Weakest Lynx (11 page)

“How so?” Spyder asked, curiosity wrinkling his brow.

“Looks can be deceiving. The ant didn’t realize the butterfly would escape the cocoon and fly off, but it seems to me …” I never finished my sentence. Spyder leapt to his feet, grabbed his keys from Dad, and roared up the street. I stood there in shock. I had no clue what I said that made Spyder react that way. A few hours later, he came to our apartment and offered to mentor me. It was a barter deal. He would teach me, and in exchange, I’d help our neighbor Mrs. Agnew with her children. I never knew the connection between Spyder and Mrs. Agnew. It was classified. Another Spyder mystery.

When Spyder made the offer, Mom and Dad thought the exchange was a great opportunity for me and accepted happily. I was beyond ecstatic. What I got from Spyder was brain training. I used the computer a lot to start, and then we would apply my skills to practical situations. I played the role of a modern-day Nancy Drew which I wanted to be more than anything else in the world ever since I picked up
The Demon of River Heights
at age six. I remembered how I walked around all day, wearing Playtex gloves and carrying a lunchbox with my magnifying glass and plastic “evidence bags.”

When I was sixteen, Spyder’s training changed; he thought I’d make an excellent Intelligence Officer; I studied and worked in that direction. Spyder insisted my innocent, girl-next-door looks would disarm people. He thought I’d be the last person the bad guy would expect, and they’d lower their guard. Spyder drilled into me the importance of maintaining my soft look, not to have the eyes or body stance of a soldier. If I did, I’d become a target. So, I walked around and practiced looking happy, approachable, and carefree all the time. Acting like a piece of fluff created my best disguise.

But as fluffy as I tried to seem now, it wasn’t helping. I still had an enemy on my trail.

“What an awesome way to learn.” Justin’s voice whipped me back from my reverie.

“Mostly, it was.” I reached for my bag. “Exposed,” pulsed in my mind. So not Justin’s burn. I needed to get out of there. I stood and tapped my leg; my dogs moved to either side of me. I was balancing from one foot to the other. It felt like a million eyes stared me down. Sweat beads formed on my nose. But weirdly, no heebie-jeebies told me to run the hell away. Dave focused on me with tense muscles. He hadn’t missed my weird behavior.

“Hey, enjoy your dinners.” I managed to keep my tone calm. “I need to scoot.” I waved and headed toward my house. Dave grabbed at my elbow as we moved together across the lawn, my girls beside us.

“What?” His voice sounded strained.

“Something’s tickling at the edge of my consciousness. Sometimes picking up stuff on the ESP-network is staticky at best.”

I unlocked the door, turned off the alarm, and gave Dave a hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Dave stood silently on the porch, looking like he wanted to beat the shit out of someone. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“Over at Justin’s, you felt the shithead close by, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. But I don’t know what to do with that. Until he drops me a clue …”

“We’re clueless,” Dave said.

T
oday was dressed unseasonably in cold and gray. I kicked off the blankets with a groan. Exhaustion made my muscles ache. I needed to get some sleep. But the house creaked and moaned all night, and adrenaline rallied me for a fight every time. I woke up a dozen times, sitting straight up in bed, my 9mm trained at the door, trying to locate the sound and identify it as safe. That Stalker wasn’t lurking in the shadows. Beetle and Bella must have thought I’d gone crazy.

I pulled on a sweat suit, slid my Ruger into my belly holster, my knife into my sports bra, and laced my feet into cross-trainers. Everything seemed so messed up. Loneliness sucked. I wanted Angel home.

“Beetle, Bella,” I rubbed my girls’ heads. “Come on. Let’s go for a run. Maybe I can snap myself out of this darned funk.”

A change of scenery might help; hopefully a jog by the river will do the trick.
I pulled open the truck door to load the girls in, and immediately saw the envelope propped on the driver’s seat.

My mind stuttered over the details. I had locked the garage last night. I had locked the truck. I just unlocked them both. No wait. Did I lock the truck last night? Or did Stalker lock it after he put the envelope in the cab? I don’t … I was sure I locked the garage.

