“What do we do? It’s escalating.”
“Each contact has been non-threatening,” he pointed out. “No actual laws have been broken.”
She offered up an unladylike snort. “Please. Is that supposed to make me feel better? Let’s call this what it is. I’m being stalked. Maybe taken on their own each gift doesn’t seem like a big deal, but together?” Feeling a chill at the thought, she wrapped both arms around her torso. “They’re getting more frequent, more personal, and more immediate to my physical proximity. It was bad enough when they were all going to my P.O. Box. That’s why I have it. But this one came to my house. This person knows where I live.”
The very idea of it skeeved her out. She wasn’t delusional enough to believe that her fans couldn’t find her if they tried hard enough. But the idea that someone would try? That they might believe themselves entitled enough to invade her personal life? That unsettled her in a way nothing else ever had. It turned the profession she loved into something that dialed up her anxiety and made it hard to even write.
Joel tunneled one hand through his sandy hair, going gray at the sideburns. “I wish I could do more. But the sad, shitty truth is that, even if we knew who was behind this, none of it is an arrestable offense. Without an actual, verifiable threat, there’s nothing we can do but document to create a case.”
“So, I’m just supposed to wait until this whack job graduates to showing up in person and traps me in some kind of Misery scenario?”
To his credit, the detective didn’t even blink at her outburst. “I understand you’re unnerved. But so far there have been no demands, no threats. There’s no reason to think it would go so far as to put you in any physical danger.”
“Right, because my peace of mind doesn’t matter at all.” Paisley pinched the bridge of her nose. This was un-fucking-believable. Someone was engaging in a type of psychological torture, and the good guys could do exactly nothing about it.
“Miss Parish... Paisley—” Reaching out a tentative hand, he laid it on her shoulder. “—I swear to you, I am not dismissing your concerns. I’ve added this incident to the file with all the others. I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got to work with.”
The assurance made her feel like a jerk, even as it wasn’t anywhere near enough. This man had been kind enough to endure her endless questions in the name of book research, even before the harassment started. He deserved more than a little credit for his patience.
She squeezed his hand in thanks for the support he’d so willingly offered. “I know you are. And I know that with a caseload of other, more serious crimes, this is nothing. I just…” There was no point in rehashing her frustration.
“l know.” He squeezed her shoulder and released her, hesitating. “Listen, do you want me to come by? I can make some recommendations for your security system. You do have one, right?”
“Of course. And that’s sweet of you, Joel, but not necessary. I’m covered.”
“I’ll at least arrange to bump up patrols in your area. Maybe a more regular presence of black and whites will help deter anything else.”
It was better than nothing. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Joel lifted a box off his desk. The box. “You want to take it home?”
She didn’t. But she’d kept all the other ones as some kind of evidence, even though having it all in the house made her uneasy.
Gingerly taking the package, she rose. “I should get out of your hair. You’ve got more important things to do.”
“Making you feel safe isn’t a trivial thing.”
“I appreciate you saying so.” He could just as easily have been annoyed with her or called her hysterical. Plenty of other men would have gaslit her about there being a problem at all, but Joel had taken her seriously from the first.
“You’ll forgive me if I hope not to see you again anytime soon.”
He flashed a smile. “At least in my professional capacity.”
It wasn’t the first allusion he’d made to wanting to see her socially. He’d straight up asked her out after the citizen’s police academy. But she hadn’t been available then and now...now there was Ty. Sort of. So, she just smiled a little and gave a tiny wave. “Bye, Joel.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
Before she could say that wasn’t necessary, the phone on his desk began to blare. He held up a finger. “Fisher. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh.” Reaching for a notepad, he began to scribble.
As his eyes flicked back to her, filled with apology, she wiggled her fingers and pointed toward the door. There was no reason for an escort to her car. She wasn’t so far gone she didn’t feel safe in the parking lot of the police station, and she didn’t want to give him any false hope on the dating front. Their relationship needed to stay professional, maybe with a side of sort of friends. She never knew when she might need to pick his brain for more book research.
On the drive home, she kept glancing at the box in her passenger seat. This damned thing had ruined what was possibly the best weekend of her life. She should have been able to bask in the afterglow of magnificent sex and multiple orgasms. But no. She had to worry about this person, who didn’t appear to understand boundaries and thought it was fun to rattle her.
As she strode up her front walk, the box under her arm, she wondered if that’s what it was. Was it malicious? Could it be a case of someone with no social skills, who didn’t understand how freaking creepy this whole thing was?
The sight of another box placed neatly in the dead center
