Page 31 of Shadowing Her Stalker

Wyatt raised his hands in surrender. “Not another word,” he promised, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“I think it’s far more interesting to know what’s real and what isn’t,” her father interjected.

“Jim is hooked on those true crime documentaries they show on CineFlix.” Betsy shuddered. “I prefer my crime scenes off camera and the bad guys rounded up at the end of an episode.” She gave him a wan half smile. “I don’t suppose it happens very often in the real world.”

Cara shot him a look, hoping he’d tread carefully. Given the circumstances of their visit, the last thing she wanted to do was add to her mother’s worry by piling on depressing crime statistics.

“You’d be surprised,” Wyatt said, crooking his arm on the back of the sofa and angling his body in the direction of her parents’ matching leather recliners. “In most cases, things are so obvious they wouldn’t make for good television.”

They finished out the hour and by unspoken agreement segued right into the next episode. “Tell us where they get things wrong,” her father prompted as they joined the investigators on the scene of yet another grisly murder.

“I have to tell you, I’ve been to relatively few crime scenes,” Wyatt warned. “I’m more the guy back in the office pulling the background reports or analyzing data.”

“Fake it,” Cara said out of the corner of her mouth. “I promise we won’t know the difference.”

So he did, and for the next hour, the three Becketts peppered poor Wyatt with all manner of questions, doubts and pie-in-the-sky theories as to the unraveling of the crime. By the time the case was resolved, the four of them were exhausted from poking holes in each other’s theories. And Cara was able to forget she was the subject of an ongoing investigation.

For a few hours, at least.

Chapter Eight

Cara awoke to five young men dressed in an assortment of leather pants and jackets gazing down at her, each one smoldering harder than the next. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then rolled them as she recalled Wyatt’s smirk when he saw the old poster tacked to the wall of her childhood bedroom. Fixing her gaze on her longtime favorite, she whispered, “Don’t worry, guys. He’s jealous of our love.”

It was early. The light coming through the partially open blinds was the dusky rose of dawn. Reaching out, she switched on the milk glass lamp on her bedside table. Gold incandescent light flooded the room, and idly, Cara wondered when her parents changed the bulb. Probably not long after she’d stopped gazing longingly at her teenage crush each night before she drifted off to sleep, she figured.

Lifting her arms over her head, she indulged in an extravagant stretch. It felt so good, she laced her fingers together and pressed her open palms toward the ceiling. The next thing she knew, she’d fallen into a rhythmic four-count breathing pattern, her gaze fixed on the blooming sunrise.

She heard her parents moving around the house. The rumble of an ATV engine signaled her father’s imminent departure. When it faded into the distance, she closed her eyes and listened hard for any clue as to whether her mother had gone with him to the barn. The clank of cast iron against the stovetop grate rang out with the promise of breakfast.

Cara smiled as she sank into the moment, feeling more centered than she had in weeks. It always felt good to come home, even if she hated admitting it.

The sky morphed from peachy pink to pale violet. Memories of running through the back door of a simple clapboard farmhouse that used to stand less than a quarter mile up the lane came flooding back. The slap of the screen door. The scent of fresh-baked bread. Sheets snapping in the stiff breeze whistling around the tree-covered mountains and through the valley.

She loved her grandparents’ house. The old house, as it was called. There was always a pan of leftover biscuits on the stove. Whatever wasn’t eaten at breakfast would be gobbled up with whatever Grandma tossed together for lunch. Or dinner, as she’d called it.

After Granddad died, Grandma moved up to the new house with Cara’s parents. Her dad claimed the old house was falling down around her ears, but Cara didn’t see it. When you’re a kid, you don’t think about drafty windows, rotting floorboards on the porch or dripping pipes.

Grandma June brought little more than her cast-iron skillet and her love of all things Hollywood with her to the new house. She slept in the room Wyatt currently occupied until the day she passed. They watched old movies together well after her parents had turned in. When she was small, Grandma June happily paid a shiny quarter for a ticket to whatever living room production Cara cooked up in her head. She’d helped Cara run lines for every school play or drama club soliloquy.

Her grandmother was the one who’d dipped into her life savings to cover Cara’s airfare to California. Her gran was the first person she’d called when she’d thought she’d blown an audition or got a callback for a second look. When she passed, Cara’d spent the entire flight home sobbing into a wad of paper napkins a kindly flight attendant had provided while the businessman next to her pretended not to notice.

In her absence the old house had fallen into even more disrepair. Sitting empty, there was water damage. Rot. Termites. Black mold. When it was demolished, Cara was hurt beyond reason. She accused her parents of tearing down the best parts of her childhood. Trips home became less frequent. Phone calls were kept brief and perfunctory.

She opened her eyes, a fresh surge of anger and betrayal coursing through her veins. If they had only waited a few more years, she could have had the old house restored. But she knew such wishful thinking was fruitless. Her parents would still have been saddled with the upkeep on a house she’d visit once, maybe twice a year. She shook her head, dismissing the thought and the rush of emotion it rode in on.

Her father had done what he needed to do.

Resolved to make the most out of this unexpected time with her parents, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. The floorboards were cool underfoot. She reached for the hooded sweatshirt she’d hung on a bedpost and pulled it on over the T-shirt she’d slept in. By the time she shimmied into yoga pants and some socks, the tantalizing scent of bacon drifted down the hall.

She closed her eyes and drew from the well of inner strength, hoping it would allow her to withstand temptation. Of all the foods she’d eschewed when adopting a vegetarian diet, bacon had been the hardest habit to break. Turning the doorknob, she stepped into the hall, promising herself an enormous bowl of old-fashioned oatmeal topped with brown sugar and pecans.

The guest room door opened, and Wyatt poked his head into the corridor. She smiled when she saw one side of his hair was still artfully rumpled, while the other appeared to be suffering a near terminal case of bedhead.

“Do I smell bacon?” he asked, darting a hopeful look in her direction.

“Undoubtedly,” she replied. “Dad usually only has a cup of coffee first thing. He’ll come back in for breakfast once the cows are fed and turned out.”

He pointed to the bathroom door. “Do I have time to shower?”

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