Lenora Worth - Capitol K-9 Unit Christmas - Protecting Virginia

She must have drifted off.

She woke to the sound of rain tapping against the roof and the subtle scent of cigarette smoke drifting in the air.

Cigarette smoke?

Her pulse jumped, and she inhaled deeply, catching the scent again. Just a tinge of something acrid and a little sharp lingering.

Was it coming from outside?

In the house?

She crept to the doorway that led into the hall and peered into the foyer. The front door was closed. Just the way she’d left it, but the scent of smoke was thicker there, and she glanced up the stairs, terrified that she’d see him again.

She saw nothing. Not him. Not the light that should have been shining from the landing.

The upstairs hallway was dark as pitch, and she was sure she saw something moving in the blackness. The shadow of a man? The swirl of smoke?

She didn’t care. She wanted out.

She lunged for the door, scrambling with the lock and racing onto the porch. Her car was in the driveway, but she hadn’t brought her keys, and the phone that she’d been clutching to her chest when she fell asleep? Gone.

She must have dropped it.

She should have thought to look for it before she went searching the house for a cigarette-smoking intruder.

She ran down the porch stairs, her bare feet slapping against wet wood. She made it halfway across the yard before she saw the man standing on the sidewalk. She skidded to a stop, her heart beating frantically, as she watched the butt of his cigarette arch through the darkness.

“Everything okay?” he asked, his face illuminated by the streetlights, his little dog sniffing around at his feet.

“I...” What could she say? That she’d smelled his cigarette and thought someone was in the house? She doubted he’d want to know all the details of that. “Fine...”

“Probably you should put some shoes on. This isn’t just rain. It’s ice—and your feet are going to freeze.”

Her feet were already freezing, but she didn’t mention that. She was too relieved to have found the smoker outside her house to be worried about her feet. She thanked him and walked back to the house. The door was open as she approached, just the way she’d left it.

She’d nearly reached it when it swung closed.

She grabbed the door handle, trying to push it open again.

It was locked.

She hadn’t paid much attention when Gavin had been installing it. Was it the kind of knob that locked automatically?

One way or another, she was locked outside.

Which, she thought, might be for the best.

The door might have closed on its own. There was a slight breeze. It was also possible she’d imagined the shadow in the upstairs hallway. She’d imagined plenty of other things before—faces staring out of the dark corners of rooms she knew were empty, shadowy figures standing at the foot of her bed when she was just waking from nightmares. None of those things had ever turned out to be real, but right at that moment, she was certain someone was in the house, and she was just as certain that if she entered it, she might not come out alive.

She didn’t have her phone, didn’t know any of the neighbors. She’d given Gavin and Cassie the spare keys to the house, but she had no way of contacting either of them. She did know John Forrester, though, and he’d told her to call if she had any trouble. She didn’t know what time it was. She didn’t care. She jogged around the side of the house and headed toward his garage apartment.

* * *

Samson growled, the sound a soft warning that pulled John from sleep. He sat up, scanning the dark room for signs of trouble. The living room was empty, the TV still on whatever station John had been watching when he’d fallen asleep on the couch.

“What is it, boy?” he asked, keeping the light off as he walked to the window where the dog was standing.

The dog growled again, nudging at the glass, his gaze fixed on some point beyond the yard.

Virginia’s house?

John leaned closer, peering out into the blackness. Ice fell from the inky sky, glittering on the trees and grass, tapping against the garage roof. Not a good night to be out, but he thought he saw a shadow moving near the shrubs. As he watched, it darted through the thick foliage, sprinted into the open.

Medium height. Slim.

Virginia?

Samson stopped growling, gave a soft whine that meant he recognized the person running toward the garage.

Virginia, for sure, and it looked as if she was in trouble.

He ran to the door, yanked it open. He was halfway down the stairs when Virginia appeared. She barreled toward him, wet hair hanging in her face, head down as she focused on keeping her footing on the slippery stairs.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

It was obvious everything wasn’t.

She had bare feet, no coat, skin so pale it nearly glowed in the darkness.

“I’m running through an ice storm in bare feet,” she responded. “Things are not okay.”

“What’s going on?” he asked, grabbing her hand, urging her up the last few stairs and into the apartment.

“I locked myself out of the house.” Her teeth chattered, and he grabbed the throw from the back of the couch and dropped it around her shoulders.

“Should I ask why you were outside in the middle of the night?”

“I smelled cigarette smoke and thought it was coming from inside the house.”

He didn’t like the sound of that.

The police hadn’t found cigarette butts on the property, but that didn’t mean the guy who’d been there wasn’t a smoker. “I’ll go check things out,” he said, grabbing Samson’s work lead and calling the dog.

“Don’t go rushing over there yet, John. I’m not done with my story.”

“The ending isn’t as exciting as the beginning?” he asked, grabbing a towel from the linen closet and handing it to her.

“I’m not sure.” She wiped moisture from her face and hair, then tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. “The cigarette smoke was coming from outside. Some guy walking his dog. When I went to go back in, the door closed.”

“The wind?” he suggested, and she shrugged.

“That would be a logical explanation.”

“But?” he prodded, because he thought there was more to the story, and he wasn’t sure why she was holding back.

“I’m going to be honest with you,” she said with a sigh. “I was diagnosed with PTSD a few years ago. I went to counseling, worked through a lot of issues, but I still have nightmares. I still wake up in the middle of the night and think someone is standing in my room or hiding in the shadows. Sometimes I think there’s danger when there isn’t.”

This was part of what she hadn’t told him earlier. She’d hinted at it, said she’d nearly died, but she hadn’t given details. He’d done a little digging and asked a few questions. Morris hadn’t been eager to give details, but there’d been a few newspaper articles written about it. Local Attorney Shoots Wife and Self in Apparent Murder-Suicide Attempt.

Lots of speculation as to why it had happened, but there’d been no interviews with Virginia or her grandmother-in-law, so no one knew for sure how a seemingly rational high-level attorney could snap.

Personally, John didn’t think he’d snapped. He thought the guy had been out of control from the get-go, that he’d just been hiding it from the world.

“The worst mistake you can make—” he began, taking the towel from her hand and using it to wipe moisture from the back of her hair. The strands were long and thick and curling from the rain, and he could see hints of gold and red mixed with light brown “—is hesitating to ask for help because you doubt your ability to distinguish real danger from imagined danger.”