Page 48 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)

CHAPTER

FOUR

Dante stood over the sink, munching on the piece of toast smeared with jam that he’d made himself for breakfast. After snatching a couple of hours of sleep once he’d returned home from meeting with Jules at the station, he was headed back into work for his shift.

Hopefully the sugar hit—washed down with a cup of high-octane coffee—would carry him through the day.

He swiped his hands together over the sink, and then reached for his personal phone, which he’d left on the counter to avoid being disturbed.

Three emails in his inbox—two from his eldest sisters half apologizing for interfering and setting him up with someone so clearly wrong for him and half accusing him of being too closed-minded for his own good.

Dante rolled his eyes before checking the third email.

He straightened abruptly. Jules? Had she remembered something about the perpetrator?

He grabbed his cup of coffee as he hit the screen with his thumb.

After taking a mouthful, he scanned her words and nearly spit his coffee into the sink.

The guy she’d witnessed callously strangling the life out of a woman had shown up at her house? When? Had he tried to get inside?

Dante checked the time she’d sent the message.

5:10. Almost two hours ago. Was she okay?

He’d give anything to be able to call her, but he only had her email address.

He dumped the rest of his coffee into the sink, dropped the mug in after it with a clatter, and then strode toward the door.

In thirty seconds, he had slid behind the wheel of his car, entered her address into the GPS, and squealed out of the driveway.

Thankfully, she only lived fifteen minutes from him. Dante made it there in twelve, slamming on the brakes as he pulled to the curb. All appeared quiet in the neighborhood. Too quiet?

His stomach in tight knots, he jumped out of the car and jogged to the front door of a little bungalow with white siding and blue shutters.

If everything was fine and Jules was finally getting a little sleep, it was too bad to wake her.

Dante didn’t care. He had to make sure she was all right.

Maybe the perpetrator was even still here.

That slowed his mad dash to get to her, and he stilled, his knuckles an inch from her light-blue door.

If there was any chance this was a hostage situation, he couldn’t go barreling in without a little reconnaissance.

Stepping closer to the door, he rose onto the toes of his sneakers to peer through the stained-glass window at the top.

The room on the other side was slightly distorted and bathed in color, but he could make out Jules curled up on her side on a couch, wrapped in a white blanket.

No crimson splatters or anything to suggest she might have been attacked.

Not that there would be, if the killer had gotten in and strangled her like he had the other woman.

That thought chilled the blood in his veins.

He needed to talk to her. Dante lowered his heels to the wooden porch before rapping on the door.

Then he raised himself up again to look through the window.

Jules was sitting up, clutching something in her right hand.

Was that a knife? If the situation wasn’t so dire, he might have grinned.

Doubtless their perp would have found it harder than he’d anticipated, going after her.

Something told Dante that Jules Adler would never go down without a fight.

He lifted his hand in greeting, although he had no idea if she could make out his features through the stained glass. If all she could tell was that a man stood outside her door, him raising a hand could be taken as a threatening gesture. Dante lowered it to his side.

Jules unwrapped the blanket from around her the way she had in the interrogation room. Then she shoved the knife under the couch cushion before pushing to her feet and crossing the room to the door.

When she pulled it open, she was tucking her hair behind one ear. The short, flippy style suited her. So did the color, a brown-gold he couldn’t quite put a name to. None of which was relevant to the case. He nodded curtly. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Jules stepped back. “Come in.”

Dante brushed by her, and she closed the door as he turned to face her. “I got your message. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Actually, I feel kind of foolish, dragging you over here.”

“Don’t. I want to know everything that happened.”

She sighed. “I need coffee before I get into it. Do you want a cup?”

Mama Mona would ground him for sure if he was late for work again, but there was no way Dante was turning down that offer. “Sure.” He slid off his jacket and tossed it onto an armchair near the door as Jules headed for the kitchen area.

Wandering over, he settled on a stool at the island, watching as she measured grounds into the filter and added water to the reservoir. Once she’d flipped the switch on the machine, Dante clasped his hands on the counter. “Want to tell me about it?”

Jules glanced down at herself. “Do you mind if I get dressed first?”

He grinned. “Actually, I like the shirt. No Coffee, No Talkee is my motto in life as well. But sure, go ahead if you’ll be more comfortable.”

She nodded before disappearing into a hallway that had to lead to the bedrooms and bathroom.

Dante tugged the work phone from his uniform shirt pocket and sent a quick message to his superintendent to let her know that he was talking to a witness in the murder investigation.

No need to add that he was at said witness’s home having coffee—she would not be impressed.

Even so, he’d bought himself a little time.

He tugged out his personal phone and scanned the messages.

A text from his third sister—his Irish twin, since she’d been born in January and his birthday was December that same year—who was still floating in the bliss of her first year of marriage to Dante’s brother-in-law.

Unfortunately for Dante, that meant she was trying the hardest of the three of them to get him matched up.

Her message was definitely more on the chastising than apologetic side. He grinned as he pocketed the phone.

As much as they might drive him crazy, he adored his sisters and knew they loved him and were only looking out for him.

After all he’d been through—which they understood more than anyone since they’d walked with him every step of the way, and he doubted he would have made it without them—all they wanted was for him to be happy.

Something he had to remind himself over and over when they stuck their little noses into his business.

Speaking of business… Dante looked up as Jules padded into the kitchen in her bare feet.

