“Somebody found out your home address,” Sebastian observed.
“I don’t use a pen name. A determined person with reasonable computer skills can find it. But nobody ever has before. It freaked me out, so Joel had Rico—he’s my pal in the crime lab—go over it, but there was no trace evidence that could lead anywhere. He said that since there weren’t any overt threats and no actual laws had been broken, there was basically nothing he could do. I got home from that conversation to find another one sitting on my doorstep. No address at all. Just placed dead center of my welcome mat. That one was the collar I found on Duke. After that, I decided it would be prudent to get the hell out of town.”
Ty crossed his arms and glowered. “You should have told me.”
“Growling at me about it isn’t going to change the fact that I didn’t, so stop.”
Ivy narrowed her eyes. “It’s odd. As you say, nothing seems overtly threatening, but it sounds like each one has gotten a little more personal. Like the sender is saying ‘Look, see, I know you.’ And certainly, the switch from the P.O. Box to showing up at your house would have been worrisome on its own. But it’s a gigantic leap to go from packages, to breaking in, to finding you here. There’s frustration in the action. You clearly weren’t behaving in the way the sender wanted or anticipated. The question is, what do they want?”
“I think the more immediate question is whether she was followed directly or tracked.”
Paisley felt the blood drain from her face again as Ty’s words sank in. She hadn’t had time to think that far. “I don’t see how I could have been followed directly. It would have taken time to get into the house to retrieve the collar. And I spent nearly an hour driving around the city before I even left town, just in case someone was watching.”
He made that growling noise again, and Paisley just pointed at him in warning. “I felt stupid when I did it.”
“Clearly your instincts are better than your logical brain. Give me your phone. I’ll check it for tracking software.”
Harrison and Sebastian rose. “We’ll sweep her car.”
Paisley wondered how exactly this had become her life, where three highly trained former Rangers were suddenly in charge of her personal security.
Laurel shoved to her feet. “Well, clearly not charring dinner is going to be on us. Come on, ladies. We’ll all think better with food.”
Ivy stood, too. “Just keep the onions away from me. The smell has been turning me green.”
Paisley looked up from digging in her purse for the car keys. “Since when? You’re the only person I know who loves French onion soup as much as I do.” Her gaze zeroed in on the ginger ale in Ivy’s hand instead of the beer everyone else was drinking and realization dawned. She hadn’t imagined it possible to smile after the events of the night. “Seems I’m not the only one with some ’splaining to do.”
“It’s subtle, but you can just see the scratches here.”
Ty crouched down, examining the minute signs of lock picking Joel Fisher pointed at with a pencil. “That’s the only signs we’ve got?”
The detective straightened, crossing his arms. “There’s a partial footprint by the back fence, but with all the rain we had a couple days ago, any tread is entirely obscured. We can’t even get a good estimate on size. Only prints on the door are Miss Parish’s. Officers canvased the neighborhood, but nobody reported seeing anything.”
“Maybe there will be something more inside. You haven’t been in?”
Tall, with a rangy build and a craggy face that spoke of a lot of time outdoors, Fisher shook his head. Ty pegged him around mid-forties, though the job had added some years to that.
“Wanted to wait on Miss Parish and her key rather than doing any more damage or potentially obscuring evidence.”
“Any more damage? Did they ransack my house?” Paisley’s voice shot up half an octave.
“No, no!” Fisher soothed. “We didn’t see any evidence of that through the windows. But we didn’t see any need to bust in the door either.”
“Oh. Well, can we go inside now and see whatever there is to see?”
He held out a hand toward the gate that led back around to the front of the bungalow. “After you.”
Together they trooped around and up the steps to the front door. It was a hell of a different experience than the last time Ty had been here. That night, the only thing on his mind had been the miracle of running back into to Paisley after all these years and finding his way into her bed. He was in mission mode now.
Once she’d unlocked the door, he laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let us go in first and sweep the place. I don’t expect anybody to be here, but just to be safe.”
Fisher stepped into position, and Ty opened the door. The alarm tone countdown sounded as he slipped inside.
“Alarm’s still set.”
Ignoring his order, Paisley ducked around him and made a beeline for the panel on the wall, punching in a code to disarm it.
“If they came in the back door, why didn’t the alarm go off for the intruder?” Were they going to find the collar she’d received exactly where she left it? Had there been a duplicate just to freak her out?
Paisley bit her lip. “Um…there’s no sensor on the back door.”
“What do you mean there’s no sensor?” Fisher demanded.
“Well, there was originally, but I kept forgetting about it and setting it off when I let Duke out in the morning, so I had it disabled.”
Ty stared at her. “Are you kidding me?”
Her cheeks flushed. “You know I’m not a morning person.”
He and Fisher exchanged a can-you-believe-this look, and Ty filed that under things to deal with later. With a shake of his head, he resumed the sweep.
No one was in the house. Nothing
