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But where the hell was he?
She walked from one room to the next, searching for the one room with color, but it wasn’t where it had been the last time. Damn it, why wouldn’t the rooms stay in one place? She grew more and more frustrated as she got more and more turned around. She was completely lost now. Hallways twisted and turned, grew longer as she tried to reach the end. She was so frustrated she felt like kicking a wall. He was here—somewhere. She felt him on a cellular level, down deep where instincts ruled alone and logic went out the window. But if she didn’t find him soon, it would be too late; he’d go away, find something else to do. He was always going away.
And then she smelled him. He had a faint, masculine odor that was his and his alone. His skin, his clothes, the soap he used … it all added up to X. Perhaps no one else would note the scent, it was so light, but she did. She’d inhaled his scent on more than one occasion, had closed her eyes and breathed deep and been soothed and excited and inflamed by the way he smelled.
She followed her nose and her instincts. She quit thinking and just walked forward, drawn onward. And finally there it was, the room she’d been searching for. She knew it was the right room before she even opened the door, but she watched her hand turn the knob and push the door open, watched all that vivid color bloom at the threshold. And there he was, waiting for her, always waiting. All this time, if only she’d known where to look.
“Lizzy.” That was all he said, one word, her name, but it was enough.
Xavier knew the details of this house he’d never been in before tonight almost as well as he knew his own. Even though it was an older home, it had been renovated at some time, opening up the interior to a more modern floor plan. The living room and dining area were open to each other, one to the left of the front door and the other to the right; the kitchen was separated from the dining area by a half-wall.
Moving into the living room, he looked around; again, the room wasn’t completely dark. Light seeped in past the edges of the heavy curtains over the windows, plus there were the electronic lights: a small blue one on the cordless phone charger, a bright amber light from the cable box, a red dot on the DVD player. The soft, multicolored glow allowed him to see all the furniture in the living room, and a sweeping glance told him what he was looking for wasn’t there. Damn it, he hoped she hadn’t carried everything into her bedroom, because that could get dicey. He stood in one spot and did a slow three-sixty, carefully examining every chair, the floor, every flat surface—
Aha. There they were, on the round table in the dining area—the shopping bags from this afternoon’s jaunt into Virginia.
This very-early-morning visit—he wouldn’t call it breaking and entering since he did, after all, have a key—wasn’t the safest course of action, but he had to know. Where had she gone, and why? What would take her into Virginia when everything she might possibly need could be found within ten miles of her house? She had been put in this location for that very reason, to make her world small. Routine was their friend. Routine kept Lizzy alive. Her days were usually predictable down to the minute, allowing for traff
ic variables.
But not today—rather, yesterday afternoon, when she’d left work. She’d gone in the opposite direction. She’d driven too fast. She’d gone way the hell into Virginia, then turned around and come back, and on the return trip she’d gotten off at an exit that she’d burned past on the first half of her trip. She hadn’t gone just one exit down, as if she’d missed that one; she’d gone several exits down. It was as if she’d been trying to shake a tail.
Except Lizette wouldn’t have known how to even spot a tail, much less how to shake it. Lizzy, however, would.
Lizette was a neat freak. Lizette would have unpacked the bags and put everything away. These out-of-character things were little, but they told him a lot.
There wasn’t enough light for him to see the bags as well as he needed to, and he didn’t dare move them. The rustle of plastic might be enough to wake her, especially if she was recovering some memory and was more wary. Not only that, she might have memorized the exact position of these bags and their contents. He did things like that, automatically, so he’d know if anyone had been in his space.
He pulled a small penlight from his pocket. He’d placed black electrician’s tape over the end so only a thin sliver of light shone through. He glanced at the window behind him, the window that faced the street. She had blinds in here, bracketed on each side by curtains. The blinds were closed, but even the faintest light would seep through the slats, noticeable even in the rain. Shit.
He had to take the chance. He moved so his body was between the window and the shopping bags, bent close, and turned the little light on directly over the bags. Just for a split second, long enough only to identify the store name on the bags; then he switched off the light and stood there with his heartbeat galloping in his chest. He, who was legendary for his cool under fire, was about to break a sweat as the meaning hit him square between the eyes.
Shit, shit, and double shit. A sporting goods store might seem innocent enough, but they were great places to stock up on certain equipment, whether you were into sports or not.
Two bags and a shoe box lay empty on the table. What the hell else had she bought?
One of the unopened bags had the receipt stapled to it.
He wouldn’t have to open the bags if he could get a good look at that receipt. The bags held some bulky stuff, and he wanted to know exactly what it was. But to read the receipt, he’d have to turn on the light for at least ten, fifteen seconds. That was just begging to get caught.
His options were to pick up the bags and take them into the kitchen, away from the window, which would make some noise no matter how careful he was; or to tear the receipt off the bag and take it into the kitchen where he could read it, alerting Lizzy for certain that someone had been there. His last option was to take the chance of turning on the penlight and reading the receipt right there.
Option C. If he had to make the guy outside disappear, so be it.
He didn’t want to kill the guy, though; the poor sap was just doing a job, and taking a decent stab at it by staying awake. Couldn’t fault that.
The kitchen towel.
He remembered it, a red-and-white check, hanging on a ring beside the sink. It wasn’t folded any particular way, it was simply hanging there. Going into the kitchen, Xavier studied the towel for a moment and concluded that the only thing she had done out of the ordinary was make certain the towel hung exactly the same length on both sides. And that wasn’t even Lizette; he’d seen Lizzy do the same thing, way back when.
He pulled the towel from the ring and went back to the dining area. Draping the towel over the penlight so virtually none of the thin beam of light would be visible from outside, he thumbed the button and in the dim light read the list of her purchases:
A backpack. A knife. A rope. Three canisters of pepper spray. And she’d paid cash for them, so the purchases wouldn’t show up on her credit card.
He turned off the penlight and closed his eyes, standing there for a moment as adrenaline flooded through him. No doubt about it now, not that he’d doubted his instincts anyway. But this was proof. She was back, or on the way back.
Lizzy was either getting ready to run or she was getting ready to fight. Would she recall everything, or just bits and pieces? How much did she remember now? Not much. If she’d remembered specifics, she wouldn’t be asleep in her own bed right now; she’d be gone, her backpack filled with these purchases and who knows what else. Would she have filled out the paperwork to begin the process of buying a weapon? No, not in a place like that. If she was looking for a weapon, she’d go deeper into Virginia for an off-the-books weapon, either find a county flea market or make a black-market buy on a street corner. If she started making unusual trips on a regular basis, they were in trouble.
No, she was in trouble.
