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bed. He likes me to read to him until he falls asleep, and sometimes it takes a while,” she said, a hint of a smile playing along her lips as if she was seeking comfort from the familiar act. He could remember when that smile had been his exclusive property. Now it belonged to anyone but him. “I came downstairs to put away the dishes and thought I heard something at the back of the house. There’s a sliding glass door that leads out to the back patio,” she explained. “When I got there, I didn’t see anyone, but then I thought I heard someone walking along the side of the house.”
    She knew she should have checked it out herself first, but all she could think of was that it would leave Alex alone in the house.
    “I thought I heard him rattling the window. I guess I panicked and called you.” Her shrug was dismissive as she ran her hands along her arms again. “Maybe it was the wind,” she muttered.
    “The wind was dressed in black and wore sneakers.”
    Her last shred of hope tore away from her fingertips. Even so, she fell back on another attempt at denial. She didn’t want to believe the worst, not about someone she’d worked so closely with. “Then it was a burglar.”
    “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