Elizabeth Goddard - Freezing Point

Or “fall off the grid,” as Eddie had put it.

Once settled in Aunt Leann’s home, she’d marched right into the office of the Orange Crossings Times to ask for a job. As it turned out, the editor was in the midst of chewing out one of his reporters because he’d not been able to breach the gatekeeper at Helms Ice and Trucking Company. With the ice-sculpture competition approaching next week, he needed a story.

All Casey had to do was tell him she could get the story because her uncle owned the company. Since it was a simple human-interest story there wouldn’t be any conflict of interest.

His response? If she got the story, she had a job.

She opened her eyes and noticed someone watching her from the far corner of the building. Black hair flashed then disappeared. She recognized him. The cell-phone guy. The worker had been watching her.

Her pulse inched up.

Why would he be watching her?

Or had Casey’s stalker experience with Tannin put her reporter instincts on overdrive, and she was simply having knee-jerk reactions to everyone who so much as glanced her way?

Would she ever recover?

Shifting her lime-green Volkswagen bug into Reverse, she backed out of the parking space and exited the lot as fast as her car would go.

Although disappointed she couldn’t get an interview with Jesse today, she knew these things took time, and she’d see him again in a couple days. She allowed a smile to come to her lips when she remembered his rugged face and fierce blue eyes, teasing her. He’d actually had the audacity to flirt with her.

He had charm, that was a fact. The guy was dangerous in more ways than one. She turned on the radio, shoving thoughts of Jesse the ice sculptor aside as she headed to her aunt’s beach house, just up the road from the ice company. She would call Meg when she got there.

Taking a left onto Shoreline Road, the frontage road that led to the beach, she continued to watch her rearview mirror, looking for a tail—a habit she’d gotten into while fleeing Oregon. She didn’t think she’d ever lose it.

In three minutes she could relax behind the safety of the beach-house walls, alarm system on alert.

She pulled into the driveway and then all the way into the garage. While the automatic garage door began its slide to the ground, shutting her off from the neighbors, she glanced at her rearview mirror and noticed a man across the street, replacing a window in a house. He was watching.

Relax. He was probably curious if not suspicious. Completely normal.

Once inside, she kicked off her shoes. Though at first she planned to call Meg, the view of the ocean drew her forward. The wall on the west side of the house was nothing but a huge window, affording an amazing panoramic look at the beach, waves lapping the shore.

Any other time, she’d walk out onto the deck and let the salt-water breeze lick her skin. But not today.

A year ago, Casey had been conducting research on an article in which she hoped to expose the enormous salaries of heads of charities and non-profit organizations. Little did she know that in the process she’d be led down a money trail, following the money behind one Will Tannin, CEO of Inner City Aid in Portland, Oregon, and discover his duplicity. Tannin had an affair with a woman who’d sought aid through the organization. She’d given birth to his son, and though he refused to acknowledge the relationship, he paid the woman to keep quiet.

Casey hadn’t gathered the evidence she needed to prove the money he paid the woman had come from the charitable funding, but she’d been working on that when she’d had to leave Oregon. Since Casey’s exposé, Tannin had lost his job, his wife and family and his home. Though he had not been charged with a crime yet, his life had been destroyed.

Four months ago, Tannin began his attempt to systematically destroy Casey’s life and had progressed to disrupting her career and credibility. His first act began when she discovered the hard drive on her home computer destroyed along with all backup files. Then her email had been hacked, and no matter how many times she changed the service provider or her password, her email address was used as spam to send pornography. So, she could live without email for a while.

The little things began to add up. Though the police could not identify the perpetrator, Casey knew it was Tannin. He’d threatened to destroy her life little by little.

She no longer answered her phone. No matter what the caller ID said, even if it was a friend calling, she would hear only the heavy breathing until she hung up. Tannin had called in a serious favor or paid someone in the world of hackers who knew what they were doing.

But why? Why would anyone go to that much trouble? Maybe Tannin had wondered the same about her unraveling his life.

Fine. She’d keep digging until he was arrested. But during the digging she discovered something else about Tannin—for years he’d been under the care of a psychiatrist for antisocial personality disorder, or rather, he was an abusive psychopath.

She’d done an exposé on the wrong man—Will Tannin had snapped. She would have done less harm by taking a baseball bat to a nest of killer bees.

The small interruptions in her everyday life were a nuisance, but a week ago, Tannin had hacked into the newspaper, changing a story she’d written in order to damage her professionally. Eddie had then told her to get out until everything died down. The newspaper couldn’t afford to fight off a madman, especially when the police could find no proof to arrest him.

That’s when Tannin had gone the next step and explained to Casey how and when he would kill her.

To be safe. That’s all she really wanted.

She’d made the right decision to come here. Her mother and father had been killed in a car accident years ago, and Aunt Leann was the only real family Casey had left. Her aunt had had the foresight to send Casey the key to their home on the beach while she and Uncle John traveled Europe. Casey had taken the key and grabbed a few necessary items then fled her home, her friends and her job.

Casey tugged out one of the low-calorie frozen dinners she’d stocked the fridge with yesterday and shoved it into the microwave, thinking she needed to find out more about the ice company.

She sighed, knowing she had to quit her insane need to uncover a story, no matter the cost. While she ate her dinner, she began the process of creating a completely new email screen name. One more step away from Tannin.

Relaxing against the chair back, she rolled her shoulders, easing the tension in her neck. The view from the living-room window had grown dark. She hadn’t noticed that night had fallen.

Casey rose calmly from the dinner table where she’d set up a temporary office with her laptop, and moved to the large window that provided the ocean view. She stared out, again, only this time instead of seeing waves lapping the shore, complete darkness stared back along with her reflection. The sun had set, and she’d missed the moment.

She turned the lights down in the house, hoping to gain a better look outside without her reflection. For a few seconds, she searched the blackness, but could see nothing except a few lights in the distance—probably a fishing boat or two. She wondered if Tannin could be out there somewhere, watching her. She couldn’t shake off the sense that someone was, in fact, observing her.

Despite everything she’d been through, the idea still seemed a little paranoid. After all, she’d driven almost twenty hours, putting over a thousand miles distance between her and Tannin. He couldn’t know where in the country she was.

The strangeness of today fresh on her mind, she shoved the hair from her face, wondering if she might have something more than Will Tannin to worry about.