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“What about my father?”
“I’ve already taken care of it. Extra men are being assigned to protect him. Trust me—nobody is going to get within a hundred feet of the judge, okay?”
“Okay.” She retreated to the cruiser, but she looked shaken and pale. “Be careful, Jason.”
He crouched down on the pavement beside her open door and took her hands in his. “Whoever did this is long gone,” he assured her. “This was done as a scare tactic, nothing more. That means that we’re getting close to finding out who did this, and they know it. They’re getting desperate.”
“Which makes them more dangerous,” Caroline said urgently. “Just watch your back, okay?”
“Always.”
He left her under the protection of two deputy marshals while he returned to the house. Inside, the police were inspecting the damaged French doors.
“We’re not going to be able to do much tonight,” the lieutenant said. “We’ll have to wait until the electricity is restored, or at least until tomorrow, when we have some light. We’ll secure the house and leave a cruiser here overnight.”
Jason nodded. “Get a team in here in the morning to dust for fingerprints, and check the area around the house for footprints, especially where the electrical input was damaged.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jason made his way upstairs. In Caroline’s room, he gathered up her clothing from where the intruders had strewn it across the floor and bed and packed it quickly into her small suitcase. As he was leaving the bedroom, his shoes crunched over broken glass, and he bent down to inspect the floor.
He’d stepped on a picture frame. Turning it over, he saw it was a photo of Caroline and her father, taken one summer when she was just a teenager. He wanted to think that the broken picture was just collateral damage, and that the intruder hadn’t deliberately smashed this particular photo. But someone had used a fat black marker to draw an X over both of the judge’s and Caroline’s eyes, reminding Jason of the stupid cartoons he used to watch as a kid. You knew when a cartoon character was dead because his eyes were crossed out. The home invasion had been personal, and if Caroline had been alone in the house, she’d likely be dead right now.
The thought chilled him.
Swiftly, he returned to his bedroom and gathered up his own discarded clothing, stuffing items into his duffel bag with no regard for whether he wrinkled them or not. He just wanted to get Caroline the hell away from the house.
It wasn’t until he had her in his own car and they were speeding away from the beach house, with the flashing lights of the police cars receding in the distance, that he began to breathe easier. The car carrying Colton and Deputy Mitchell was somewhere behind them, and they’d agreed to rendezvous at a hotel about fifty miles south of San Francisco. Whoever had attacked Judge Banks had sent a clear message: they wanted Caroline, too. It took all Jason’s training and restraint not to slam the palm of his hand against the steering wheel. He was pissed off on a level so deep that he had to shut that part of himself down or risk losing focus on what was important—Caroline and her safety.
“Are you okay?” she asked softly.
He nodded, unable to even summon a false smile for her. “I’m good. I’ll be better once we’re at the hotel, and I’ll be perfect once we catch the goddamn bastard who’s doing this.”
“Did any of the neighbors see anything? I mean, it hasn’t been dark for all that long—whoever broke in had to have done it during the day. How does someone burglarize a home in the middle of the day without anyone noticing?”
By blending in.
For a moment, Jason thought he’d said the words aloud. He didn’t want to frighten Caroline, because she was already pretty freaked out, but he suspected that whoever had broken into the beach house had been dressed in a way that wouldn’t draw attention. A landscaper maybe. Or a cable guy.
He’d send one of his deputies back in the morning to gather information, but for tonight, he just wanted to hold Caroline in his arms and reassure himself that she was safe.
* * *
CAROLINE SET HER bag down on the small chair by the bed, and turned to Jason. She could barely see him in the darkness. He secured the locks on the hotel room door before moving over to the windows to pull the shades. Only then did he flip on the small light next to the bed.
Unlike the opulent suite they had stayed in during her first night, this room was a standard room with only the basic amenities. But it was clean and spacious, and the knowledge that she had deputy marshals in the rooms on either side and across the hall made her feel secure. But having Jason in the room with her was what truly made her feel safe.
