Page 49 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)

CHAPTER

FIVE

Dante stopped in front of her, so abruptly Jules almost crashed into him. Had he seen something? “What is it?” She came up to stand next to him as he pointed to a spot beneath her window.

Jules glanced down. Shoe prints. She’d been wrong, then. The face she had seen in her window wasn’t a nightmare. At least, it was, but the living kind, not the hallucinating kind. “He was here.”

Although she’d barely whispered the words, Dante nodded. “Looks like it.” He tugged a phone from his uniform pocket. “I’m calling in the team.”

Numbness started in Jules’ extremities and spread throughout her body.

Her home, her private life, her escape from the hard things she saw at work, had been violated in the most egregious way.

Dante wandered a few feet from her as he spoke to someone on the phone.

Gradually, the numbness in Jules’ body eased, driven out by a fire as scorching as any she had battled on the job.

If this guy wanted to shut her up, why hadn’t he tried to break in last night?

Was he toying with her? If so, what might he try next?

Dante shoved the phone into his pocket and returned to her. “You doing okay?”

Once again, Jules was caught off guard by how nice he was being. He’s still on the job, doing and saying what he’s been trained to. Don’t get sucked in. “Not really. I’m frustrated. Confused. Mad.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Have you ever had this happen before?”

Dante tilted his head from side to side.

“I mean, criminals do go after witnesses sometimes, but almost never at this stage or when they’re perfect strangers.

That’s typically more domestic violence situations or when gangs or the mafia are involved.

” He paused, running the toe of his running shoe through the grass before adding, “This kind of creeping around without actually trying to get to the witness? That’s new. For me, anyway.”

“You think he’s playing games with me.”

His dark-brown eyes locked with hers. “I’m concerned that he is.

The fact that he walked straight toward you in the alley without worrying about you seeing him already had me on edge.

That’s a sociopathic level of boldness. Now this?

Showing you his face and then disappearing?

That definitely sounds like he is playing some kind of long game with you, which is unusual. ”

“Lucky me,” Jules murmured, staring at the footprints. They were big, confirming her initial note that the murderer was a tall man.

Dante touched her arm with the back of his hand before pulling away. “Do you have someone you can stay with? Family, maybe?”

She frowned. “No. My dad’s gone, my mom is in a home, and I’m not putting my friends in danger. Besides, I refuse to let this guy drive me out of my own place.”

“It’s just for a few days. Until we can track him down.”

“What if you don’t? What if it takes weeks or months? What if you never find him? I will not put my life on hold for this. I didn’t do anything wrong, so why should I be the one who’s punished?”

“In a just and fair world, you wouldn’t be. But it’s not a just and fair world. Bad things happen. All we can do is take steps to keep ourselves as safe as possible. And you staying here by yourself is not safe.”

She crossed her arms but didn’t answer, only met his gaze steadily.

After a moment, Dante blew out a breath. “Fine. Then let me stay here with you. I’ll sleep on the couch. I’ll even make coffee in the morning. Or I’ll be gone before you get up. Or I’ll make the coffee and still be gone before you get up.”

Jules uncrossed her arms. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

She shoved her hair behind her ears with both hands. “Look, I admit you’ve been trained really well.”

He frowned. “Trained?”

“Yeah, this whole…” she waved a hand up and down in front of him, “…nice guy holding the witness’s hand until you can get what you want out of her thing. But you forget, I know the real you.”

His jaw tightened. “Is that so? And who is the real me?”

“That man-child in the pub last night. You being you, with nothing to gain or lose. And I wouldn’t trust Frat Boy alone in the house with me overnight, even with an escaped killer on the loose.”

For a moment he only stared at her, his jaw still clenched.

Then hurt drifted into his dark eyes. “You wouldn’t trust me?

” He drove his fingers through his hair, leaving it standing slightly on end.

“Look, I admit I was a jerk last night. But, Jules, I’m a cop.

What do you think I would do? Attack you in your sleep? ”

A twinge of remorse pricked her chest. She hadn’t meant to hurt him.

Still, she needed to stand her ground. “Probably not. Even so, I don’t want you hanging around.

It’s way above and beyond your call of duty, which means it would be a personal thing, on your own time.

Something a friend or a boyfriend would do.

And you are definitely neither of those. ”

Dante drew in a long, slow breath. “Got it.” The sound of cars pulling up to the front of the house and doors slamming cut off anything else he might have said. Instead, he spun around and stalked toward the corner. “I’m going to work. Take care of yourself, Jules.”

Well, she hadn’t intended to send him off like that. Jules pressed a palm to her churning stomach. “Dante.”

He lifted a hand in a gesture that might have been a wave or a dismissal, likely the latter, before disappearing around the side of the bungalow.

Jules pressed her eyes shut and huffed out a breath before following.

She came around to the front of the house in time to see him talking to a female colleague in the driveway and gesturing in her direction before heading to a dark-gray sports car parked at the curb.

Without a glance back at Jules, he slid behind the wheel and slammed the door. Hard.

Jules flinched. Before she could think what to do, the woman Dante had spoken to walked over to her. “Officer de Marco said you found footprints in the backyard that could be pertinent to our murder investigation?”

Jules repressed a sigh. “That’s right. I’ll show you.” She led the officer around to the back and showed her the prints beneath her bedroom window. “Do you want me to stay out here?”

“Will you be in the house if we need you?”

“Until about three-thirty this afternoon, when I need to go to work.”

“That’s fine, then.” The woman crouched to examine the prints more closely.

Jules started for the corner of the house. I should call Kelli and… Oh right. No phone. She couldn’t call anyone. She whirled around and returned to the investigator.

The woman, still in a crouch, looked up as Jules approached, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. “Can I help you with something?”

“I hope so. I was wondering if you happened to be one of the officers who investigated the crime scene last night.”

“I was, yes.”

“Did you or anyone on your team find my phone in the alley? I dropped it near the dumpster when I heard that woman scream.”

The officer straightened and brushed dirt off her knees. “I didn’t, no. I don’t remember anyone else finding a phone, either, but let me go check.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Jules followed her to the front of the house, hanging back when the woman spoke to two male colleagues who had been lifting gear out of a van. Her heart sank when both men shook their heads.

The woman walked back to Jules. “Sorry. None of us found a phone. You’re sure you dropped it at the scene?”

“Yes. Positive.”

The officer grimaced. “It’s possible that the suspect grabbed it before he disappeared. If that’s the case, you might want to look into securing any online accounts you don’t want him getting into.”

Great. Jules hadn’t even thought of that. “I will, thanks.”

“All right then. I’ll let you know if we need you for anything else.”

“I’ll be here.”

The woman nodded and started for the back, the two men, loaded with bags and equipment, at her heels.

Jules watched them until they had gone around the corner, unable to believe what her life had become in less than twenty-four hours.

All because, in a moment of insanity, she’d agreed to go on the worst blind date in the history of the world.