“I swear I’ve seen you before,” he said. “Did you grow up in Laredo?”
“No,” she said, her pulse positively ricocheting now. No, she hadn’t grown up in Laredo. But she’d gone to college there. She wasn’t about to tell him that, though. She’d run with a rough crowd during college, and the only reason she hadn’t ended up in jail herself was because she’d gotten the teaching job in Sweet Water Falls.
“Okay.” He headed toward the hall and the bathroom where he’d changed yesterday. Emma let out the breath she’d been holding, wondering what Ted had done before he’d gone to prison. Ginger had a whole file on him, and Emma could easily read it. In fact, it sat on the corner of her desk right now.
She picked up her ruined phone and plucked her purse from the hook by the back door. She was just about to go outside to wait for Nate—Ted could find his own way—when the doorbell rang again.
Adrenaline spiked through her, and she turned toward the door but didn’t move.
“I’ll get it,” Ted called, and Emma let him. She heard him say something to whoever was at the door, and then his footsteps came down the hall and into the kitchen. He joined her in the small hallway off the back door, a paper in his hand.
“It was the pest control guy. He dropped off this receipt.”
Emma stared at it, her eyes wide. Everything raced now. She grabbed it from him and flew outside, desperate to see the man and the pest control truck. Thankfully, no one ever closed the garage doors, and she could see all the way to the dirt lane.
A white truck—not blue—still sat there, and it had a license plate on the front bumper. She strode out into the sunshine, lifting the paper as she went. “Hey,” she called, and the guy looked up.
She went all the way to his door, where he rolled down his window. “You just did this?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“You don’t drive a blue truck?”
Confusion furrowed his brows. “No.”
“Have you ever driven a blue truck?”
“Not for Eradicate,” he said. “Always white.” He tapped the door. “With the ridiculous ants on the side?”
She looked down at the side of his truck, which did have several semi-ridiculous cartoon ants painted there. “Not grasshoppers?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.” He shook his head. “Is everything okay?”
Ted had followed her, and he leaned his elbows on the top rung of the wooden fence that separated the dirt and gravel from the grass.
“Yes,” she said, the word barely ghosting out of her mouth. Because it was really a no. No, everything was not okay.
The man who’d been here in the blue truck was not the pest control. She spun toward the left corner of the house, her fist crunching the receipt. She went through the rungs in the fence while Ted asked, “What’s wrong, Emma?”
She didn’t answer him as she marched across the grass. All this striding had really gotten her heart rate up, and sweat beaded along her hairline. She arrived at the side of the house, desperately scanning.
There were no meters.
“Emma?” Ted asked again, gently. “What’s going on?”
“There are no meters here,” she said, looking wildly from him to the smooth siding on the house.
“No,” he said slowly. “There aren’t.”
“There was a guy here,” she said. “He had a clipboard and a meter thingy, and he was driving a blue truck with a grasshopper on the side.” She couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “He rang the doorbell and then disappeared.”
What had he been doing? Had he taken pictures of her? Did he know about Missy?
She needed to call Fran right now. She flung down the receipt and yanked her phone out of her pocket.
Then she had to face reality—her phone was shattered.
A sob started in her stomach and wrenched its way up, catching in her throat for only a moment before it came soaring out of her mouth.
Chapter Five
Ted had no idea what was going on, only that something bad was happening. Emma looked one breath away from pure panic, and Ted knew what that looked like. He’d helped a couple of newboots when they’d come to River Bay, and Raymond had suffered a complete panic attack his first night.
It had been as scary for Ted as Raymond, and they’d been friends until the day Ray got to walk out, a free man.
Emma was about to lose it, and Ted stepped closer to her as a sob came out of her throat. He gathered her tight, because he knew more now than he had when he’d attempted to help Raymond.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “You’re okay. You’re right here.” He held her tightly against his chest, and he couldn’t complain when her arms came up and around him too. She clung to him as if she needed him to stand, which was actually fine with Ted.
Strangely enough.
“Just take a breath,” he said. “Okay? In with me, Emma.” He drew in a long, deep breath, but she ignored him completely. “And out,” he said anyway, releasing his breath. He did it again, and this time, she matched her breath to his.
“Tell me what’s in your head,” he said.
“I can’t.” Her voice was thick as honey and filled with misery.
“Who was the man that was here earlier?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the problem.”
Ted didn’t quite get how. “You didn’t talk to him?’
“No, I assumed he was the pest guy, because he had that truck with the grasshopper.” Her breath was hot against his chest, but she’d started to calm.
“You thought he was checking the meters?”
“Yes.”
“Or was the pest guy.”
“Yes.”
“But he wasn’t either of those.”
“I don’t think
