Crime and Passion

“Or someone trying to blend into the night until he got in. Let me take a look outside, see what I can find. You stay here,” he told her sternly as she began to follow him. To his surprise, Ilene nodded her head and remained where she was.

He was back within a few minutes, holding something in his hand. A drawing of some sort. “I don’t think whoever it was was trying to break in. He was trying to warn you off.”

“Warn me off?” she repeated, puzzled.

In response, Clay held up what he’d found taped to the window she’d heard being rattled. It was a drawing of three monkeys sitting side by side. One covered his mouth, another his ears, the third his eyes. The message was clear.

“This is only the first step. It’ll escalate. The next time he’ll be inside the house.”

She looked at Clay accusingly. “You’re scaring me.”

“Good,” he retorted flatly. “I want to. I also want you to take Janelle’s suggestion seriously.”

She didn’t want to. Janelle’s suggestion meant going into hiding. She wanted to stand her ground, to stay in her own home. To continue with her life as if nothing had happened.

But she knew that something had happened, and just as she’d said to him when he first came in, nothing was ever going to be the same again.

She couldn’t hide her head in the sand. Not when she had Alex to think of. “So what do I do?”

“Well, you can’t stay here. We can place you in a hotel and—” Clay began to outline the familiar course of action in these cases. She was a witness and had to be kept alive.

But Ilene was already adamantly shaking her head. “No.”

He could feel his temper suddenly getting frayed. No one had that kind of effect on him—except for her. But then, she could always make him feel things no one else could.

“Ilene, this isn’t the time to be stubborn.”

“I’m not being stubborn. But I won’t disrupt Alex’s life.”

He stared at her. “And having people break into his house and possibly abduct his mother or worse isn’t going to disrupt it? Think, Ilene, use your head. This time he was asleep, maybe next time he won’t be—”

She wasn’t going to let him scare her, at least not any more than she already was. “There’s got to be another solution.”

Did she think this was some kind of game that if she didn’t like it, she could just pick up all the marbles and go home? She’d set something in motion by bringing the audit’s discrepancies to light, something that couldn’t be stopped. All he could do was get her out of the way of the rolling boulder that threatened to crush her.

“There is.”

“What?” she demanded.

He didn’t like her tone, didn’t like the situation they found themselves in. Didn’t like to think what could happen to her if he couldn’t convince her. “First you can start by trusting me.”

Chapter 4

Ilene looked at the man standing before her for a long moment. How could he ask her to trust him after the history they had?

“If I remember correctly, that was where I made my mistake.”

The next moment she forced herself away from the emotional vortex that was sucking her into its midst. The past was over. She had to leave it behind her. She hadn’t called him because they had a history, she’d called him because she needed a policeman and he was familiar with what was going on. She hadn’t wanted to go into long explanations, she’d just wanted to have someone come quickly.

“Sorry, that was uncalled for.” Her voice was crisp, devoid of feeling. Ilene told herself that the only way she was going to get through this was to keep a very tight rein on her emotions. “After all, you’re just trying to do your job.”

Clay couldn’t shake the feeling he was out in the middle of nowhere, trying to find his way through a minefield. “Right, and my job is to keep you and your son safe even if you don’t want to be.”

Her temper erupted. “I never said I didn’t want to be safe. I just don’t want to have complete chaos.” She thought of her own childhood, of how she’d never felt as if she could count on anything. “A child needs stability in his life, otherwise there’s no foundation, nothing to build on.”

She could see by the expression on his face that Clay thought she was blowing this all out of proportion.

“And going to a hotel would cause chaos?” He wasn’t mocking her, but he might as well have been.

Ilene didn’t expect him to understand. He didn’t have children. And from what she gathered, his own life had been cushioned by a family that cared about him.

“He has a routine,” she insisted. “Kindergarten, friends. If I give up our liberty to a tag-team of policemen, how is that going to make Alex feel? I would be taking him away from everything that’s familiar to him.”

“Except for the most important ingredient. You,” Clay pointed out quietly. “And maybe your son’s more resilient than you think.” She just continued to look at him, not saying a word. She didn’t have to. Her eyes did it for her. Clay sighed, dragging his hand through his hair. He went back to the thought he’d had when she made her initial protest. “Okay, maybe I have an idea.”

Here came the trust part, she thought, her eyes never leaving his face. “Like what?”

Even though he was pretty sure his father would go along with this, he knew he couldn’t just take it for granted. “Give me a second.”

Turning from her, Clay took out his cell phone and pressed a preprogrammed number. It belonged to his father’s new cell phone. The cell phone had been an impromptu gift that hadn’t been all that warmly received. Andrew maintained that he didn’t need a cell phone. That the old-fashioned method of using a stationary telephone was just fine with him.

But Callie and Teri had insisted that he needed to get “with the times” and that this allowed them to always reach him if necessary. The deciding argument that he could also reach them whenever he wanted had finally turned the tide.

Now if his father had only remembered to leave it on, Clay thought, they’d be home free.

The cell phone on the other end rang a total of ten times before the annoying automatic message finally came on. Not bothering to listen to the theory that “the party you are trying to reach is either not answering or currently out of the calling area” Clay closed the phone and then opened it again. He hit redial immediately.

This time he got a response.

“Hello?”

“Dad, it’s Clay.” There was some kind of din accompanying his father’s voice. He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like singing. Very bad singing. “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

“Was that you? I thought I heard something ringing, but it’s so damn noisy in here, I thought maybe it was just me.”

“You’re still at the party?” Clay had difficulty picturing his father in that kind of social situation. Ever since his mother had disappeared, his father had become the very core of the family unit. Because he’d become such a fixture, there were times Clay had to remind himself that his father needed to get out among his own kind.

He heard his father chuckle. In the background the noise level picked up. “You’re missing a hell of a time. By the way, Adrienne Ballard is asking after you.”

Patrol Officer Adrienne Ballard was just one of the scores of women he’d gone out with since his breakup with Ilene. Blond, vibrant and nicely endowed, Adrienne was a woman who knew how to enjoy herself and how not to complicate things by trying to bring up the matter of strings. In short, his kind of woman.

Still, the notion of seeing Adrienne right now did nothing for him. He tried to tell himself it was because he was on duty but the truth of it was after a handful of dates with the woman, he’d found himself getting bored, wanting to move on. She hadn’t kept his mind occupied—the way Ilene had.

“That’s nice,” he said dismissively. “Listen, Dad, I need a favor.”

“Ask.”

That he was one of the lucky ones was once again brought home to him. His father was always there, always willing to help. Clay knew by experience that not too many people could say that about either of their parents.