Breathing hard, skin prickling, I crouched by the garage door, checking for signs someone had pried or picked or forced the doors, but saw none. Thank goodness Beetle and Bella sat right beside me acting normal, or I would have jumped right out of my skin.

He got in. He got in? How could he have possibly gotten in? If he could get into my garage, could he get into my house? Past my security? Surely not with Beetle and Bella around. If he were inside when we got home, my girls would tear him to pieces. Unless … A tiny voice whispered in the back of my head that he might hurt my girls—incapacitate them. I couldn’t listen to the voice. It made me too vulnerable, too horrified. I couldn’t lose Beetle and Bella. I couldn’t let anything happen to them. They were my family.

I employed Master Wang’s technique for steadying nerves. I acknowledged the fear and vulnerability. I thanked these emotions. Soon they calmed enough that I could function. I called Dave, waited for him to arrive, then we opened the envelope:

The burn on thy neighbor lay,

I were na far away,

But waited for the break o’ day

To tell you of my view …

We sat across from each other at my kitchen table.

“He’s watching you, Lexi.” Dave’s eyes didn’t raise from the cream-colored stationery. “Your stalker saw you help Justin yesterday. Now he’s taunting you. Calling you out.” He shook the paper at me, then reached around to get a plastic bag from my drawer. “We should Google this. I actually think I memorized it in fourth grade for Mrs. Paulson. Had to stand in front of the class to recite it; nearly pissed myself, too. If I’m right, it’s Robert Burns’s ‘Bannockburn.’”

“Robert Burns?
Burns
?
Are you kidding me? Maybe this guy has a sense of humor.” I laughed. Okay, so I sounded a little hysterical. I didn’t want Stalker calling me out. I was supposed to be a suburban housewife, planting vegetables and making meatloaf. Damn it!

The coffee pot light turned green, and I put the carafe on a trivet between us.

“So how many Xanax are you popping each day?” Dave gingerly set his smiley face mug on the table.

“That would be a fair indicator of how badly this guy’s getting to me. Right now? None.”

“Nerves of steel?” He was in professional mode, eyes scanning me, assessing. It felt intrusive; I lowered my lashes for privacy.

“Hardly. I’m trying to stay busy so when I fall into bed, I’m too exhausted to let the tap dancing in my stomach keep me awake.”

“So Zantac, not Xanax, keeps you together?”

I focused on the mug I slid back and forth in front of me. “I guess.”

Dave reached out a hand to still my cup. “Lexi, I’m not making light of this. I really want to know how you’re handling everything. There aren’t any signs, other than your antlike behavior, that you have a care in the world.”

“It’s spooky, Dave. His lurking—his watching where I go. I’m beginning to unravel.”

“You seem pretty pulled together.”

“You’re not looking close enough. I’m a freaking melodrama.” I clunked my head down on the table. My stomach churned. My skin felt flushed and feverish. Stalker was making me physically ill. He was the black plague. He was plaguing me. I sat up and gave a reflexive shiver. I tried to steady myself and refocus on this moment. I took a sip of my coffee then set the mug out of the way and cleared my throat.

“My coping strategy is to distance myself emotionally,” I said, lacing my fingers and looking directly at Dave. “I’ve been trying to think of this as a case I’m working on, like I’m puzzling something at my old job. He’s always there though, you know? Like a pot simmering on the back of the stove that I can smell cooking. I keep sniffing the air, trying to tell if things are starting to smoke and burn. It’s hard to pretend I’m not involved.”

“I’m sure it’s impossible. Do you need me to get Victim’s Services to give you a call? They could probably get you in to see someone.”

“A psychiatrist? No, thanks. I’m not going to take any medications that might slow my mind or my reflexes. I can’t talk my way through this. It’s not over.” I got up and poured my coffee into the sink.

Dave followed me over with his mug. “Nothing’s on the security tapes?”

“I don’t have any trained on the garage. I’ll call Boomer today, get that taken care of. Run the alarm back there, too. He thinks I’m out of my mind with all this security.” I leaned a hip into the counter, arms crossed, lips pursed.

