Jan Hambright - Keeping Watch

He clamped his teeth together when he reached the open door at the end of the corridor. The splintered wood at the kick plate indicated it had been kicked open. Anger jolted him, and he sympathized with the terror she must have experienced, hearing the intruder, knowing he was in her room.

Seeds of an old memory sprouted in his mind, but he quickly stunted them. The past was just that, the past.

Reaching around the jamb, he flipped on the light and stepped into the room. The closet door was open. A trail of clothing and broken hangers lay on the floor in front of it. She must have hidden inside, but the assailant found her.

Royce examined the layout of the bedroom, his gaze pausing on the massive bed against the south wall, at the bunching of covers thrown back. What had gotten her out of bed and into the closet? Taking one last look, he left the room and found the linen cupboard.

He pulled a couple of towels out and went back down to the parlor, where Gina was putting the coil of duct tape into a paper bag.

“What woke you up tonight?” he asked, coming around the sofa to hand her a towel.

“Wait,” Gina said, just as Adelaide shook the towel open. “I’ve got to have the blindfold, too.”

“Sorry.” Adelaide waited as she cut the towel off and put it into a bag.

“The lightning. A flash woke me up, and I’d left the window open a crack. The blind was hitting against the frame and I got up to close it. That’s when I saw him standing in my backyard.”

“And you called 911?”

“No. Not until I heard him break a window in the back door of the kitchen.”

“You hid in the closet?”

Fear hissed through Adelaide’s body as the memory reconstituted in her mind. “Yes. That’s when I dialed 911 from my cell.”

“What happened next?”

She clutched the towel, pulling it up around her neck, trying to combat the surge of anxiety sliding along her spine.

“He kicked in my bedroom door and came into the closet after me.”

“Did you get a look at his face?”

“No. I never saw him. He grabbed me, covered my eyes, taped my hands and—”

Reaching up, she milked a section of her hair to confirm a weird suspicion. “He clipped off a piece of my hair.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know, Detective. Maybe it’s some sort of trophy to appease a fetish.” Her voice threatened to give out, but she cleared her throat. “He was so strong, I couldn’t get away.”

Royce moved in next to her and sat down. “You fought hard. It wasn’t your fault.”

His words calmed the what-if game raging inside her head. What if she’d have called the police last week after she suspected someone had been in her house. What if she’d have put in a security system. “Miss Charboneau…Adelaide?”

She glanced over at the detective, suddenly aware he’d spoken her name more than once.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that…I think someone may have been in my house last week. I wish I could be one hundred percent certain, but I’m not.”

Royce sat forward, letting his instincts take over. “How so?”

“I ran to Delesandro’s Bakery to pick up my mother’s birthday cake before two when they close, but halfway there I realized I’d forgotten my cell phone in my studio, and I was waiting on an important call. When I ran back into the house to grab it, there was an unfamiliar scent inside, and some of the work in my studio wasn’t where I remember leaving it. It was like someone had shuffled through everything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I always put my sketches away in a portfolio, but I found them scattered on the table. I suppose I could have forgotten, but I’m pretty consistent.”

A tingle of caution crept along Royce’s spine. Had the unsub cased her home for its layout before tonight? Judging by his violent entry, he knew exactly where to find her.

He watched her towel her hair, letting his gaze slide over her slender body no longer covered by his jacket. Hard to imagine she’d ever have been able to overpower her attacker. Maybe it was better that she hadn’t. He might have really injured her. But he deemed her a fighter, judging by the mess upstairs, and her physical injuries. Still, the need to protect her welled inside him, festering and flooding into his brain like a drug.

“Would you like me to call an ambulance? You should have your ankle looked at.”

“I’m going to ice it and call my mother. She’ll take me in.”

He nodded, noting the pink in her cheeks matched the color of her drying nightgown. He tamped down a flare of heat the observation fired in his blood and stood up just as one of the uniformed officers stepped into the foyer.

“Detective Beckett. There’s something you need to see.”

“Where?”

“Under the window on the back left side of the house.”

“What room is that?” he asked Adelaide.

“It’s my art studio and office.” Her brows pulled together. “That’s where I found my sketches out of place last week.”

Royce moved for the front door, taking the flashlight the uniform handed him as he moved past. He stepped out onto the veranda, noting that the rain had stopped, and dawn was beginning to overtake the darkness.

He turned on the flashlight and took the steps quickly. Hanging a right, he walked around the right front corner of the house, spotting an officer with his light trained just below the windowsill.

“You got something?”

“Yeah. It’s suspect, anyway. Sort of weird.”

Royce stepped in next to the officer and aimed the flashlight beam on the same spot.

“What does it mean?” Officer Jones asked.

“I don’t know.”

The letters were scratched…no, carved into the siding of the house. It wasn’t weathered. It looked fresh.

BEHOLD…and the beginning of another letter. “Is that part of an E maybe?”

“Could be.” Royce slid the flashlight’s beam down the siding and onto the soft earth, where a partial shoe print was pressed into the mud.

“Get Gina on this, see if we can match it to the tracks in the kitchen.”

“Do you think they were made by the same person?”

Royce pondered the officer’s question, but he didn’t have an answer.

“We’ll have to wait for a comparison.” But there was one thing he knew for certain.

Adelaide Charboneau was in real danger.

Royce paced in front of the chief’s office door.

It had been two days since Adelaide Charboneau’s attack, two days too many as far as he was concerned. Hell, he’d have put half the department shoulder to shoulder around her house if he could have.

“Beckett. Stop it, and get in here.”

Relief would have been his response had Chief Danbury’s voice not held its note of irritation for more than two beats.

He avoided the chair directly in front of the desk and chose to stand. “You heard about Miss Charboneau’s attempted kidnapping?”

“Is that what it is now?”

“Her attacker blindfolded her and restrained her with duct tape. He was dragging her across the lawn when I got to the scene. We have to assume he planned to take her if I hadn’t intervened. For what purpose, we don’t know.”

Danbury grunted, motioned to the chair and rocked back in his own.

A sit-down was a good indication he’d at least hear him out, up until the word “stake-out” came up, anyway.

“I’ve read the report, Beckett, and you know where we stand on manpower. I’m up to my armpits in shortfalls. The mayor is having a hissy fit because the knucklehead who snatched his mother’s purse hasn’t been apprehended yet. Three cruisers in the motor pool have been vandalized in the last week, and this department is stretched as thin as my momma’s gray hair.”