Heat of the Moment (13 page)

I straightened. “Did this belong to the creepy creep?”

I don't know why I continued to talk to the wolf. Maybe because she continued to answer me. Make that, I continued to answer myself. But the answers were good ones.

Give it to the authorities. Have them call the FBI.

“The FBI?” I got to my feet with a laugh. “Why would they care that some nut broke into a vet's house and tried to kill her?” I was suddenly very dizzy.

Someone had tried to kill me.

I have to go.

As I'd been trying to get her to go I didn't argue. That she actually went
after
I'd imagined her saying she would, should have freaked me out but didn't. Stuff like that happened to me all the time.

Pru descended the stairs. I retrieved my phone, called 9-1-1, and requested help. At the open back door, Pru glanced up.

Beware the
Venatores Mali.

I'd taken Latin in college, but it hadn't really stuck the way it should. Besides, I was still loopy. I hadn't thought I'd had my oxygen cut off by the pillow, but apparently I had.

“Something … bad?” I translated.

Pru rolled her eyes.
Not bad. E—

Her head turned sharply forward.
Oh, no! Edward!

Then she ran.

By the time I reached the parking lot, she was gone. And if there'd been anyone named Edward there, he was gone too.

 

Chapter 10

A siren approached from the main highway. In the past day I'd seen more of Chief Deb than I had in the past month.

Tires screeched. I hurried from the back door to the front sidewalk as Deb leaped out of her cruiser. She'd parked kind of funky—facing the wrong way, with her left front tire nearly up on the curb and the ass end hanging into the street. If anyone else had parked like that they'd be begging for a ticket.

“Calm down,” I said. “No one's here any more except me.”

And maybe Henry, but I'd keep that to myself.

Deb lowered her gaze from my apartment window and her hand from her gun. “Who was it?”

“No idea. He … maybe she, wore a ski mask, hat, gloves.”

She contemplated the street where the owners of the local businesses, as well as their patrons, had begun to spill onto the sidewalk. “Anyone see a person in a ski mask run past?”

Much head shaking ensued.

“You'd think someone like that would have been pretty obvious running down the street,” Deb said.

“If he…?” I tilted my head, and Deb made a “yeah, yeah, go on” gesture to indicate she understood I'd just keep saying
he
instead of
he/she,
which had already become annoying. “If he wasn't a moron, he'd have run into the woods. And lost the ski mask.”

Her gaze flicked to the shadowy tower of trees that marched right up to the edge of my parking lot then spoke into her shoulder mike. “George, I need you to go into the woods on the other side of town. Detain…” Her gaze flicked to mine.

“Six feet, maybe one sixty. Brown shirt.” I spread my hands. “That's all I got.”

Deb's eyes lifted to the heavens for help. That was the only place she was going to get it too. “Just grab anyone you find in the vicinity of six feet tall and detain them for questioning.”

“Anyone?”

“Roger that. Send Billy to Doc Becca's for crowd control. Stat.” She indicated the building. “Let's go.”

“Front is locked.” I headed around the side. My back door still gaped open.

“I'll assume it wasn't like that when you came home.”

“Please do.” I wasn't an idiot. My parents might not have locked their doors since the dawn of time, but I did.

“Was the door locked?”

“I used my key.” I frowned. I'd just assumed I was opening it. Might it have been closed and unlocked? I had no idea.

Maybe I was an idiot.

“Don't touch anything.” Deb used her shoulder mike again to ask for Ross Quinleven, Three Harbors Police Department's version of CSI.

“My prints are going to be everywhere already.” It wasn't like I dusted the doorknob or the railing on the staircase. It wasn't like I'd dusted anything in a long, long time, which Deb was going to see for herself in a minute. I should probably be more embarrassed about that than I was.

“I know, but you don't want to smudge anyone else's.”

“He wore gloves,” I repeated.

“We'll still follow procedure. Maybe he took them off so he could pick your lock.” At my incredulous glance, she continued: “You'd be surprised what criminals do that they shouldn't.”

