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And Robbie Guidry, the twenty-five-year-old man who lived across the street from her family, three doors down on the left, had listened, smiling like the rest of their neighbors as he carefully absorbed everything about her life.
So the drawing wasn’t innocent.
It was a reminder.
An instrument of terror plied to take her back to that sunny afternoon years ago—the day Addy learned what fear was, the day the darkness settled into her bones and refused to leave her.
Before she went home, she’d drop the drawing she’d received with Lt. Andre who had worked her original case. The man kept a file of the “gifts” sent to her over the years, even though no physical evidence could tie the missives to Robbie Guidry. The nutso stalker wasn’t stupid and never, never allowed what he sent to be traced back to him.
Picking up the bouquet of spring flowers, Addy scooped up her purse, her thumb firmly on the fob’s alarm, and turned out the lights. Her heartbeat sped up, but she was accustomed to that reaction. She inhaled, exhaled, and became hypervigilant to the world around her as she pushed out the back door that led to an open parking lot used by the employees of the shops and the bank across the street. Open and in sight of a half dozen businesses. Safe. The rational part of her brain overrode the irrational.
Addy walked toward where her blue Volkswagen Bug sat against the high curb, noting her car needed a wash. Maybe she could get the kids next door to wash it. Kids loved to wash cars, and she could pay Michael and Chris fifteen or twenty bucks to give it a bath.
Three steps from her car, she froze.
Tucked beneath the windshield of her car was a single brown-eyed Susan.
The shattering of the glass vase made Addy jump and stumble backward. She hadn’t realized she’d dropped the flower arrangement. Instinctively she pressed the alarm on her fob, and the chirping wails of the system bounced around the near empty parking lot.
Breathing hard, Addy rifled through her purse for her cell phone. The purse-sized canister of pepper spray was already in her hand.
The owner of the monogramming shop stuck her head out with a questioning look, but Addy ignored her and instead focused on the innocent flower sitting bright against the blue of her car—another reminder from a man who would never leave her alone, a sharp left hook of a message meant to do exactly what it had done—terrify her.
Addy sat down hard on the curb, clutching her cell phone, not bothering to stop the car alarm. The world tilted, and she concentrated on taking in deep breaths, rather than the short panicked ones sounding in her ears.
Breathe, Addy.
Think, Addy.
Robbie Guidry was still behind bars, and Addy sat in a safe area. No one was an immediate threat. She stood, head on swivel, and looked around the parking lot.
Who could have left the flower on her car? Who, either knowingly or unknowingly, could be aiding such a horrible man? She doubted she would get answers, but she would report it… not that it did much good. Without proof Robbie Guidry was behind the small gifts sent her way, she had little to stand on in prosecuting him for harassment. It had been almost six months since she received anything from him, and she’d hoped her lack of response had done its job.
But two things within twenty-four hours?
She shivered despite the sun pressing on her shoulders and turned off her alarm. The woman at the monogram shop closed her door, and Addy took her phone out and photographed the flower, sending it immediately to Andre’s email along with the date and time of the incident. She’d long since ceased bothering with calling the NOPD over the threats—the responding officers made her feel stupid for wasting their time.
Addy tore the flower from beneath the wiper and tossed it onto the pavement where it would wither and be crushed beneath the wheels of the vehicles going in and out of the parking lot.
If only she could toss away her fear the same way.
She looked down at the cellphone she still clutched in her hand and for some crazy reason, she wished she had Lucas Finlay’s phone number.
Lucas learned the hard way that taking three kids to Home Depot is living hell on earth. As soon as they waltzed in under the orange sign, Charlotte had to go to the bathroom. At first Lucas panicked. How was he supposed to take a little girl to a public restroom? Thankfully he spied something called a “family bathroom” and sent Chris in with her. Strangely, Michael disappeared before he could be nabbed.
After a full ten-minute wait while Charlotte did her business, Lucas met Chris’s demand—a sports drink as payment for wiping his sister in a place where “any of the hotties from my school could see.” The kid promptly drank three sips and wanted Lucas to carry it. Michael remained MIA while Lucas juggled trying to find the right wood screws and pushed Charlotte in some weird racecar cart. Charlotte insisted he make engine noises like her father. Lucas found the whole thing embarrassing, but if it kept her from climbing out and playing on the lawn furniture display then he’d gladly rumble like a NASCAR engine.
After an hour, he needed a drink… and it was only nine thirty a.m.
Not the ideal way to spend a Saturday morning, especially after Addy had canceled their Wednesday night dinner, sending over Aunt Flora’s gumbo without a word on why she couldn’t meet with him that night. Flora had taken Chris to karate on Thursday night, and outside of catching a glimpse of Addy wrapping her orchids in what he assumed to be wet newspaper, he hadn’t seen her at all.
So much for finding a haven in the chaos. He’d been in survival mode for the past four days, and now he only wanted to get the damn greenhouse repaired and focus on the spinning plates precariously balanced in an unfamiliar world.
“Where have you been?” Lucas asked hefting the lumber into the back of his truck as Michael finally appeared with earbuds in and a frown on face.
“I’ve been sitting on that bench.” Michael pointed toward the front of the store.
“With the smokers?”
