was trying to be funny. She was
not
being funny.

“You don’t need to call me Prince Charming. Just ‘Dom’ is fine.” Then he said the damnedest thing. “How can I help you?”

His voice was calm, his tone authoritative. Just like that, Cassie felt the beast raging within her flinch. She began to stammer a response but then just stared at him. Speechless.

He took a step forward, moving his large body with a remarkable elegance. “I can watch the baby,” he continued. “Or I can help you to get things together. Just tell me what you need.”

He was studying her with his dark almond-shaped eyes, peering at her from beneath thick black lashes, and Cassie’s heart skipped off-kilter for a beat. Damn him and his cavalier ways. She’d always gotten weak in the knees around a man in uniform. She took a breath. “Can I ask you a favor?”

His brow creased. “Sure.”

“Do you think you could turn on all of the lights in here? This house creaks sometimes and I don’t have an alarm system. I just want all of the lights on.”

He smiled softly. “I can do that.”

She waited while he walked around, patiently switching on the lights in each and every room. She could follow him by the creaking of the floorboards beneath him. She’d never noticed how noisy this old house could be. He returned after five minutes to announce, “Your house is well lit, señorita.”

“You went in my closets. I heard you.” Her cheeks were hot. Those closets were filled with cobwebs and shame: wrinkled clothes on wire hangers and cardboard boxes stuffed with odds and ends. Old stuffed animals with missing eyes. Tattered concert posters she couldn’t bear to throw away. Years of junk, formidable evidence of the chaos that was her life. And he’d just seen it all.

“I didn’t look, except to make sure they weren’t hiding anyone. I even checked under the bed. And the crib.”

She bit her lip. What’s done was done, and she wasn’t sure why she cared so much in the first place. He was a hot cop...big deal. He’d escort her somewhere and then he’d be gone, and none of this would matter. “Okay. Whatever. Thanks.”

He hesitated. “Do you want to go pack? I’ll wait here or go with you, whichever you prefer.”

She wiped her palms on the front of her skirt, wondering how far she could push her luck. “Can you sit here? With Sammy? I’ll just be a few minutes.”

He waved his hand to indicate that she should go ahead, and she headed into the bedroom. The urge to shove him out of the house had been replaced, leaving in its stead a swirl of butterflies in her stomach. After all, turning on the lights for her was kind of an apology, wasn’t it? And it was too nice to have a gentleman in her house to kick him out so soon.

She opened a duffel bag, scooped up armfuls of clothes and dropped them inside. She chuckled as she thought about the way her father might react if he saw that. He’d stand there and watch her remove each and every article, refold it and return it neatly to the bag. He would
not
have allowed hot Sergeant Vasquez to escort her anywhere. Dad had made a career of law enforcement, but he’d never trusted the police.

She grabbed another armful of clothing, shoved it tightly in the bag then tugged the stretching zipper closed. She tossed Sam’s clothes into a diaper bag, then remembered how many outfits he soiled in a day. She packed a second bag for him just to be safe. Cassie emerged from the bedrooms strung with bags filled to their limit with an array of clothing. Dom’s eyebrows rose. “Are you moving out?”

“I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone, do I? And I’m going to be hiding out somewhere with a baby, which means multiple changes of clothing for both of us for each day.”

“I’m not judging.” He grinned and held his palms up. His smile crinkled his eyes and made Cassie feel warm.

She glanced from the bags at her feet to the large man in her living room. He got the hint. “I’ll get those for you.” He lifted the large duffel bag as easily as if it had been stuffed with feathers. He carried the diaper bags with his other arm. “I’ll put them in your car.”

“Thanks.” She gave him a sweet smile and threw in a couple bats of her eyelashes.

Then she paced the living room, waiting for him to return. She paused in front of a framed still life photograph and checked her reflection in the glass. Her feminist mother might have scolded her for raking her fingers through her hair and swiping her lips with strawberry-flavored gloss.
Chill out, Mom.

No one could accuse Cassie of not being a strong, independent woman. She was raising a baby on her own and so far, surviving. But she’d spent her pregnancy in sweatpants and baggy shirts, and these days she struggled to find time to shower. She’d recently stopped flinching at the gobs of baby spit-up that landed on her shoulder. Some days she wondered if she’d ever care about feeling beautiful again. Maybe when her maternity leave ended and she’d returned to her glamorous job as a receptionist for an accounting firm? She doubted it.

