Page 92 of Love Me Fearless

“So it’s a copycat, trying to mess with her?”

“That’s my first instinct, but we don’t have enough to go on yet.”

We walk to Ava’s rock garden at the back corner of the house. The granite cobbles look like they came from the river, each one smoothed and rounded by the water. Hanging from the back eave are her two hummingbird feeders, newly replenished, both hosting a stream of visitors who chirp and bicker in between sips.

“She’s not using that fake rock anymore, right?” Everett asks from where he’s crouched at the edge of the rocks.

“No. Not since I put in the deadbolt.”

“Good.” We climb onto the deck, and Everett does a scan of the glass panes. He leans down for a closer look at the slider door latch. “Does she use this door a lot?”

“Not recently.”

He peers at the latch from the side. “I might come back to that.”

“You see something?”

“No, but it’s a likely place to grab a print.”

“Ava will need to give hers to compare with, won’t she?”

“Yeah.” He gives me a quick glance. “Yours too.”

I grimace. Is this the kind of thing stalkers get off on? Inconveniencing and scaring their victims? How is that enjoyable for them? It’s fucking sick.

We move to the back corner, where sections of river rocks are interspersed with landscaping bark, and a giant hydrangea, the leaves a vibrant green.

“This her bedroom?” Everett asks, nodding at the big window that overlooks the backyard. Unlike the others, the blinds are drawn.

“Yeah. Her room, then the bathroom, then a laundry area.”

“Got it.” Everett eyes the ground, then squats, his eyes narrowing.

“What?”

He rocks to one side, and points. “See how the rocks are uneven there?”

I lower down and brace off my fingertips as I try to see what he’s noticed. “Rocks are always uneven, aren’t they?”

He slips his phone from a breast pocket and takes several shots of the area below Ava’s window. “If you were to walk on the rocks here, they’d shift under your weight. That depression could be where someone likes to stand.”

Anger flares inside my chest. “Likes…as in present tense?”

Everett’s face tenses in a grimace. “Appears like that to me.”

I close my eyes, trying to retrieve whatever I heard last night. Could it have been the tap of river rocks shifting outside Ava’s window? Maybe.

“There’s also a bent branch there,” he says, pointing at the base of the hydrangea. I wouldn’t have seen it unless I was looking, but it still makes me feel stupid. Why didn’t I go outside and check the house last night and tear this fucker’s throat out?

I want to punch the wall. Hard.

Everett removes a small plastic bag from his back pocket and slides on a pair of blue latex gloves, then teases something out of the hydrangea.

“What the fuck is that?”

Everett slips a black wispy thread into the small bag and zips it shut, then whips out a pen and labels it. He holds the specimen up, in the fading light. “Some kind of fiber. Could be from a coat, or even a glove.”

“Not a hair, though.”

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