Page 56 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

After speaking to the nursing staff and, once again, calling in the crime scene team, Dante drove Jules home.

The nurses had seen nothing. As far as they knew, no one had come or gone from her mother’s room since they had helped her to bed the night before.

How did the guy do it—come and go while leaving as little trace of his presence as he had left an imprint on her mind?

Jules stared out the side window—at the streaks of pink and gray lining the horizon to the east, at people jogging or biking or walking their dogs in the early morning coolness.

Ordinary people living their ordinary lives with no dark shadows rising all around them the way the killer’s shadow had loomed before Jules in the alley.

Would she ever be able to return to a life like that?

The ramifications of her mother wearing the locket Jules had left on the dresser in her bedroom were too horrific to contemplate.

It meant that he had been there, in her mother’s room.

If he himself had put Jules’ locket around her mother’s neck, his hands—hands that had wrapped around another woman’s neck only days before—had touched her skin.

Shudders rippled through her. And he’d been in Jules’ room.

When? The night she had seen his face in the window?

Had he entered the house before that? Crept into her room and watched her as she slept? Touched her too?

Her stomach roiled, and she pulled her feet up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees, drawing in one deep breath after another to keep the nausea at bay.

Dante touched the side of her leg with the back of his hand. “Are you all right?”

Jules propped her elbows on her knees and lowered her forehead to her palms. “No. Not even close.”

He gave her a minute before lightly tucking a strand of hair behind one ear, his fingers brushing across her skin. “It’s going to be okay, Jules.”

Ignoring the hot tingles of, well, electricity dancing across her flesh, she lifted her head. “Is it?”

He sighed. “I have to believe that, yes. He took too many chances this time. Something has to turn up at the hospital that will help us nail him. Video footage, maybe.”

“Meaning that we would then have the image of his face I should have been able to provide you with days ago.”

Dante took his eyes from the road to look at her. “Jules. Would you blame a deaf person for not being able to hear a noise or a blind person for not seeing something?”

She studied her clasped hands as she mumbled, “I guess not.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. You not being able to call that guy’s face to your mind is the same thing.”

When she didn’t answer, he reached over and squeezed her forearm. “We’re going to get him. I won’t give up until we do.”

The adamance in his voice helped. Jules sloughed off the self-pity and the numbness as she lowered her feet to the floor. “Neither will I.”

“Good.” Dante returned his hand to the wheel. “Have you given any more thought to where you will stay until then?”

Clever man. He hadn’t asked her if she was willing to move out, only where she would go when she did.

No way she was letting him get away with that.

“ If I move out, I’ll likely go to a hotel.

Obviously, I can’t go near anyone I care about.

” She checked her watch. “For now, all I have time to do is pack a bag and head to work. I’ll figure out the rest later. ”

Dante steered the car up her driveway and shifted into park. “You know if you spend the night at your house again, I’ll find out from your neighbor.”

His lips twitched, and a little more of the darkness swirling around her lifted. “I’ve spent years cultivating their loyalty. They won’t turn on me now.”

“We’ll see.” He grinned at her. “I do owe you a coffee, though, since I never got the chance to make it for you this morning.”

She reached for the door handle. “When all this is over, I’ll take you up on that.”

“Deal.”

Jules pushed open the door. Before she could climb out, Dante grasped her arm again. “Jules.”

She turned back. “Yeah?”

“Be careful. Please.”

“I will.”

He squeezed her arm before letting her go.

Dante didn’t reverse down the driveway, only sat there, engine idling, as she walked to the front entrance. Although she felt his gaze on her, Jules didn’t look back as she unlocked the door and slipped into the house.

Seriously, the Calgary PD had to offer their police officers the absolute best training in the world. Jules almost couldn’t remember the Frat Boy who had turned their date into such a fiasco only a few short days ago.

If she’d been hoping for a quiet day at the station so she could slip in a nap here and there, Jules was seriously disappointed.

