Page 10 of Glimmer in the Darkness

“I’m probably being paranoid. I thought…” She flicked a gaze at the mountain.

“Thought what?”

She swallowed. “I thought somebody was following me. It creeped me out.”

“It’s a hiking trail,” he said. “Lots of hikers in the summer.”

“I know that.” Did he catch defensiveness in her tone? “This felt different. It felt…”

Was anybody there? The trail was a quarter mile up the mountain from the house. Nobody should be there.

“Explain what you saw.”

She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” After a long breath, she said, “I’m here now. I’m going to have to trust that God knows what He’s doing.”

God? Did she mean that, or was she playing him? Back in high school, he’d told her about his faith, taken her to church. But after Hallie’s death, then his parents’, God felt about as close as Antarctica, and just as cozy.

“If you need to turn me in,” she said, “I understand. I’ll tell the cops everything I know. Not that they’ll listen to me this time.”

“They’d have listened to you last time if you hadn’t taken off.”

She took the baseball cap from her head, yanked out a ponytail holder, and ran her hand through her hair. Not black as it had been in school. Light brown. After she returned the cap, she sighed. “I panicked. I shouldn’t have…”

He was about to demand she finish her sentence when movement caught his eyes. A flash of red in the woods, there and gone too fast to define.

Branches rustled.

Somebody was there.

The kidnapper? A cop on her trail?

He grabbed her arm. “Come on.”

“What?” She whipped her head around to look at the mountain, but he pulled her toward his house.

“What are you doing?” She tried to yank away.

But she was tiny, and he maneuvered her easily. At the foot of his porch steps, he said, “Go inside, lock the doors, and don’t open them for anybody but me.”

Before she could argue, he bolted across his yard.

He reached the edge of the forest and stepped in. There was no trail here, and he hadn’t trimmed back or yanked out any of the underbrush on purpose, a good way to keep strangers from wandering onto his land. He fought his way through and made it to the place where he thought he’d seen the flash of color. Nobody there, of course, but bent twigs told him somebody had been. Cassidy could have done that. Was paranoia contagious?

Or had somebody recognized her? Was that somebody calling the cops right now to report a Cassidy Leblanc sighting?

If so, would the cops show up to take her into custody?

He turned back toward his property, wondering if Cassidy was still there or if she’d run off again, returning to wherever she’d come from even now. That would make his decision for him. He’d call Vince, report that Cassidy was in town, and be done with it.

That feeling in the pit of his stomach, grief and fury, would fade to a gentle ache. It always did.

The real problem was that the emotions he’d experienced when he’d first seen Cassidy hadn’t been grief. And the thought of her disappearing again didn’t bring fury. He’d missed her. Everyone else thought she was a murderer, but what James had felt for her in high school lingered.

He took the key he kept hidden beneath the potted plant on his patio and unlocked the door. She was probably gone, but no matter how many times he’d tried to plug it up, hope was a bubbling brook that wouldn’t be contained.

He closed the door behind him. The house felt unnaturally quiet.

He glanced in the living room. Empty, of course.