“This sucks,” Dave acknowledged, his eyes flinty.

I stared at him for full a minute before I responded. “You’re right it does. Okay, let’s think this through, if Stalker came nearby last night, Beetle and Bella would have known it and alerted. The dogs were calm. I didn’t get the heebie-jeebies. This guy must have watched remotely during the whole burn scene—and put the letter in the truck while I was singing at StarLight. I took my car.”

Dave raised a questioning brow. “Do you always rely on the heebie-jeebies to signal danger?”

My lips quirked into a lopsided grin. “Yup. I’ve found my heebie-jeebies meter to be a pretty reliable early-warning system and accurate threat sensor. It’s saved my butt on more than one occasion. When I feel the prickle flow up my spine into my scalp, and my legs want to run, I let them.” My smile dropped. “I got nothing and no one last night.”

“Have you felt the heebie-jeebies when you found any of your letters?”

“I wasn’t around when he delivered any of the letters. I’ve always been somewhere where I was protected. And for sure he hasn’t been caught on my cameras. He must know they got installed, or he would have slipped up by now. Come on.” I reached for my jacket. “Let’s take a look at Manny’s yard. I want to see the lines of sight for the grill. See if there’s any equipment in place.”

Dave cast his gaze out the window toward my garage. “I’ll dust for fingerprints when we get back.”

We trudged to Manny’s backyard and looked around.

“This grill’s in a bad place to be seen from any kind of distance.” Dave stuck his hands on his hips.

“What about from across the way?” A sound barrier rose up behind the houses on the south side of Silver Lake Road. It made for a private backyard, and the highway below gave off a low, rumbling white noise. Across the highway, a hill swelled above the other sound barrier wall where a little patch of woods grew. Dave and I climbed into my car with the dogs, and we headed over to the opposite side of the highway.

When we got to the area, I held the envelope for my girls to sniff then let them out of the car. Noses on the ground, they trotted over to the tree close to Dave and barked—their signal they had a hit. Whoever touched the envelope had stood on this spot long enough to leave a scent mark. With the time lag and the wind from the highway, he must have been there for quite a while or the girls wouldn’t have been able to find that mark. I moved over next to the dogs and inhaled deeply. “Can you smell that, Dave?” I asked.

He raised his nose in the air and sniffed. “All I get is car exhaust and pine trees. Is this the scent you mentioned ESP-wise the first day you brought me this case that you’re talking about? Do you smell it here?”

I shrugged by way of answer—I haven’t stopped smelling Stalker’s evil since the first letter slid under my door. But, yes. Here it was worse. Here it smelled … hungry.

Training my binoculars toward Manny’s grill, I said, “One mystery solved.”

… And so freaking what? How did this get me any closer to answering the puzzle and getting this nutcase out of my life? We scanned the area for clues—a piece of trash that fell out of his pocket, a shoe print … My girls snuffled the ground. Nothing. Absolutely nothing but the damned putrid smell, and the creepy hair-raising, spine-chilling feeling that came with knowing someone had had me in his sights.

Standing in Manny’s yard, swathed by the soft air left by the May shower, I took in my little house’s slow transformation from ugly duckling to swan. In the beautiful spring weather, Mrs. Nelson came out to sit on our newly rebuilt porch with her dog, Barney, and wave to the kids on their bikes. She seemed happier when she got out of her house and around other people. Knowing the home repairs were helping Mrs. Nelson gave me a sense of satisfaction—like I was doing something good for her as well as for Angel and me.

Little by little, I was making real friends in the neighborhood. A few days ago, on their sixth birthday, I made Colin and Fletcher each their own cake: Colin chose an army theme, and Fletcher wanted a fire-breathing-dragon cake. I helped Cathy out at the party by doing some magic tricks for the kids. Balls appeared and disappeared, treats showed up in the kids’ pockets—little yoyos and whistles. The kids were great. They begged for “one more” like my friends in my apartment building had when I was a teen.