She had changed into jeans and a black T-shirt with a backdrop of flames and the words Fire Fighting is Hot scrawled across it.

Well. Although he absolutely should not think of her that way, he couldn’t disagree with the sentiment.

Jules looked a little more awake than when she’d left the room. Given the damp strands of hair, she’d splashed cold water on her face. He waited as she went straight to the coffee machine and poured them both a cup.

“Cream? Sugar?” She held the pot up in his direction.

“A little milk or cream.”

Jules nodded as she slid the pot onto the burner and strode to the fridge. After dumping a splash of cream into both their cups, she carried them to the island, slid one closer to Dante, and then settled on the stool across from him.

He pulled his cup to him. “So, can you tell me?—”

She held up a finger and he closed his mouth, giving her a minute to take a few sips before she set the mug down. “Okay, shoot.” She grimaced. “I mean, go ahead and ask.”

“Can you tell me exactly what you saw last night? Why do you think this guy was on your property?”

“Actually, I don’t.”

His fingers tightened around the mug. “In your email you said he’d come to your place.” Heat drifted through his chest. Had this all been some ploy to drag him over here? Payback for last night, maybe? Not that he wouldn’t deserve it, but still…

“I know. I’m sorry. That’s the part I’m feeling foolish about. At first, I did think he was here.”

“Why?”

“Because I saw him.”

Dante shifted a bit on the stool. “Jules…”

She held up a hand. “I’m aware I sound crazy. But I woke up in the night and clearly saw his face in my window. It disappeared right away, though, and once I calmed down, I realized what I’d seen was likely a hypnopomic hallucination.”

That didn’t help. She was seeing hallucinations? The woman was becoming less and less reliable as a witness.

“Before you say anything, look it up. It’s a thing.”

He studied her a moment before reaching for the personal phone in his other shirt pocket. “Say it again.”

“Hypnopomic hallucination.”

Dante typed that into the search engine. The description that came up—images that weren’t hallucinations, exactly, but the remnants of a dream—eased his mind. “Does this have anything to do with the aphantasia?”

“I think so. I mean, I believe anyone can experience these hallucinations, but those aphants who, like me, can actually visualize in our dreams—even though we can’t when we’re awake—typically have vivid ones.

I’m unable to picture them after they disappear, but I do know I’ve experienced those hallucinations occasionally.

It makes sense that, after what I witnessed, I could have had a nightmare intense enough to cause one, right? ”

Dante set his phone on the counter. “It does make sense, yes. Do you truly believe that was what happened?”

“I do. So, I’m sorry you had to come all the way over here for nothing.” Jules took a sip of coffee. “Actually, not completely nothing. In the few seconds before the image disappeared, I did note that the man had a longish face with a pointy chin.”

“Okay. That’s good.” A very faint, shimmering picture started to form in Dante’s mind.

He lasered in on it, trying to bring it into sharper focus.

That ability was one he had always taken for granted.

What would it be like to never be able to visualize an image in your mind?

“Do you see anything at all when you close your eyes?”

Holding the mug in front of her chest, Jules tapped a pink-painted fingernail on the rim. “Just black and gray, mostly. Sometimes I’ll see a bit of drifting color. Purple, for some reason. Maybe because it’s my favorite. Or maybe that’s why it’s my favorite.”

Huh. Dante lifted his mug—beige with dark brown triangles on it—to his mouth and took a drink. The coffee was rich and nutty, and he inhaled the aroma as he took another sip. “You know, while I’m sure you’re right about what you saw, as long as I’m here it wouldn’t hurt to take a look around.”

“Sure.” Jules lifted her mug and pointed to it. “Can I just…?”

“Of course.” Dante enjoyed his last few drops before carrying his mug to the dishwasher. After setting it on the top rack, he turned to her.

Jules had slid around on the stool to face him. She tipped up her mug to drain the last few drops before handing it to him. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” He set the mug next to his and closed the door. “Is there any chance that, if the guy was actually here, he could have been inside the house at any point?”

She shook her head. “I doubt it. I came out here right after and didn’t really fall back asleep, so I would have heard something.”

“All right then.” Dante started for the door. “I’ll take a quick look around outside.”

“I’ll come with you.” Jules followed him to the exit, tugged on a pair of white sneakers, and grabbed the jacket hanging on a hook in the entryway.

She trailed after him as he wandered along the front of the house, looking for footprints or any other sign of human life.

Nothing that he could detect. When he reached the corner, he rounded it and continued along the side of the house.

The first window he passed would be the living room and the second was the small one above the kitchen sink.

As far as he could tell, no one had walked along here in the last twenty-four hours.

If Jules seriously thought the guy had shown up here, he would have called in the CSI team, but since she didn’t, what he was observing appeared to corroborate her thesis that she had only been hovering between asleep and awake when she saw the face.

At the back corner, Dante turned again. Two big windows faced the backyard. Two bedrooms, maybe? Or a bedroom and bathroom? He stopped and glanced over his shoulder at Jules. “Which window is your bedroom?”

“The far one. The first one is the bathroom.”

He nodded and started walking again, his gaze sweeping the grass, the foot or so of dirt along the wall, the bush—its leaves turning a flaming red in the frosty, early-autumn nights. Again, no sign of human activity.

Once past the bush, he approached the second window. And stopped abruptly.

In the dirt directly beneath the glass, he could clearly make out two large shoe prints, toes touching the base of the wall.

Looked like he’d be calling in the crime scene investigators after all.