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Rachel for a moment, and then followed Officer Shearn to the car.
    After the officers drove away,
Mark put his hands on Rachel’s shoulders. “When I saw the police here...” He
pulled her close, and placed his hand on the back of her head. Worry filled his
jagged breathing. “I thought something happened to you.”
    She rested her cheek on his
shoulder, and pressed her face into his neck. His tight hold comforted her, and
she did everything she could not to cry. The past couple months had stretched
her emotional stability to a breaking point. Her overwhelming feelings for Mark
competed for control against paranoia and anxiety.
    Her obsession with security had
reached an all-time high, having added the alarm last month and a hinge lock to
the back door a few days ago. She fought the urge to put bars on the windows
and lock herself up, away from the world. Everywhere she went, she looked over
her shoulder and in her rearview mirror.
    All the while, she made sure
Mark remained oblivious to her self-destructive behavior and naïve to her
torments, as well as the cause of them. No matter what it took, she intended to
keep it that way.
    Rachel pulled away from him.
Hand-in-hand, they walked into her house. “I haven’t had a chance to shower
yet,” she told him after closing the front door and securing the locks.
    “I’m in no rush. Are you sure
you’re okay?”
    “Yes, I’m fine. I promise.” She
slipped her driver’s license and the written warning into her purse on the
hallway table. “I’m going to take a quick shower, if you don’t mind. Then we
can go wherever you want for dinner.”
    “Unless you’d rather stay in
tonight,” Mark said. “We could order something for delivery. Maybe Chinese?”
    Her taste buds jumped at the
thought of fried rice and sesame chicken, and the world was back to right once
more. “That sounds good.” She leaned over and picked up her bag. “I’ll be out
soon.” Her lips pecked his cheek, and she headed for the bathroom.

  Chapter Eight
    Rachel
disappeared into the bathroom, and Mark’s smile faded. As he held her, she
erected another wall between them. The way she tensed against him, and then
relaxed as if nothing was wrong. But something was wrong. His conviction
of that grew stronger every day.
    Still standing in the hallway by
the front door where Rachel left him, Mark caught sight of her purse sitting on
the hall table. The officer’s words came back to him about her driver’s license
having the wrong address. He peered down the hall and listened to the faint
sound of the shower. Rachel would be occupied for at least another ten to
fifteen minutes.
    Mark stood over her purse, his
hands ready to rifle through it to get out her driver’s license. As far as he
knew, she had always lived in this house since she came to Wichita. He couldn’t
fathom the reason why her driver’s license would have a different address.
    Mark left the foyer without
sneaking a look at her license, and admonished his suspicious thoughts. He
couldn’t spy into Rachel’s personal items, not without asking about the
discrepancy. She might have lived at a different address before she moved to
this house. He must have misunderstood that she always lived in this house, as
the wrong address had no other explanation. Yet it seemed his misunderstandings
were piling up over time.
    He stepped into the living room
and glanced around for some kind of clue as to what mysteries controlled
Rachel’s life. He partly blamed his suspicions on the house. Aside from the
feeling he had stepped back into the days of peace signs and orange Volkswagen
vans, the house brought about no emotions, heightened no senses.
    Cold and dead, the house lacked
in the feeling of being a home. No pictures on the walls, no plants or flowers,
none of the small touches to make him think Rachel and Danielle lived here.
There was the candle on the coffee table, but he had been in the living room
with Rachel when Danielle