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door!
    Turn on the alarm!
    Her hands shook, but she managed to do both, her heart pounding
frantically as she ran up the stairs, looked out her bedroom window again.
    A car idled in the driveway, lights off now, doors closed. No
hint of light from the interior. No telling who the driver was.
    She could imagine, though.
    Could picture the same masked figure that had stood at the edge
of the yard, chased her to the road and toward Darius’s house. Put his hands
around her neck.
    She shuddered, grabbing her cell phone and dialing 911 as the
car door opened and a dark figure climbed out.
    * * *
    Darius eased around the side of Catherine’s house,
approaching from the back rather than the front, hoping to catch the car’s
driver by surprise. He could have brought his truck, but that would have warned
the guy off before Darius got a good look at who he was dealing with.
    The bushes near the corner of the house provided perfect cover,
the full moon laying thick shadow against golden light. Darius hugged the edges
of the porch, tensing as a door closed and an engine revved. Leaving?
    Surprised, he stepped out from the shadows, let the driver see
him standing in the moonlight, his gun held loose in his hand.
    Black Toyota. Tinted windows. No way to see the driver, but the
car pulled away so quickly, he was positive the driver saw him.
    Good.
    He wanted the guy to know that Catherine wasn’t alone with
Eileen. She had a neighbor who was keeping his eye on things. He tucked the gun
back in his shoulder holster, and jogged up the porch steps, phantom pain
shooting up from his phantom calf. He’d moved too quickly too many times today
and his thigh muscles ached, the stump beneath his knee throbbing.
    The porch light went on, spilling onto the newly painted
whitewashed wood. No hint of the bloodred words that had been there earlier.
Darius had made sure of that.
    He thought about ringing the doorbell, but Catherine and Eileen
were probably asleep, and he didn’t want to wake them. Not yet. He surveyed the
door and windows. Everything locked up tight just the way it should be. No hint
that anything untoward had happened.
    He retraced his steps, this time veering to the left and the
driveway where the car had been parked. Packed earth left no evidence. No tire
marks. No tread. Nothing that would help trace the car.
    A lock clicked, the sound loud in the silence, and Darius
frowned as the door opened and Catherine stepped outside.
    “He was over near that old pine tree,” she said, not offering a
greeting, not seeming at all surprised to see him there.
    “You saw him?”
    “Yes.” She walked toward him, her legs long and slender in
cutoff jeans, her arms well muscled and too thin, her tank top clinging to
slender curves and a flat abdomen. She looked like a dancer—long, lean lines and
graceful, upright carriage, but her eyes were wide in a too-pale face, her
breathing shaky.
    “You okay?” he asked, and she nodded.
    “Fine, but he had something in his hands when he got out of the
car. It wasn’t there when he got back in. I think it’s under the tree.” She
gestured to the edge of the yard and towering pine that stood there.
    “Wait here. I’ll take a look.”
    “You’ve done enough already, Darius. I’ll look.” She started
walking as if she really expected him to fall in line with her plans.
    He snagged the back of her shirt, his fingers skimming over
warm flesh before slipping into the belt loop of her shorts. “I don’t think so,
Cat.”
    “I told you not to call me that.”
    “Let’s not waste time dancing around the real issue.”
    “Which is?” She raised an eyebrow, her hair tawny in the moon’s
yellowish glow.
    “You don’t want me involved in your life, and I’m not. I just
happened to hear a car pass my house, and I happen to have the kind of training
that makes me more suited to dealing with danger than you are, so I came over.
It’s as simple as that.”
    “I don’t think there’s anything