Page 24 of The Last Close Call

But instead she’d allowed herself to be lured in. Violent cases pulled at her, and especially this one. But part of it was Jack.

She glanced at him beside her.

“No,” he said curtly, followed by a long pause. “All right, keep me posted.”

He clicked off.

Silence settled over them, and Rowan turned her attention out the window. The hike-and-bike trail that paralleled the creek was almost empty tonight, which wasn’t surprising given the soggy weather they’d had lately. Rowan spotted a woman jogging alone, AirPods stuffed into her ears. She had a zipper pack clipped around her waist, and Rowan wondered if it contained pepper spray.

“What’s wrong?”

She glanced at Jack. “Huh?”

“You look worried.”

“Oh. Nothing—just... I used to run on this trail all the time. Campus to the lake. Four-point-five miles round-trip.”

“You went to UT?” he asked.

“Yep. Graduated six years ago.”

She glanced at him, surprised he didn’t know this already. Of course, it wasn’t one of the facts she included in the short bio on her website. That paragraph purposely omitted personal information and focused on her membership in various professional associations.

“So, you were there for the first attacks,” Jack said.

“I was, yes.”

She didn’t mention that she had lived in a garage apartment just half a block away from Olivia Salter, WCR’s second victim.

Rowan also didn’t mention that she and Olivia had been friends.

Had been. As in, years ago. But Rowan hadn’t seen or talked to Olivia in ages. Rowan had tried to find her on social media but hadn’t had any luck, and she felt guilty for letting the relationship slip away.

She glanced at Jack, who was watching the road now with a somber look on his face. She wondered if he was thinking about Olivia, too. And it suddenly occurred to her that he’d probably talked to Olivia way back when. He’d probably interviewed her shortly after her attack, right after her world was shattered by a ski-masked intruder.

The crimes had rocked the campus. The entire city of Austin, really. By the third attack, people were scared. Many women were buying Mace and changing their routines to avoid walking home after dark. By the sixth attack, it was clear WCR’s preferred MO was to break into women’s homes when they were alone, often through a sliding glass door. People began installing steel brackets on sliders. Some women moved in with boyfriends or tried to get roommates.

A lifelong introvert, Rowan had remained alone in her studio apartment. But the combination of the intensive news coverage and knowing one of the victims personally ratcheted up her stress. She signed up for self-defense classes and installed braces on her windows—despite the fact that she was on the second floor. When neither of those things helped her sleep easier, she bought a motion-sensitive security cam that linked to her phone and sent her alerts—which served only to make her resent the squirrels and other critters that interrupted her sleep several nights a week.

But her resentment wasn’t just reserved for nocturnal animals. She started to feel pissed off at the men in her orbit, who seemed to go right along as normal, oblivious to the possibility of waking up in the middle of the night to a masked terrorist.

Rowan had operated in a state of constant vigilance, not letting her guard down until years later when she accepted Skyler’s invitation to come live at the ranch. But even after moving, her anxiety lingered, and to this day, she slept with a can of bear spray under her bed.

They hung a left into a neighborhood with stately houses and giant oak trees. As a college student, Rowan had done a few babysitting jobs over here—mostly professors’ families. After hearing they paid well, she had posted her name and number on bulletin boards in several of the academic buildings on campus.

Jack turned onto a curving road and shifted gears as they headed up a hill. Rowan had never been on this street. The lots were getting bigger, and many of the houses were tucked behind vine-covered walls.

“Three-fourteen,” Jack said, slowing at an open gate.

He pulled onto a long driveway that curved in front of a redbrick house with black shutters. Neatly trimmed hedges lined a path leading from the driveway to the black front door.

“What did you say she does again?” Rowan asked.

“Works for a software company.” He veered around a huge magnolia tree and rolled to a stop beside a black convertible Mercedes. “She’s a VP of sales.”

Rowan glanced at the convertible. Given Austin’s typical sunshine, she guessed the top was down much of the year.

Jack cut the engine.

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