Jan Hambright - Keeping Watch

Somewhere in the dark, he heard bushes rustle, followed by running footsteps. Royce pushed away from the house and charged for the backyard. There he found an opening in the foliage and stepped out into the alley. A block over he heard a motor start up and the engine rev.

He bolted to the corner in time to see a flash of the car’s taillights, and then it was gone. Pulling the portable radio off his belt, he alerted the squad car to the vehicle’s exact direction of travel. With any luck they’d get the plate number and a description of the car.

Royce hurried for the house. Had Adelaide somehow been injured while he sat outside in his car? If so, the subject would have had to be able to walk through walls.

Key…key…under the front mat.

Hurrying up the steps of the front porch, he flipped up the mat and picked up the key. He shoved it into the lock and opened the door.

Was she okay? Had he somehow blown his mission to keep her safe? The string of unanswered questions all ran together in his brain as he rushed down the hall and into the studio.

He dropped to the floor next to her and reached out, touching her warm body.

“Adelaide. Adelaide.” He listened to her suck in a startled breath and realized he’d just awakened her.

Her eyes flicked open and she pulled back for an instant. Tears flooded the brim of her lower lashes. She reached out for him.

He pulled her against him, feeling her body tremble.

“Make them stop, Royce. Make them stop.” A sob shook her, and he settled into a rocking motion, trying to comfort her.

“What, Adelaide? What do you want me to stop?”

She didn’t answer as he stroked the nape of her neck, feeling her go pliant in his arms. Streams of heat entered his body and burned in his veins. There it was again, that inexplicable hypnotic edge of desire present every time he touched her.

“Tell me. You’ve got to tell me if you want my help.”

“It’s here…it’s all around me.”

Now she was talking in riddles, riddles he couldn’t understand. Crazy talk, and as much as it pained him, he let her go and sat back, not breaking contact where he held her bare shoulders between his hands. Was she still half-asleep?

“Make sense, Adelaide. You’ve got to make sense.”

She swallowed hard and met his gaze. The veil of drowsiness lifted, and she visibly straightened, shoulders back, chin up.

“It’s here.” She motioned to the drawings on the floor with a slight tilt of her head. “They wake me up from a dead sleep and I’m compelled to come down here and draw these…these…”

“Pictures?”

“Yes.” She looked away and shook her head. “But they’re becoming more detailed, more intense. Tonight I was able to give her a face.”

For the first time, Royce looked down at the drawings spread out around them.

His mouth went dry and he released her to pick up the nearest one, trying to conceal the creeping layer of revulsion that the sadistic image churned in his gut.

“They’re horrific, and I can’t get them out of my head.”

Glancing up at her, he watched a tear zigzag down her cheek and tried to imagine how the woman in front of him could draw a murder scene that included a posed female body.

“Please, you have to understand. I don’t know where they’re coming from, they just come.” She turned misty green eyes on him and he couldn’t resist.

He reached out for her and pulled her against him, feeling the silkiness of her skin under his fingers. Smelling the sweet, spicy scent of her hair. He closed his eyes for an instant to absorb the sensations, but the only thing he saw was the image of a disturbing murder.

What was going on?

He didn’t know, but he needed to find out, that was, if he could reconcile the ugly drawings around them with the beautiful woman in his arms.

Adelaide fidgeted in the padded chair and wrapped her hands around the cup of coffee sitting in front of her on the table. This was her sanctuary inside the police station, a place where she helped innocent victims visualize, describe and mentally relive their nightmare to bring their tormenter back to life and onto an APB sheet.

She took a swallow of her coffee. It was lukewarm. She worked to get it down and leaned back. Detective Royce Beckett would walk into her realm any moment now, and she’d be forced to explain the drawings he’d gathered up off her studio floor last night.

But she didn’t have an explanation…at least not one that would make sense to a clear-and-present-danger sort of man like him.

Just the memory of him holding her made her cheeks warm. He made her feel safe, made her want to try to survive what was coming.

A couple of quick knocks, and the door opened. He stepped into the room, sucking the oxygen out of the space, and her lungs, too.

She looked up, catching the full force of his intense, dark-eyed perusal, but she couldn’t keep her focus from drifting to the sketches he held in his right hand between his thumb and index finger.

“Detective.” A wash of nervous energy rolled over her.

He smiled for an instant. “Adelaide. Nice place you have here.” He eyed the room, nodding his head in approval before he returned his attention to her.

“I understand how important it is for you to make victims feel safe. Protected. I’m sure it helps them give you the information you need to sketch their assailants.”

She settled back in her chair, feeling the first whisper of fear skitter over her nerve endings. “I like to think so.”

He pulled out a chair across from her and lowered himself into it, setting the sketches on the table next to him. That was when she noticed a Polaroid picture on the top of the pile. He picked it up and put it down in front of her.

“I need you to take a look at a snapshot of the man we believe was looking in your window last night. We got his name from a plate check on a car parked a block over from your place. Do you recognize him?”

She reached for the photo, unable to still the quaking of her hand as she picked up the picture and stared at the shot of the man’s face.

“Yes. I’ve worked with him before. This is Clay Franklin. I did a sketch of his mugger a little over three weeks ago, but they haven’t caught him yet.”

She glanced up to see Royce studying her with an intensity that made her skin prickle.

He broke eye contact, pulled a notepad and pen from his shirt pocket and jotted down some information before he looked back up at her.

“I know the mugger’s sketch went out on an APB, and WGNO-TV ran it. Five people have been mugged in the same area, but Clay was the first victim who got a good look at the man’s face.” She licked her lips and tried to relax, but she knew he was dissecting her, her information, and most assuredly the sketches lying next to him.

“Did he say anything to you? Did he put the moves on you? Give you any indication that he was interested in you?”

“Enough to become a Peeping Tom and spy on me you mean?”

An amused grin tugged at his mouth. “Yes. Enough to watch you on more than one occasion?”

“No.” She ran the drawing session over in her mind, sorting for important details she may have missed. “Not at first. But he did take to staring at me profusely once I revealed the sketch of his attacker to him. It made me uncomfortable.”

“That’s an affliction the bulk of the department’s males seem to have in common with Mr. Franklin.”

Embarrassment bloomed on her cheeks. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

His eyes narrowed for an instant, and she wondered about his thoughts. It was true, she’d been approached time and again by the officers of the NOPD, but Detective Royce Beckett was the first one who sparked any interest inside her.