Page 94 of Paranoid

He’d thought the name was an alias and kicked himself for not taking a picture of the guy or asking more questions at the time.

He saw a light go on upstairs in the office overlooking the front yard. Her silhouette was visible beyond the shade, and for a second he felt like a voyeur, a teenaged boy trying to gain a peek of the girl next door taking a shower. He watched as the light snapped off, replaced by a blue glow—her computer. And he imagined her in an oversized T-shirt, her hair pulled into a messy bun that was falling loose after hours of restless sleep, a yawn parting her lips.

God, he missed all that.

He missed her.

He missed living with the kids—being a part of his family.

“Get over it.” He’d blown that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

He wondered if she’d gotten another text that had woken her.

Or had it been another one of her nightmares?

Or just her ongoing battle with insomnia?

He’d been such a fool.

“Too little too late.”

Staring at the house, watching and waiting, he remembered the good times . . . and the bad. When he’d married Rachel she’d been pregnant and scared, and he hadn’t realized how deeply scarred she was from the tragedy of the night her brother died. Yeah, it all came back to Luke’s death and that stupid, dangerous game the group of kids had been playing.

She’d always blamed herself.

Despite the fact that most of the people in that darkened cannery had testified that they didn’t think Rachel could have fired the gun. Violet Osbourne and Annessa Bell had both claimed they weren’t sure that Rachel was the killer.

He finished the coffee and saw the computer light dim in the house, but the street remained quiet. He thought of how it had all fallen apart. There had been fights, of course, especially about her ever-increasing paranoia. With motherhood came a whole new raft of fears. She’d overprotected the kids, he’d thought, and the kids had rebelled. Rachel probably hadn’t been able to stop herself and the nightmares had increased. She’d been freaked out that something would happen to a member of their family and hated the fact that he was a detective, as her father had been. She blamed her father’s job for his drinking and the dissolution of her parents’ marriage. She’d been certain the same fate would befall them, and because of that, her fears of divorce, she’d almost put the wheels into motion.

Yeah, Ryder, but you were the driver, weren’t you?

His partner at the Chinook County detective division had moved on and had been replaced by Kayleigh O’Meara and they’d spent many a night on stakeouts like this one, getting closer, enjoying the camaraderie and the hours alone. She’d broken up with a boyfriend—Travis Mcsomething or other—and Cade’s marriage was crumbling. He’d confided more than he should have on those long, dark nights, and he’d recognized that she was starting to fall for him. He should have put the brakes on, headed her off at the pass.

But he didn’t.

Once in his old sedan, Kayleigh had been bold enough to kiss him and he hadn’t stopped her. Her warm lips felt like heaven after weeks of being shut out from a wife who was falling apart. One kiss led to another, and soon they were fumbling at each other’s clothes before he came to his senses and stopped the madness. “I can’t,” he said, breathing hard, looking away from her. “And . . . and we need to pay attention here.” They were on a stakeout of a suspected drug dealer, in a sketchy area southeast of Astoria near the bay, a small, one-story house tucked among similar crumbling residences, some abandoned and boarded, trash littering the cracked road. There was a chance that this was a meth lab, a small operation but one that might lead to others, part of a larger system.

He straightened his clothes, and from the corner of his eye he saw her do the same, her lips pursed, as she swallowed hard. Embarrassed. As he was.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be.” She stared straight ahead through the bug-spattered windshield to the house with a single lamp glowing in a cracked window. “My mistake.”

“Kayleigh—”

“Don’t. Just don’t.” Her lips had barely moved, but in the weak streetlight he saw that her eyes were glistening, a tear starting to slide down her cheek.

“Oh, God, I . . . I don’t know what to say. I’m married.”

“Are you?” She swung her head around to stare at him. “Really? All you’ve done for the past month or so is talk about how miserable you are, how miserable she is, how you don’t know what to do.”

He couldn’t deny it. He’d crossed a line. But he wasn’t going to cross another.

“I thought your marriage was over; Jesus, Ryder, I usually don’t make this kind of mistake!”

“Neither do I.”

“Oh, shove it.” She sniffed loudly, but her eyes, almost luminous in the night, glared at him, her pain turning to a palpable fury. “I’m sick of this. Really sick of it. I’ll ask for a new partner in the morning.”