kept getting those letters with the prison stamp on them, she knew where he was. Locked away, forever. They reminded her that he was a mentally ill man and not a demon. Not a demon with supernatural powers who could reach through the earth from the depths of hell and snatch her away.
Jeffrey never stopped nagging her about the letters. But, as usual, Lydia could not be swayed. And Jeffrey had long since given up, feeling rage rise in his chest whenever he thought about the first letter.
But as they walked in the front door and he caught sight of the letter in her hand – indeed a letter from Jed McIntyre – with the rest of the mail she collected from the box, he felt his throat constrict with anger. He slipped it from the pile when she dropped it on the kitchen table.
“Jesus, Lydia, what the fuck do you do with these?’’
“At least I know where he is.’’
“By not returning these, you’re allowing him to perpetuate whatever fantasies he’s having about you.’’
“Jeffrey, don’t we have enough to deal with right now without rehashing this?’’
He handed the letter back to her without a word and opened the refrigerator, looking for a beer. She stared at his profile cast in the light. She could see the anger in his set jaw. She stood behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Don’t be angry. Try to understand.’’
He placed his arms over hers and leaned back into her. “It makes me crazy to think of him even thinking of you.’’
“I know but it’s all right. He can’t hurt me,’’ she said, turning him around.
“Okay,’’ he said, and gave her a sad smile.
She left him and walked up the stairs to her bedroom. As she flipped on the light, she stopped cold in the door frame. Her lingerie drawer stood open and its contents had been cast to the floor. On the full-length mirror that stood beside the dresser was a message written in red lipstick.
O Righteous God, who searches minds and hearts, bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure.
Jeffrey came up behind her. “Lydia, did you leave the back door unlocked?’’ he asked.
“No,’’ she answered, turning to him, her face flushed. A moment passed as she heard him inhale sharply and felt him stiffen as he registered the message on the mirror.
Instinctively, he reached for the.38 he’d been carrying. “Stay right where you are. Don’t touch anything,’’ he called as he left the room and began searching the house.
But she knew even as she heard Jeffrey slamming open doors, that the killer was gone. Somehow, somewhere, he had seen her, been close enough to her to want her. He knew enough to know when she would not be here. And he wanted her to know that he had been here. She smiled, in spite of the fear twisting in her belly. The desire to find him, to finish him, was more powerful than her desire to breathe. She leaned against the doorjamb, shaking with an adrenaline rush. I am not a victim, and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let some backwater psycho turn me into one.
“He broke into the breaker box behind the house and turned the system off. That’s how he got in. But he’s gone now.’’
“I know,’’ she said, pulling her cell phone from her pocket and dialing Morrow from her speed dial. “It’s Lydia Strong. We’ve had another intruder at my home…Okay…we’ll be here.’’
Jeffrey walked past her and stood staring at Lydia’s lingerie. The rage, the fear that churned inside him, blurred his vision. It was clear to him that if he lost her now, all his patience, all his resolve would have been for nothing. His love for her would be a stone swallowed whole, unexpressed, unrequited, sitting in his heart for the rest of his life. If anything ever happened to her, he might as well be dead, too. “Never love anything so much that if it goes away your whole world turns black.’’ Too late. Too fucking late.
She could see his face in the mirror that hung on the wall over the dresser. The pain etched there frightened her. “Jeffrey?’’ Her voice was a plea, soft but urgent.
He turned and walked over to her, grabbed her hard into him, burying his face in her hair. “I want you to leave here until this is over,’’ he said urgently. “Please, Lydia.’’
“I can’t, Jeffrey, you know that.’’
“Lydia…’’
She reached up and touched his face, smoothing the anger from his brow, ran her fingers through his hair. And then he was covering her face in kisses.
“I can’t do this anymore, Lydia. I can’t pretend that I’m going to leave you when this is over and everything is going to be as it has always been. I can’t pretend that I don’t think about you every day and wish you were beside me every night. I can’t hold you like I’m your friend when I’ve wanted so much more for years. I can’t pretend that I’m not in love with you. I’m sorry, Lydia. I love you. I’ve always loved you.’’
A thousand thoughts swirled in her head: her mother, her father, Jed McIntyre, the killer they hunted now. All this death and tragedy in her life and in the lives of others. Love had never brought her mother anything but pain. Lydia had lost or been disappointed by so many people, except for Jeffrey. She thought of Maria Lopez, how no one had claimed her body, how she had been disconnected from the world. How much more connected am I? If you don’t love anyone, then you don’t lose anybut nobody loves you, either. Do I keep him at bay because it keeps him loving me and I don’t have to love him back? So I don’t have to give him my heart?
She closed her eyes against tears, against the fears. And when she opened them he was watching her, so intently, with so much love. In his face, so beautiful to her, so familiar, she saw home.
“I love you, too,’’ she whispered. “You know I always have. You must know.’’
His mouth on hers tasted like the ocean, salty, warm. She felt his urgency, his desire on her tongue. “I’m not going to let you move in close and then back a mile away from me again.’’
“I know. I don’t want that anymore either. I’m tired. Tired of fighting everything. Tired of pretending I don’t need you. I do. I have, probably, since the first day I met you.’’
They were startled by a pounding on the front door.
She didn’t want to let go of him, didn’t want to move from his arms and face the nightmare they found themselves in now. She’d chased this monster and now the monster was chasing her. She hated herself suddenly for inviting this horror into their lives. But there was no choice now but to face it down.
“That must be the police,’’ she said.
“I know. I don’t want to let this moment pass.’’
“It’s okay,’’ she said, and smiled. “We have all the time in the world.’’
Lydia sat on the couch in the living room as Jeffrey let the police in. Chief Morrow was the first person through the door.
“How did he get through the alarm system?’’ he asked Jeffrey.
“The breaker box is outside the house. He forced the lock and turned off the alarm. These things are supposed to default to sounding an alarm in that case, but this one didn’t,’’ answered Jeffrey. “Basically it looks like when the power went out, the house opened wide.’’
“Shit,’’ said Morrow. “The stakeout starts tonight on the twelve-to-eight shift. I couldn’t start it sooner than that. We’re short-staffed.’’
“A day late and a dollar short,’’ said Lydia from her place on the couch. “As usual.’’
“It’s no one’s fault, Chief,’’ Jeffrey said quickly. “Let’s just make sure we’ve got someone on this house day and night from this point forward. On foot, on the property, not sitting in a car down at the bottom of the drive.’’
The chief nodded his head, his face flushed with embarrassment and anger. He followed Jeffrey up the stairs and into the bedroom to inspect the scene.
Lydia stayed on the couch downstairs, her legs pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around them. She did not want to be in the room while the police dusted for fingerprints. She did not want to see that message again, which she was sure was from Psalms. “O Righteous God, who searches minds and hearts…’’
She heard Jeffrey’s voice but couldn’t make out what he was saying. He had his professional voice on – the one that made everyone jump, the one that accepted no excuses and no hesitation. She always envied him that. It seemed to come so naturally to him, as if he were born with an authority that no one questioned.
She was not afraid. It was more like every atom in her body was buzzing with electricity. She scanned her memory for strange faces, things that had caught her attention fleetingly but were dismissed, a car she’d seen more than once. Anything that could have been a warning. But there was nothing. She would not have missed
