“Jack is the strongest person I know,” Ivy said. “Does Marcus want to kill Jack, too? Will he settle for killing me and leaving Jack to mourn?”
“No. He wants Jack dead, too. He just wants him to suffer a lot before he finally kills him. Mark my words, when Marcus does finally go after Jack, he’s going to torture him for days first. It won’t be a quick death.”
Ivy swallowed the lump in her throat. “Where is Marcus now?”
“He’s coming for you.”
“IVY!”
Jack was enraged by the time he walked through Ivy’s front door. After calling Max and finding out she was already gone, and stopping by the nursery to have Michael tell him she returned home, Jack was beside himself. To top it all off, she wasn’t answering her phone.
The cottage appeared empty, which didn’t make any sense. Michael had his car back. Ivy had no means of transportation other than her feet. Where would she go?
“Ivy!”
Nothing.
Jack turned when he heard shuffling in the doorway, a bellow ready to escape his mouth when he saw her. He wanted to shake her for scaring him like this.
“You are in so much trouble you’re not going to be able to walk for days,” Jack hissed, swiveling. His eyes widened when he caught of Laura Simmons standing behind him.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say to a lady,” Laura said, her green eyes shifting brown momentarily before she slammed the vase from Ivy’s front table against the side of his head.
Jack saw the blow coming, but it was too late to stop it. He staggered and fell, falling forward. His last thought was of Ivy. He was convinced he would never see her again.
Twenty-Three
Ivy found her front door open when she returned to the house, Laura drifting along beside her. Outside of the fairy ring Ivy was having a harder time seeing the morose ghost. She could hear her, though, and Ivy considered that a win … for now.
“Let me go in first,” Laura hissed. “I’ll know if he’s in there.”
Ivy bit her lip and nodded. She had to be smart about this, if only for Jack’s sake. It took Laura what seemed like forever to search the cottage. When she returned, Ivy felt her rather than saw her.
“The house is empty, but it looks like something happened inside,” Laura said.
Ivy pushed her way into the cottage, frowning when she saw the remnants of the shattered vase. She knelt, picking up a few shards to study them. There was blood on one of the pieces.
“Someone has been hurt,” Ivy said, biting her lip. “I … Nicodemus!”
The cat was the first thing that popped into her mind. She’d found him in a Dumpster, near death, and bottle-fed him back to health. She loved him as much as was humanly possible. If Marcus didn’t have any qualms about shooting an innocent police officer in the middle of the street, she knew killing Nicodemus would be easy.
“Nicodemus!” Ivy raced down the hallway, throwing open her bedroom door and found the cat lazily cleaning himself on her bed. She cried out in relief, gathering him in her arms and hugging him. He didn’t like being crowded, so he batted her face away when she tried to kiss him and wriggled out of her arms. He was safe. That was all that mattered.
Ivy returned to the living room, studying the floor with a mixture of dread and curiosity. “Maybe I should call my dad,” she said, glancing around. She’d left her cell phone to charge on the table behind the couch. It was still there. “He was working over at the nursery. He might’ve come over here if he was hungry or wanted to check on me.”
“Something bad happened here,” Laura said. “I think it was Marcus.”
“I’m betting money it was Marcus,” Ivy said, touching her phone screen and sighing when she saw three missed calls. All of them were from Jack. “God, I hope Marcus doesn’t have my dad.” Ivy was worried for an entirely different reason this time. She punched up her voicemail button and pressed the phone to her ear. “I’ll bet Jack panicked when he couldn’t get me on the phone and sent my dad over here to check on me. Oh, God!”
Ivy listened to Jack’s increasingly frantic voicemails back-to-back-to-back and then dialed her father’s number. He picked up on the second ring.
“What do you want, car thief?”
“Thank God,” Ivy cried out, relief washing over her. “I thought something happened to you.”
“Why would you think that?” Michael asked.
“I just got back from my fairy ring and the front door was open,” Ivy explained. “The vase I had by the door is smashed on the floor and I’m sure there’s blood on it. I thought maybe Nicodemus was hurt at first, but I found him and he’s fine. My next thought was of you.”
“Ivy, have you tried calling Jack?”
“No. I had three voicemails from him, though. I left the phone in the house to charge while I was at my fairy ring. Why? Is he mad?”
“They found Laura Simmons’ hotel room,” Michael said. “Jack called me about … I don’t know … forty-five minutes ago. She’s been stalking you. She had hundreds of photos of you and Jack.
“Jack thinks she’s coming for you right now,” Michael continued. “He was on his way to your house.”
Ivy’s heart rolled. “No … .”
“Is his truck there?”
Ivy glanced out at the driveway. She would’ve noticed Jack’s truck on approach. It wasn’t there. “No. He’s not here.”
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t there,” Michael said. “You hang up and lock the door. Call Brian and tell him what’s going on. I’ll be there in two minutes. Don’t open that door for anyone but me. Do you understand?”
Ivy nodded, tears filling her eyes.