They’d been called out on three minors in the morning—a dumpster fire in a different alley in the city, two cats stuck up in a tree, and a car accident that looked horrific but in which, surprisingly, everyone managed to walk away relatively unscathed.

Miraculously, even, if stuff like that still happened.

After grabbing a quick lunch, she was on her way to the bunkroom to try and grab a few minutes of sleep when the alarm wailed again.

Repressing a sigh, she turned on her heel and sprinted for the lockers.

In two minutes, everyone was suited up and the engine and ladder trucks were peeling out of the station.

As she steered the ladder truck along a side street, sirens wailing and lights flashing, Jules glanced at the computer screen mounted on the dash.

Looked like a bad one—an old house in a nice enough area of town that it was likely quite big.

Hopefully no one was inside. They’d need to figure that out as soon as they arrived.

In under five minutes, she’d pulled up behind the engine in front of a house, flames leaping from two second-story windows and thick, black smoke billowing into the sky. A bad one, all right.

Jules leapt from the truck and grabbed her self-contained breathing apparatus from the back, sliding the straps over one shoulder and then the other before snapping the belt in place over her beige uniform and tightening it.

After tugging on her respirator, which covered most of her face other than her eyes, and tightening all those straps, she pulled up her hood and then buckled her helmet. Good to go.

“Adler, Hernandez, there’s a report of at least one person in a bedroom on the second floor. The two of you check it out.”

Jules nodded before sprinting for the entrance, her co-worker next to her.

Another firefighter, Max Forrester, had reached the front door ahead of them and was using one of their large fans to direct as much smoke out the open back door as possible.

Max lifted the fan out of their way so they could head inside.

A strong breeze cooled the backs of her legs when he set the fan back in position.

Despite Max’s efforts, smoke still hung thick and heavy in the air.

Jules reached around behind her to twist open the canister of compressed air that traveled from the pack up through a black hose to her respirator.

Hernandez lunged toward the stairs to the right of the entryway, and Jules followed him.

At the top, Hernandez pointed to the right while he spun to the left.

She tugged the thermal imaging camera free from her belt and held it in front of her eyes so she could see through the heavy haze.

As expected, the place was huge, and a number of doors lined the hall to the right, all closed. She’d need to check every room.

Ignoring the smoke and the heat and the persistent screeching of smoke detectors and the crackling of flames from somewhere nearby, Jules raced to the first door.

No one in sight that she could see, although people, especially children, often climbed under beds or hid in closets in an emergency, so she’d need to check both. Nothing.

After ascertaining the room was clear, Jules strode along the hall to check out the second door.

She moved quickly but methodically. Flames crawled along the walls of every front bedroom which, thankfully, were all empty.

The heat and smoke grew more intense as she worked, until she reached the last door in the wing, a room facing the rear of the building.

Flames were creeping from the front rooms to the ceiling of the hallway.

She needed to get in and out of here fast.

Jules pushed inside a massive room. After checking the bed and two walk-in closets, she headed toward the last door.

It had also been closed, so she shoved it open to step inside the master ensuite.

Through the thick haze, she could barely make out something scrawled across the smoke-blackened walls above a heavy-looking towel rack.

Were those words? She lifted the camera to study them as she approached.

You can’t picture my face. But I know yours.

Despite the intense heat in the place, Jules froze. Was this fire because of her? Before she could move or think what to do, someone grabbed her arm, yanked off her left glove, snapped a handcuff on her wrist, and then closed the other cuff around the metal towel bar.

What in the world…

Jules slid the cuff along the bar until she could whirl around. A man in full firefighter gear towered over her, his intense gaze—all she could see of him through the respirator opening—welded onto hers. Him . The camera clattered to the floor.

Although the lower half of his face was hidden, his eyes crinkled at the corners.

He was smiling, even as no warmth softened the cold cruelty in his eyes.

Take note. Take note. Given the circumstances, it was unlikely she would survive long enough to pass those notes along to Dante, but on the off chance she did…

Hard, deep-set amber eyes with flecks of brown. Thick, dark eyebrows. A smattering of freckles over the top of his nose. Tiny crows feet.