Stalker in the Shadows. Camy Tang

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СКАЧАТЬ and Augustus Grant in the kitchen when Monica’s strangled shriek startled him. He raced out the front door.

       She had dropped her car keys as she recoiled backward from her car, her face white. He followed her gaze and saw the snake, seemingly tossed carelessly onto the roof of her car, with the head arranged to rest against the closed driver’s side window.

       He reacted swiftly, racing to her and grabbing her none too gently by the shoulders. He propelled her toward the front door, his arm around her as he hustled her inside. She stumbled over the threshold, but he tightened his hold on her so she wouldn’t fall.

       He shoved her to one side of the door and slammed it shut. He peered out through the long, narrow diamond pane windows on either side of the front door, but couldn’t see anything through the fuzzy glass. “I can’t see anything,” he muttered. “Do you have any other windows with a clear view of your car?”

       Edward and Rachel, both standing at the foot of the stairs, turned toward them with shocked expressions. “What’s going on?”

       Monica sagged against the wall, her breath coming in gasps. She pointed to her right through the open doorway. “Dining room windows. You think he’s out there now?”

       Shaun hurried into the dining room and moved aside the drapes. The large window gave a clear view of the entire front lawn of the house, including the orange tree grove on the other side of the neatly trimmed grass. No movement.

       “Your stalker is outside?” Rachel asked. She and Monica had moved warily into the dining room also, while Edward moved to the other side of the window and peered outside.

       “Creeps like stalkers enjoy watching. He wouldn’t have put that there and not stuck around to see your reaction.” Shaun turned from the window and his eyes caught hers. “Monica, that snake wasn’t there when we arrived a few minutes ago.”

       A violent shiver passed over her entire body. She swallowed, trying to get hold of herself.

       “What’s going on?” Augustus Grant’s voice called from the kitchen. There was another open doorway into the kitchen from the dining room, and Augustus had a clear view of where they stood on either side of the window.

       “Rachel.” Monica motioned to their father, and Rachel hurried to Augustus and Patrick, speaking in a low voice.

       Shaun looked outside again. Her stalker had been only a few feet away. He’d been close enough to be able to place the snake on the car in the short minutes between the time Shaun had entered the house and when she went outside to move the car.

       Shaun scanned the front lawn. There weren’t many places the stalker could hide. There was a small group of trees to one side of the property, but the rest of the front lawn had open, serene landscaping with artfully placed black rocks and a few low shrubs that wouldn’t hide more than a rabbit. On the far end of the lawn was a grove of orange trees. Had he been able to run from the orange grove to the driveway and back in only a few minutes, with no one seeing him from the house?

       Then it occurred to Shaun that maybe the stalker had been crouched behind Monica’s or Edward’s car when Shaun drove up with his father. The man might have been only a few feet away. Shaun might have even heard him breathing if he’d been paying attention.

       If he’d been that close when Shaun drove up, the man would have had time to plant the snake and then get to the orange grove in the few minutes before Monica exited the house to move the car.

       “Do you have binoculars?” he asked.

       Rachel ran to her father’s library and returned with a pair. Shaun searched the orange trees on the far side of the front lawn.

       The tiny figure of a man came into focus. Peering through binoculars directly at Shaun.

       The man bolted away.

       No. He wouldn’t let him get away.

       Shaun sprinted to the front door.

       “Shaun!” Monica shouted. “It’s too dangerous!”

       His hand was on the doorknob. She was right. He didn’t know if the stalker had a gun or not. He had to protect Monica, not run after the stalker.

       His hand dropped from the doorknob, but the frustration sizzled in his brain, making buzzing appear on the edges of his vision.

       The stalker had been watching them—had been watching Monica. This was the kind of man he hated—the ones who thought they had the right to play with others’ lives. The ones who acted like God. The frustration of dealing with men like this had made him quit the border patrol, had made him feel like a cop who couldn’t hack it.

       Well, he’d catch this man. And maybe it would heal what was broken inside him so he could do his job again.

       “Are you all right?” Rachel asked Monica.

       Monica looked up from where she sat at the kitchen table. Dad and Mr. O’Neill were in the library, finally having their discussion about the spa’s expansion into a hotel, and Shaun was outside talking to Detective Carter about what he’d seen through the binoculars. Edward had left because of an emergency at the greenhouses, but Rachel had stayed with her sister.

       “I think so.” Her gaze fell on the pot of tamales, forgotten on the table. “Be sure to tell Julio’s mother thanks.”

       “I will. Julio’s doing great.”

       “He should have gone to the E.R., Rach. He’s lucky that gash to his leg hadn’t been worse.”

       “I know, but it was his father’s call. And at least you looked at him rather than no one at all.”

       What kind of world was it when a man couldn’t take his son to the hospital because he couldn’t afford it? The frustration welled up in her, buzzing in her ears. “It’s not right.”

       Rachel looked at her in confusion. “What?”

       “This area needs adequate medical facilities especially for the migrant workers and the farmhands. If my free children’s clinic had been up and running, Julio’s father could have taken him there and not had to pay anything.” How could she abandon her plans for the clinic?

       Monica wasn’t the headstrong, gutsy one—that was her sister Naomi. But she also wasn’t the logical, gentle sister like Rachel. She was the emotional one, the one who always thought with her heart and relied on her instincts. Were her emotions only getting her in trouble now?

       And it wasn’t just her desire to help children like Julio that drove her. She knew that, deep in her heart of hearts, she wanted this clinic because it would make her feel like she had accomplished something, that she was more than just an E.R. nurse. She wanted to help more people. Dad’s insistence that she become a resident nurse at the spa would be her agreeing to fade away to insignificance, and she couldn’t willingly do that when she had a chance to really make a difference in someone’s life. In lots of children’s lives.

       “I don’t like hiding,” Monica told her sister. “I don’t like waiting around and giving this man permission to keep leaving dead snakes everywhere I turn. I don’t like putting my life on hold while I wait for someone to capture him. Even though I know it’s dangerous, I’d rather СКАЧАТЬ