Jan Hambright - Keeping Watch

For the first time tonight he finally got a solid look at her face. It was a fresh face, a beautiful face, he decided as she stared up at him with eyes the color of smooth jade.

The drone of another squad car hummed from up the block, and it pulled in just as the other officers appeared from around the side of the house using their flashlights to comb the darkness.

“Anything?” he asked, dragging his gaze away from Adelaide.

“Nothing. We saw a car pull away from the curb a block over, but we weren’t close enough to get a description.”

“Do an inside sweep in case the unsub had a partner. I’ll call in CSI.”

The two officers climbed the steps, drew their weapons and disappeared inside the front door.

Royce pulled the radio from his belt and called in the team, hoping the thug had left evidence he could use to nail him.

Two more uniforms sloshed up the walkway and stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Miss Charboneau?”

Royce turned just as one of the officers took the stairs a couple at a time and knelt next to the settee.

A jolt of protectiveness jumbled his thoughts, and he had to fight the urge to step closer to her, to pull his jacket tighter around her shoulders, to cover the smooth expanse of her bare leg stretched out on the settee.

“Officer Brooks. It’s a horrible night to be out.” She gave a tired smile.

Brooks’s face was stern as he stared at the tape locking her wrists together, then back up at her face. “What happened?”

“A man broke into my house and tried to take me.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“No, I never saw his face.”

“You mean you didn’t recognize him?”

“I mean I never saw his face. He blindfolded me in the closet.”

“Dammit.” Officer Brooks came to his feet and turned to face Royce. “She’s the best sketch artist the department has ever hired. If she’d seen the bastard, she could draw him, and I’d catch him.”

It hit him then, like a Mack truck on the 10 freeway. Adelaide Charboneau, NOPD sketch artist. In fact he’d just used a composite she’d drawn to catch a serial rapist. “I got a look at him.”

Adelaide glanced up a him. “If you saw him, I can create a composite.”

Royce pulled the image in his brain, then realized how obscured the details were by the man’s ball cap. “We’ll give it a try, but between his hat, bad lighting and the rain, I’m not sure it’ll make a difference.”

A look of acceptance passed across her features, and she nodded in agreement. A gesture that seemed to him to be out of place in the exchange.

Glancing up, he watched a long white van pull up to join the string of cop cars bedazzled with flashing lights.

The whole neighborhood was awake now. People rubber-necked from their porches, dressed in their jammies. Fortunately the rain was letting up one bucket at a time, and dawn was just over the eastern horizon.

“It’s clear, Detective.” One of the uniformed officers stepped through the doorway, while the other one flipped on the porch light from inside the foyer.

“There are a dozen muddy footprints coming in across the kitchen floor, and broken glass at the point of entry. We’ll take a look around the perimeter and turn it over to forensics.”

“Thanks.” Royce turned his attention back to Adelaide, noticing a shiver quake her body. He needed to get her inside and dried off.

Officer Brooks’s radio broke squelch and Royce was relieved when his unit was called out by dispatch on an MVA.

“Take care, Miss Charboneau.”

“I will.” Adelaide raised her bound hands in an awkward wave and watched the two cops hurry for their car, nearly colliding with a woman carrying a case almost as big as she was.

She rushed up the steps, put the case down and shook off the rain before wiping a hand across her face and looking up at Detective Beckett.

“I’ll be glad when hurricane season is over.”

“How are you, Gina?” Royce stepped forward.

“Soggy.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. “But I suspect you knew that, Beckett. Looks like everyone gets wet tonight. Let’s just hope it doesn’t flush all the evidence down the storm drain.” She gloved up and looked at him. “It’s your crime scene, what’ve ya got?”

“A break-in using the back door of the home. The unidentified subject crossed through the kitchen. Officer Jones indicated there are muddy tracks leading from the point of entry. The subject then attacked the occupant of the home, Miss Charboneau, and dragged her outside via the front door, then onto the lawn, where I confronted him.”

Gina glanced over at Adelaide. “Glad you’re okay, miss.”

“Thank you.”

“First order of business is removing the tape he used to bind her hands.”

“Let’s get her inside, then.” Gina picked up her forensic kit and stepped inside the house.

“Can you stand?” Royce asked, glancing down at her swollen ankle.

“Maybe.” She rocked forward and slid her legs off the settee, then put her bare feet on the floor.

Royce moved in next to her and helped her up. She put pressure on it, and recoiled when searing pain shot up her leg. She lifted her foot, only to have Royce catch her before she went down.

“No way. There’s no way I can put full weight on it.”

In one fluid motion he scooped her up into his arms again.

Embarrassment flooded her body and morphed on her cheeks in hot patches she could feel. The close contact jumbled her nerves and tensed her muscles, sending her body into another fit of shivering. She’d always wanted to be carried over the threshold, but this wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind.

“Try to relax,” he whispered over the top of her head. “I’ll get you warmed up in a minute.”

That was as futile as asking the rain to stop in an instant. She sucked in a deep breath, willing the shaking to cease, but everything about the night conspired against her. She turned her face into his chest and closed her eyes.

Royce stepped in the front door, worried about the woman in his arms. Was she in shock? He couldn’t blame her if she was. She’d been through a lot tonight.

He spotted Gina to the right of the foyer, motioning him to the sofa in front of a massive fireplace. Turning her back to them, she flipped the switch on the wall next to the mantel and flames ignited in the hearth, sending a wave of heat out into the room.

Royce carefully put Adelaide down on the sofa and stepped back. “She’s freezing. Can you tack it up?”

“Yeah.” Gina was already pulling the digital camera out of her kit.

“The blindfold, too. She was wearing it when I stopped the unsub outside.” Royce stared at the soaked piece of cloth draped around her throat. “It looks like a kitchen towel.”

“He must have improvised and grabbed it on his way through the kitchen.” Gina raised her camera. “This won’t take long, miss.”

“Towels?” he asked.

“The linen closet in the upstairs hallway.”

Gina squeezed off a shot of Adelaide’s bound hands, and repositioned from another angle.

Royce stepped out of the parlor and glanced up the expansive staircase to the second floor. Moving forward, he turned on the light switch, firing up a massive chandelier suspended from the open foyer ceiling. The place smacked of money and elegance. Neither one a bad thing. Big bucks. Was it possible the subject had planned to kidnap Adelaide Charboneau and hold her for ransom?

Worry sliced through him, drawing him up the stairs to the second-floor landing where the intensity of her struggle against her captor was apparent.

A vase lay smashed on the hardwood floor, swept from a low mahogany table. A large painting was cocked at an awkward angle above it. All the doors in the hallway were closed save one. Royce slowed his steps, careful to survey the damage for clues.