one. If you’re not with me on that, then we have a serious problem.”
“I didn’t want tonight to be about you doing your job,” she snapped. “I’m tired of that. I just wanted to have a nice night, just the two of us.”
Dec glanced over his shoulder and pulled across a lane of traffic before guiding the car into an empty parking spot. He turned off the ignition and then faced her. “This stopped being about the job a while ago, Rachel. You have to know that. And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’ve been spending too much time thinking about you and not enough time thinking about your stalker.”
“No,” she said, reaching out to touch his cheek. “No, you’re the only one who has kept me together through all of this. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“Rachel, my first priority has to be your safety. And I honestly can’t say that it has been. I didn’t have to stay with you. I could have sent you somewhere safe or put an army of my guys around you.”
“You can’t leave me,” she said, hearing a desperate edge to her voice. “I’m not sure I could feel safe without you.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. “We’re going over to the university. And we’re going to figure out who is doing this.”
“All right,” she said. “Maybe there will be a clue there. Maybe there’s a witness who saw something. We can figure this out.” But even as she said the words, Rachel had her doubts. Her stalker had pretty much gone unnoticed for the past few months, slipping in and out of her life as if he knew her every move. They weren’t any closer now than they had ever been.
She held the tiny bouquet up to her nose and inhaled the scent of the flowers, closing her eyes. This couldn’t go on forever. Sooner or later there would be a confrontation and whoever was doing this would reveal himself. And then she’d find out whether Dec would ever be a more permanent part of her life.
DEC WATCHED RACHEL THROUGH the glass window of the control booth, standing in the shadows so she couldn’t see him. She was aware that he was there though. Since her show had gone on the air, she’d constantly glanced up to reassure herself. But with each glance, Dec felt more guilty.
He knew from the start he was breaking every professional rule he’d ever laid out for himself. Every instinct had told him to maintain his distance, to keep an objectivity with Rachel until her case was resolved. But he hadn’t listened to his instincts, or at least not his professional instincts. He’d let his desire lead the way. And Rachel’s stalker had continued on without consequence.
A knock sounded on the control room door and Rachel’s producer turned as a skinny young man walked inside. He carried a package, wrapped in brown paper, and a stack of letters. “This is Dr. Devine’s fan mail,” he said. “And a package that came for her this morning.”
“I’ll take that,” Dec said.
The young man handed him the mail, then stood awkwardly in front of Dec, shifting from foot to foot. “Are you watching over Dr. Devine?” he asked.
Dec nodded.
He reached into his back pocket and withdrew another envelope. “Would you give this to her? It’s an apology note. I know it probably won’t help, but I want her to have it.”
“You’re Jerry,” Dec said.
The young man nodded. “The infamous Jerry,” he said with a weak laugh. “Tell her I’m sorry I screwed things up.”
“Why did you confess to something you hadn’t done?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought people would look at me differently. Nobody ever sees me around here. I just bring the mail in and clean up the studios and make coffee. Nobody really cares what I do. But for a little while, they knew who I was.”
“You shouldn’t have confessed,” Dec said.
“I know. After I did it, I couldn’t take it back. The cops wouldn’t listen. They didn’t believe me, that I made it up. I knew too many details, they said. But I only knew those things because everyone at the station was talking about Dr. Devine’s stalker.”
Dec nodded. “I’ll give her the letter.”
The young man smiled, then nodded, backing out of the control room. “Thanks. I really appreciate that.”
“I’m surprised the station let that guy come back,” Dec muttered after Jerry was gone.
“He’s the owner’s nephew,” Rachel’s producer said.
Dec groaned. “Yeah, well, he should have known better.” He turned his attention to Rachel’s mail, flipping through the envelopes. They’d all been opened. Perhaps it was station policy or maybe security was looking for more letters from her stalker, but as he read through a few, Dec didn’t find anything of interest.
Then he turned his attention to the package, flipping it over. The moment he did, his heart stopped. A slash of red paint covered the brown paper, the same shade that had been tossed on Rachel’s car.
He excused himself from the control room and walked across the hall to a small conference room. He set the package on the table. There was no telling what was inside. The prudent thing to do would be to call in the bomb squad.
He picked up the package and carried it through the hallway to the back door of the station. When he’d reached the middle of the empty parking lot, Dec knelt down and carefully began to unfasten the tape and string that held it together. He’d had some training in disarming explosives when he was in the navy, but if there was some type of explosive device inside, it probably wasn’t as sophisticated as what he was used to dealing with.
He got the brown paper off the box without incident, then ran his finger under the lid of the shoebox. There weren’t any trips or triggers, so he carefully tipped the box over and lifted the bottom off the top.
A small can of paint, streaked with dribbles of red, tumbled out. Stuck to it with a piece of tape was a note. Dec picked it up and squinted to read it by the parking lot lights.
“Damn it,” Dec muttered. He raked his hand through his hair, then carefully put the can of red paint back into the box. His first thought was to turn it over to the police. But maybe it was better to first give it to one of the private labs he used, just to make sure nothing was missed.
He walked over to his car and unlocked the truck, then put the box, along with the paper wrapping inside. He wouldn’t tell Rachel about this. It would only worry her further. But he did want to talk to Jerry. It seemed a bit more than coincidence that he was the one delivering the package.
Dec pressed the security buzzer for the back door and a few moments later the station guard came and let him in. He walked back toward Rachel’s studio, searching for Jerry along the way. He found the guy in the coffee room, refilling the sugar and creamer dispensers.
“Hey,” Dec said. “I need to talk to you.”
Jerry glanced up. “Did I do something wrong?”
“That package you brought in. Where did you get it? It didn’t come through the mail. There was no postage on it.”
“Some lady dropped it off this morning.”
“She brought it in?”
Jerry shook his head. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, no. She was out in the parking lot and I was coming into work. She asked if I’d deliver it to Dr. Devine. I said yes.”
“And you didn’t think anything of it? You know that Dr. Devine has a stalker.”
“But this was a lady,” Jerry said. “Dr. Devine’s stalker is a man.”
“We don’t know that.” Dec sighed. “What can you tell me about her? Describe her.”
“I don’t know,” Jerry said. “She wasn’t old. But she wasn’t really young either. And she had kinda dark hair, but you couldn’t really see because she was wearing a big hat. And sunglasses.”
“How tall? As tall as Dr. Devine? And older or younger than Dr. Devine?”
“She was a little older I guess and about the same height,” he said. “She had a pretty good body. I noticed when she was walking back to her car.”
“You saw her car?” Dec asked, stepping closer.
Jerry backed away. “Yeah. It was grey or maybe light blue. Some kind of sedan.”
“What make and model?” Dec asked.
“Hey, I don’t know much about cars. I couldn’t tell you. But it didn’t have four doors, only two. It was a little