“Like picking door locks then trying to kill people?”

“There you go.”

I took the stairs to my apartment carefully. Once you were told
not
to use the handrail, suddenly the handrail seemed a lot more necessary than you realized.

The sight of the tossed bedcovers, the pillow on the floor, the table in pieces, the lamp tipped over, made me shiver. I'd always felt safe here. My mistake.

“Take me through what happened.”

“Joe dropped me off.”

“After Watley's?”

“Yes. No.” I was so tired I was getting shaky. Or maybe my being shaky was making me more tired. “Owen dropped me at my parents' after Watley's.”

“He was with you all night?”

“Yeah.”

She lifted her eyebrows. I didn't elaborate. I only had so many more words left before my brain shut down. I wasn't going to waste them trying to explain something I didn't understand already.

“He dropped you at your parents' at what time?”

“Seven maybe? I had breakfast, and Joe brought me here.”

“You didn't notice anything off when you came in? Anything where it shouldn't be? Doors closed when you thought you'd left them open, or vice versa?”

“You think he was already inside when I got here?”

“You tell me.”

My gaze wandered the apartment. “It's a little small to hide in.”

Kitchen, living, bedroom were all one. The only doors were to the outside, the bathroom, and the closet. Shit. The closet. Had he been in there watching me undress? My shiver became a shudder.

Deb set her hand on my arm, and I jumped. “Calm down. It's over.”

“Is it?”

That depended on why someone had tried to kill me. Because I was there? Did that mean once I wasn't, I was safe? I didn't think so.

Deb gave me an awkward pat. “What happened next?”

“I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and … stuff.”

“Shower curtain?”

“Yes. I mean no. Yes, I have one. No, I didn't look behind it.” Had the intruder been behind my shower curtain watching me pee? This just got better and better.

Did people peek behind their shower curtain every time they went into the bathroom? Paranoid much? Maybe I should be paranoid more.

“Go on,” Chief Deb urged.

My attention kept drifting. From the ease with which Deb brought me back to the topic, I wasn't the first victim to do so.

I was a victim. I didn't like it.

Deb snapped her fingers in front of my nose.

Whoops.

“I … uh … put on…” I indicated my scrubs. “Lay down and the next thing I knew someone was smashing a pillow on my face.”

“That pillow?” She pointed.

I nodded.

“Why did he stop?”

“I—” Should I mention the wolf or shouldn't I? Probably had to.

“There's this wolf…” I began. “She … uh … likes me.”

“A wolf likes you,” the chief repeated. “Why?”

That I didn't know. “She just does. She hangs around. Follows me when I run. Stuff like that.”

“And you're telling me this why?”

“She scared the guy away.”

Her eyes widened. “A wolf came in the apartment?”

“The door was open.”

Deb blinked. “You're sure?”

“That the door was open? Yeah. How else would she have gotten in?” I wiggled my fingers. “She doesn't have thumbs for the doorknob.”

Which got me thinking—for Pru to have gotten in someone had to have left the door open and it hadn't been me. The intruder?

Or Henry.

“Very funny.” Deb set her hands on her hips. “Is this wolf black, with weird eyes?”

“You saw her?”

“Not me personally. But we've had reports.”

And here I'd thought I was the only one who'd seen her. I guess that was because I'd thought I was the only one who
could
see her.

“Her eyes?” Deb pressed.

“They're green.”

“Which is weird, right? Most wolves have brown eyes.”

“Most,” I agreed. “Some might be a lighter shade, yellowish or hazel, which could appear green in certain light.”

But none would ever be the green-green of Pru's eyes. Even hybrids—part dog, part wolf—would be more likely to have blue eyes than green. Pru being a hybrid would explain why she felt comfortable hanging around town, walking into apartments. It did
not
explain why I could suddenly hear her now when I hadn't before. But that was more my weirdness than Pru's.

