Stalked In Conard County. Rachel Lee

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      Those vehement words told Roger he’d tripped into a minefield, one he wasn’t equipped to handle. Damn, he was just a guy who made saddles. He knew horses better than he knew people. Well, with the possible exception of their riders.

      But the very honest anguish Haley had just displayed left him feeling helpless and as if he needed hip waders so he wouldn’t get in dangerously deep. The last thing he wanted was to make some stupid comment that would exacerbate whatever Haley was experiencing.

      “Sorry,” she said quietly. Her gaze was now focused on the coffee mug she held in two hands before her.

      “No need.” Really there wasn’t. His brain was on a rapid search down the halls of memory, trying to pull out some sliver that could give him a clue to this moment. Peering down those hallways, however, told him how little he truly knew about Haley, how little time they’d really spent together. Flora provided more recollections.

      But then, somewhere in his mental search, he ran up hard against a nearly forgotten memory. Of course it was nearly forgotten. He’d been what? Twelve or so? At that point he wasn’t sure he’d ever met Haley at all, but he’d heard her mentioned. And he suddenly remembered, although it hadn’t seemed important at the time, not to a kid, something about her having been kidnapped and returned unharmed. In fact, by the time any adult had mentioned it around him, she was safely at home.

      And his young mind had dismissed the event as unimportant.

      After Haley’s reaction just now, he realized the memory was not in her distant past and that at this moment it was very much present.

      Calling the police would make it more real? Uh, yeah. God, she’d probably spent much of the night wrestling with recollections that should have been buried beneath a tombstone nearly a quarter century ago.

      All of a sudden, the Peeping Tom no longer seemed like a minor nuisance that needed to be looked into. Suddenly he seemed like a major threat to Haley’s peace of mind. Problem was, Roger didn’t know what to do about it. Nor, likely, would the police.

      Conard City—in fact, the whole county—was by and large a peaceful place. Oh, yeah, they had their share of loonies and wackos, but overall it was still a place where people felt safe, let their children play outside and all the Norman Rockwell rest of it.

      Of course, some of that was illusion. Everyone knew it but clung to it anyway. So far, he didn’t think many had paid a high price for believing everything was okay around here. People might be irritated by the idea of a Peeping Tom, but they’d be equally certain they’d figure out who it was and, between a misdemeanor charge and public disapproval, he’d get back in line or leave town.

      But if the guy peeked in on kids…well, local ire might be explosive. It was something he’d seen early in life. The village would put up with the idiot because he was one of them. If the village idiot went beyond the pale, however, tolerance would evaporate.

      He was just putting together careful words to ask Haley if her reaction had to do with her kidnapping when a heavy knock sounded on the front door. Police, he thought with mild amusement, were never timid about pounding for attention.

      “That must be Kelly,” he said, rising. “Should I ask her in or just show her where the footprints are?”

      She tilted her head a little and smiled. “I’m not a hermit. I’d like to meet her. I just hope she doesn’t think I’m overreacting.”

      “There isn’t a soul around here who’d think anyone was overreacting to having someone peer into their bedroom window in the middle of the night. You can relax about that.”

      The front door wasn’t far away. A small foyer divided the ground floor of the house, a foyer he’d helped to refinish a few years back when Flora had remarked the wood wainscoting was looking rough. Dryness had begun to crack it, so he applied sandpaper and oil and made it look as good as new. His reward had been Flora’s delight. All he’d ever wanted, although she’d often drowned his bachelor self with all kinds of tasty casseroles because, according to her, cooking for one was a pain.

      It was a nice excuse.

      He opened the door and found Kelly Noveno there with Bugle, a Belgian Malinois. Bugle sat politely beside her, looking attentive. Kelly herself was a pleasant eyeful with dark hair and snapping dark eyes, but she was already claimed by Al Carstairs, the animal control officer. A guy could still look.

      Haley herself was a lovely woman. As a rule, he didn’t find blondes appealing, but Haley was different. And those blue eyes of hers looked like deep, still waters, even now. Under less stressful circumstances, she might have lit his fire.

      “Come on in, Kelly. Haley’s at the kitchen table and I don’t think she got much sleep.”

      “I heard that,” Haley called from the kitchen. “Caffeine helps. Want some, Deputy?”

      “Kelly, please. And I’d love some.” Once in the kitchen, she put Bugle at ease and invited Haley to pet him. СКАЧАТЬ