Keeping Watch Read online

  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.

  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 su
spicion. “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.

  Chapter Two

  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.”

  “She’s one of our own, Chief.” If his statement registered with Danbury, it was in the way his eyes narrowed for an instant and his shoulders sagged. “Spill it.”

  Royce sat forward, feeling tension crank the muscles between his shoulder blades. “I know this guy is coming back for her. I don’t know when, I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I just know he is.”

  “Cut the drama, Beckett. How much time?”

  “Three days, more if necessary.”

  Chief Danbury let out a puff of air and eyeballed him with skepticism from across the desk. “The report says the word behold was carved in the wood under a window. Any idea what it means?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ask Miss Charboneau?”

  “I didn’t get the chance—”

  “Then you better get cracking. You’ve got three days.”

  Had he heard correctly? Three days to prove a theory that had churned up from somewhere in his gut?

  “Thanks, Chief.” He stood up and hustled for the door.

  “Don’t thank me yet. If anything comes in, I’m pulling you off this.”

  He nodded and didn’t turn around. He couldn’t risk giving Danbury a chance to renege. It was going to be tough enough to hope another case didn’t come in and push hers down on the priority list.

  Hanging a left at the end of the hall, Royce headed for Gina’s office, almost running into her as she stepped through the doorway.

  “Hey, Ice Man, you better pull your head out of the clouds before you get hurt.”

  Royce stopped short and glanced up, irritated with himself for not paying attention. “The Charboneau case.”

  “Hmm. I don’t suppose you’d be this mushy-brained if she were, let’s just say, less than attractive.”

  He gave her a serious stare. “Yes, she’s beautiful, but I’m only interested in doing my job, and catching the creep who kicked her door down and tried to abduct her.” He pulled in a breath, watching a slow smile bow Gina’s lips.

  “Just checking to see if you’ve caught the bug, too, because in case you haven’t noticed, the single men in this department have lost touch with any measure of decorum they may have possessed. It’s Miss Charboneau this, and Adelaide that—”

  “You’re jealous?” Royce followed her into her lab and leaned agains
t the counter.

  “No. But my date-night calendar for this weekend is empty. Care to disprove my observation? I’ll pencil you in.”

  “Busy.”

  “I was counting on you to be immune.”

  He wasn’t immune, but he opened his mouth to quantify a denial.

  Gina held up her hand, and the rebuttal stuck in his throat.

  “Yes. I have some results on the Charboneau scene.”

  He clamped his teeth together and smiled.

  “Men,” she grumbled as she snagged a file from her desk and returned to the counter. “I’ll have you know she has turned every one of them down for a date in the past six months. I have no idea why they keep banging their heads against that wall.”

  A measure of admiration circulated in his brain as he watched her open the file and spread out its contents.

  “There were no prints on the duct tape, but I did find some fibers, possibly from a pair of gloves, which would explain why we didn’t find any foreign prints on the tape, or anywhere in the house.”

  She slid the photo of Adelaide’s bound hands in his direction, exposing the one underneath. It showed the towel used to blindfold her, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the close-up of her lips that had made it into the top of the frame.

  Full and supple, slightly parted. Sexy as hell.

  The desire to connect them with his own, and part them even farther with his tongue, streaked through his mind before he could pull it back.

  “The footprints from the kitchen floor, and the one from under the studio window, do they match?” he asked, more than ready to refocus his thoughts on the crime scene, rather than the crime’s beautiful victim.

  Gina flipped the tantalizing photo over with a decisive slap. “No. We’re looking at two different sets of footprints. Two different subjects.”

  “There’s no way to tell if they were made on the same night?” Concern laced through him.

  “Not unless you’re some sort of human surveillance camera. It’s just the toe of a shoe, and the only reason I was able to cast it at all is because the overhang protected it from the downpour. Otherwise, it would have dissolved.”

  Royce straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. “So we’ve got nothing from forensics except the revelation that there are two subjects out there who are focused on Miss Charboneau. One a brutal assailant willing to kick her door down and take her, and the other a Peeping Tom?”