Keeping Watch. Jan Hambright

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. СКАЧАТЬ