I made a soft sound of amusement. The chief glanced at me, but I shook my head. I wasn't going to tell her the wolf's name was Pru. That would just add more weird to the weird, and how was I going to explain how I knew her name? I couldn't. Wouldn't. Definitely shouldn't.

“I need to send a report to the Department of Natural Resources,” she said.

“What? Why?”

Deb jumped. I guess I had shouted.

“It's what we do when wild animals misbehave.”

“She hasn't misbehaved. She saved my life.”

“By walking into an apartment. Wolves don't do that. They also don't hang around towns or follow people when they're jogging. You know that.”

I did.

“She seemed harmless.” At least to me. She hadn't been harmless for the intruder.

“I doubt she's harmless. She's also the only wolf that's been seen, which makes her a lone wolf and they're unpredictable at best.”

Pru was definitely unpredictable. Still …

“What will the DNR do?”

“Send a wolf expert.”

“What will he do?”

“Decide if she needs to be relocated or shot.”

“I don't think you should call them.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“Sarcasm?”

“You think?” I narrowed my eyes, but Deb moved on. “How did the wolf stop the masked intruder from smothering you?”

“Yanked him away by his shirt. Once the pillow was off my face, and I could breathe, I was a little harder to kill and he ran.”

I'd left out how the guy had flown through the air and smacked against the wall. I was funny that way.

“If you had a pillow over your face you couldn't see exactly what happened,” Deb pointed out.

“No. But I can add. The guy stopped. The wolf had a piece of his shirt in her mouth.” I searched for it amid the debris. “There.” I pointed to the bit of brown material peeking out from beneath the leg of what was left of my end table.

“Anything else?”

“He dropped his ring.” I shifted my pointer finger to where it still lay on the floor.

Deb walked over, bent, squinted. “What is that on the face?”

“I think it's a snarling wolf.”

“Weird, considering.”

“Mmm,” I agreed. What wasn't?

She straightened. “How did that happen?”

For a minute I thought she could tell that the ring hadn't actually fallen where it now rested. But that didn't mean she knew it had gotten there thanks to the powers of Henry, the telekinetic ghost.

I was losing my mind.

“I mean, how could his ring fall off if he was wearing gloves?”

“You think I lied about his wearing gloves?”

Her eyebrows flew up. “Did you?”

“Why would I?”

“Why would you lie about anything?” she asked. “Don't you want this guy caught before he tries it again?”

“Again?” I echoed.

“You're not dead. As he apparently wanted you that way badly enough to try it in broad daylight in the middle of town, he seems pretty motivated.”

“He didn't just try to rob me, see me here, and—”

“Decide to kill you? No.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Thieves and murderers are two different types of criminals. If a thief had been inside when you got here, he would have run out instead of engaging you, especially since you were asleep. If he came in after you got here, he would have left as soon as he saw you.”

She indicated the sight line from the door; my bed lay dead ahead. He couldn't have missed me. Still …

“You don't know that.”

“You're right. I don't. So, what
did
you lie about?”

“Nothing.” Everything I'd said was the truth. It was what I hadn't said that was the problem.

A chill wind seemed to ruffle my hair. I should probably shut the door, but I'd just have to open it again when Ross arrived. I hugged myself.

Chief Deb's gaze fell, narrowed. I glanced down. My fingernails were bloody.

“I scratched him!” I held out my hands as if admiring my new manicure. “You'll be able to find him now.”

She reached into her pocket. “Maybe.”

“You can check people's forearms.”

“Because a guy who attempted murder is going to hang around in the caf
é
wearing a T-shirt and no coat? I can't just go up to people and demand they bare their forearms for my examination.”

“You can't?”

She shook her head. Then she pulled two evidence bags from her pocket. “Hold 'em out.”

I did, and she put the bags over my hands then secured them at my wrists with rubber bands. “What I can do is have Ross scrape your fingernails for DNA, and if this nut is in the system…” She clapped her hands together so loudly I started, and my plastic bags rattled. “We got 'im.”