Page 22 of Shadowing Her Stalker

He asked the question as casually as if he was curious about her favorite color. So she answered in the same offhanded way. “Of course. Who gets doxed and doesn’t get their fair share of death threats?”

Wyatt cast a quelling look in her direction. “Any the police were particularly interested in?”

“I’d like to believe they found all of them interesting, but there were a couple with, uh, specifics.”

“You gonna tell me, or do I need to wait until the records we requested from California come through?”

She drew a deep breath, then let it out to the count of six. “One...person...said they liked my dog, and they’d be sure to take good care of it when I died.”

He glanced over at her, his brow knit. “Your dog? I thought you said you have a cat.”

“Half a cat,” she corrected. “JuJu is a time-share.”

“A stray you and the neighbor both feed,” he recalled.

“My neighbor had a dog, though. Has. She has a dog. They are both alive and well, thank God.”

Wyatt shifted in his seat, and she knew he was catching on, but she wasn’t quite ready to say more. Instead, she pointed to a large metal building ahead of them. “Go past the Bakers’ barn, you’ll want to take a right on County Road 36. The road is barely more than one lane, and Mr. Baker likes to make a point out of farm equipment having the right of way around here, so look out for cranky old men on tractors.”

“Got it.”

Wyatt flipped on the turn signal even though there was no other car in sight. Cara smiled. He must have been telling the truth about growing up in farm country. Only city dwellers waited until the last second to signal their intention to turn. Out in the country, one never knew who or what might be coming up behind or poking along around a bend.

The tires scrambled for purchase on the crumbling concrete roadbed. Cara was pleased to note he’d heeded her caution and accelerated at a sedate pace. He let a good mile or so pass before he asked, “What happened to your neighbor?”

“She was out walking her dog. A car pulled up and a guy jumped out and grabbed her. He had a knife,” she said, her words ending in a whisper.

“He stabbed her?”

Knowing he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, she simply nodded.

“But she wasn’t fatally wounded,” he confirmed.

“No.”

“And the dog wasn’t hurt.”

Cara couldn’t help but release a tense little laugh. He sounded so falsely encouraging it was ridiculous. She didn’t know Wyatt Dawson well at all, but she felt safe in assuming optimism didn’t come naturally to him. Why would it? He was a cop. He spent his days up to his elbows in all the worst things people did to one another.

“Buster is fine. Has a new little harness with LAPD printed on the back.” She nodded to a crossroad ahead of them. “Keep going, but our turn will be coming up on the left.”

“Got it. So Buster is an official K-9 officer now?”

“I wouldn’t say official, but he was tough enough to get one of the officers to say every department should train a pack of Pomeranians. They may not be able to take a bad guy down, but they can sure wake the neighborhood.” She pointed to a narrow driveway marked with three blue reflectors on their left. “Here we are. Home sweet home.”

Chapter Six

When they pulled to a stop in front of the single-story ranch house at the end of a very long lane, a lazy yellow Labrador retriever bestirred itself enough to let out a single warning bark, then lay back down. Apparently, he felt he said enough. No one would ever accuse the big yellow dog of being a Pomeranian.

Wyatt barely switched off the engine before a tall, slender woman with long gray-blond hair woven into a thick braid burst through the screen door and bounded down the stairs.

“You’re here,” she cried, arms flung wide.

Cara fell out of the passenger seat and into the woman’s embrace. “We’re here,” she replied, her voice muffled by an exuberant hug.

Wyatt watched them, arrested by the sight of the two women wound tight around one another. He nearly laughed out loud when he spotted a man wearing a shearling-lined denim jacket just like his and an Arkansas Razorbacks ball cap speeding toward them on an all-terrain utility vehicle. Her father abandoned the battered old gator before it came to a complete stop and hopped the low fence separating yard from pasture.

Wyatt noted the older couple were both strikingly attractive. Looking at them, it was no stretch to see into Cara’s future.

---