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A chill swept over her. If she could see through the curtain, anyone out there could see her.
Forcing a note of positivity to her voice she didn’t possess, she turned to Chet who made her couch look as if it belonged in a child’s playhouse. “At least Beau got all the ropes down, even if they still marked the area as a crime scene.” Not like it mattered. She’d never erase the image of the long ropes hanging from the branches in the silent, gray sky from her mind.
Chet rested his head on the back of the couch, his face lifted toward the ceiling. “Sure.”
His one-word responses might have driven her crazy before, but now she understood Chet a little bit more. Heck, she couldn’t even blame him for his surly demeanor. She wouldn’t want to welcome each day, filling it with pointless chatter, after what he’d been through.
Wanting to comfort him, but not knowing what to say, she settled beside him on the couch. Otto laid at her feet, refusing to leave her side. She hooked up her knee, using her dangling foot to rub over Otto’s back. Her mind spun. As much as she wanted to help Chet right now, she was freaking out. Her already messy life had taken a nosedive right into shitsville.
“Say it,” Chet said, swiveling his head to face her.
She frowned. “Say what?”
“I can see your wheels spinning.”
“You can?”
“I’ve spent enough time with you to know when something’s on your mind. That little line on the bridge of your nose creases.”
She lifted her finger and touched the spot between her brows. “It does?”
He widened his eyes, answering her in his favorite way—with no words.
She drew in a deep breath. She didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but he’d asked so she might as well unleash the flurry of activity brewing inside her. “Why would this guy slash my tires and tie ropes on the tree in our yard?” She’d asked Cruz the same question after she’d given her statement, but his answer rang more like a run-of-the-mill response used to placate her. Not a real answer. At least not one that made sense.
“I don’t know. It feels like he’s messing with me. Like I got away from him and he wants to make me pay for living.”
As much as she hated the idea of some sadistic criminal playing mind games with Chet, she understood Chet’s train of thought. “But why me? Do you think he saw me in the woods? Maybe he thinks I saw him, or something that could point to him. But if that was the case, I would have already told the police. Playing with my mind now wouldn’t benefit him.”
“How does any of this benefit him? What does he gain from killing women and branding their skin?”
“I guess I never thought of it like that. I’ve never really looked at things through the eyes of a killer.” Goosebumps tingled the skin of her forearm, and she grabbed the blanket that had been tossed on the floor from her earlier nap. She wished she could hide under the warm, fleece throw and forget this day had ever happened.
“It’s not a fun place to go.” Chet wiped a palm over his face then let his hand drop to his side. “But the more we can make sense of him, the easier it will be to catch him.”
“I bet you were a good cop,” she said. It was funny how she’d seen him as a pain in the butt coworker since she met him. A giant of a man who liked to cook and bake and bark out orders. She’d been told he was an officer at one point, but she’d never been able to imagine him in a police uniform, patrolling the streets or helping others in need.
But that had changed. She could see not only the slivers of vulnerability that would help a policeman empathize with others but also the way his brain worked. The way he attacked a problem head on, searching for answers and looking at the situation from different angles.
Wanting to know more and sensing they both needed a distraction, she pressed. “Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where did you learn to cook?” She’d been impressed by his skills in the kitchen, although she’d never told him so. He’d put up a huge, concrete wall between them the moment she stepped foot at the retreat. Breaking through was impossible before, and she’d quickly given up trying.
He shrugged. “Just picked it up.”
She fought the urge to roll her eyes, even though a tickle of amusement leaked through the irritation of his refusal to give her a straight answer. “While working at the station? From your wife?”
He winced, a flash of pain deepening the brown of his eyes. “My mom worked nights. Dad wasn’t around. My cousin lived with us. If we wanted to eat, I had to cook.”
“I get that,” she said, thinking back to her own childhood and nights spent alone while her mama picked up extra shifts at the diner. “But I just had to feed myself. No siblings. No cousins. Just me and my mama. Are you and your cousin still close?”
Another flash of pain contorted his features. “She died. About a year ago.”
His admission smacked against her chest, and she fell further back into the couch. So much loss had to be hard to bear. “I’m sorry. Losing her after already losing your wife and daughter had to be difficult.”
Shifting on the couch, he met her gaze with a long, heated stare. Indecision bounced in his pupils, as if he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to confide.