Dom reentered the house with a smile and gestured to the car seat. “I assume you’re taking him with you?”

Cassie grinned. “Yeah, I’ll take him along for the ride.”

And just like that, she cared about feeling beautiful.

* * *

Nick stacked Libby’s suitcases beside the door to the guest bedroom in his parents’ house. He’d stayed there all weekend and the house still smelled stale. He flung open the bedroom windows.

“Make yourself at home. I’m going to go through the cabinets to see what I can make for dinner. Macaroni and cheese is good forever, right?” His hands fell uselessly at his sides as he looked at her. He felt as if his entire body had been starched and ironed stiff. “Why is this so formal? I feel like a butler.”

“I can call you Lurch if that would make you feel better.” Libby dragged a suitcase over to the guest bed and unzipped it. “But I’m not hungry. In fact, I’ve felt a little sick all day, so don’t worry about dinner for me.”

That suited him just fine, and he wasn’t about to beg her to eat, or to take a list of acceptable ingredients so that he could construct a suitable meal. When they’d been dating he’d had a difficult enough time keeping track of her strange food habits. One day she was counting calories, the next day she was eating whatever she wanted as long as it didn’t include wheat, the day after that she’d gone vegan and had donated all of her leather shoes to charity. He couldn’t keep up with her dietary moods.

She lifted her shoulders wordlessly and then stopped. “Do you think it’s okay in here? With the window over the roof like that? Couldn’t someone climb in?”

She was pointing to the window leading out to the pitch roof. Nick had climbed that roof many times himself when he was younger, always at night, and never for any respectable reason. “The windows lock and my parents have an alarm. But Libby, he doesn’t know you’re here. No one followed us, and I was checking the entire way over.” He paused. “Would you feel safer in a different room? You can sleep anywhere you feel safe.”

The way she hesitated, she seemed on the verge of saying something, but then she simply returned to her suitcase. She was picking her clothes out, one item at a time, refolding each article before stacking it on the bed. All of the seams had to align, of course; her ratty college T-shirts needed those fresh-from-the-retail-chain creases on each side, just in case anyone suspected they were fifteen years old. Fifteen years old—who kept T-shirts for that long? But she folded each one with a near fondness as if she found the process soothing. Later she would dress for bed and select a perfectly folded T-shirt to sleep in. All that work just to go to bed.

She spun around and smiled, holding out a white shirt with a faded iron-on design on the front. “You bought this for me. Do you remember?”

She was holding the souvenir T-shirt she’d selected on their college trip to Myrtle Beach—the one with the shark in swimming trunks holding a surfboard and winking while giving a thumbs up. Nick couldn’t help but grin at the sight of the familiar shirt. He remembered the way she’d laughed the first time she’d seen it and the tone of her voice when she’d declared it to be “all kinds of tacky.” Mostly he remembered the kiss they’d shared in the middle of the parking lot after he had bought the shirt for her, his lips lingering on her taste of dried salt water and coconut oil lip balm.

The memory stung. Somewhere, at some point after that kiss, something had changed. The girl who had once giggled about tacky souvenirs had become consumed with the grave task of constructing a tower in which to hide from the world. Libby’s moods had grown dark and her life had become serious. Nick thought it may have happened during those months he was at FBI training in Quantico, but looking back, he couldn’t say for sure. All he knew was that for a while, life had been better than he could have ever predicted. He was dating the girl he’d been in love with since they were children, and she seemed to love him in return. Then she’d disappeared without explanation, leaving in her place a distant woman who’d chosen to fill her free time with work.

“I remember. Admit it. I only bought you the best.”

Libby laughed at that and resumed folding the shirt. Nick eyed her drawn skin and gaunt cheekbones. Her fingers had assumed the knobbiness that he knew came with working too many late nights and skipping too many meals. He’d be a lousy host if he didn’t at least make an effort to get her to eat. Figuring out how to prepare soybean patties smothered in soy paste and truffle oil and resting on a bed of tempeh was preferable to watching her go hungry.

“I’m sure I could find something for dinner to tempt you,” he began brightly, not fully believing it. “What are you eating these days?”

She leveled a heavy breath. “Food, mostly. You?”