Page 73 of Up In Smoke

The chief had dropped her here. He’d seen her car at the barn but couldn’t get her to it. It still counted as evidence. So she was stuck.

The RFD officer was already outside as they arrived and the officer volunteered to come inside and search the place. Though she valued her privacy—something she'd never had growing up—she was now more than willing to let someone make sure that Carlos wasn't in her home.

When she asked if they had him in custody, the officer only said he didn’t know. When she asked for Luke the answer was that he was in custody and so were Mario and Tiago. So, they'd managed to sweep up every Hernandez brother except the one they needed. She told herself that Luke had the evidence. If he'd seen it, he could share it.

She told herself he'd be home soon. But the officer had gone back out to his car, sitting in the driveway, just to the left of her front door. One short set of paver stones away should she need him. She downed the rest of the juice and moved to close the front curtains. She should have been home long before now to shut them. It obstructed the officer’s view, but it also obstructed whoever might be watching her, and the feeling was even stronger tonight than usual.

That was no surprise, though.

She told herself that her neighborhood was not as wealthy as Maggie's and Seline’s. Her backyard didn't border on to the Greenway, but a small border of a single row of trees ran between the houses accompanied by a fence falling down in places from the roots of those very trees. It was a ridiculous system she intended to fix at least on her own yard.

Her brain ran crazy circles, thinking about everything except the man who kept trying to kill her. If she stood here for a while longer, she’d be able to watch the light change as the sun came up.

What a shitty night. And Luke wasn’t even here yet. She decided to wait up until he got here. She wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.

A noise bumped from the back of the house and everything in her went still. It was nothing, she told herself, just the creaking of an old house.

Pausing, she listened, then when she didn’t hear anything, she tried to calm down. But, if she didn't check on it, she was no better than the woman in the horror movies.

Could it have been the back door? Maybe.

The living room sat at the front of the house, the kitchen to the side by the garage. The back door was through a short hallway that cut between the bathroom and the bedrooms.

She reminded herself the odd design was part of why the house had been affordable. When she got to the back door, it was not only closed, but still locked. It was nothing, just the settling of the old bones of a house.

She should get a dog. They'd had dogs while she'd been growing up, but it had been clear that they were working dogs. She and her siblings had wanted to have them as pets, but her father and mother insisted they couldn't be treated as such. So maybe she could have a pet that had a job, which was to tell her when she was being ridiculous about noises her house was making.

Ivy went into the kitchen again, her body tired but needing food. She’d burned every fuel reserve between fighting Carlos and the fire. All she’d had was the few sips from that stupid bottle of water. The juice hadn’t made her throat feel any better, but her body was starting to. Still, she blinked again, her vision occasionally still going blurry. At least it wasn’t as bad as the first time or, she guessed, actually thesecondtime. Lesson learned. Hopefully one she wouldn’t need ever again.

She thought through her possibilities. The detective was out front. Carlos could light the back of the house on fire without him seeing. But then she could just get out the front door.

What if he'd already put accelerant around the front? But no, she told herself. She'd made the detective walk around the entire house and together they’d checked the flowerbeds and inspected the grass near the foundation. There was no accelerant. Carlos’s earlier threats of burning Luke alive had been just that—threats and nothing more.

The police had come and checked the place out while she'd been in the hospital. So had the chief and Sebastian Kane. It had all been just a lie to keep her in line. She was safe in here.

Ivy considered fixing herself a grilled sandwich. The thought of the wonderful crispy edges that she liked, and how it may feel on her throat, was enough to stop that idea. She settled instead for softer foods that would slide down easier.

It was another twenty minutes later, sitting on one of her new stools at the bar, that she heard the noise again.

The creaking of an old house. That's really all it sounded like. But she checked. Lord knew she'd almost died far too often in these last months. She wasn't going to die now of stupidity.

So she went to the back door and again found it locked and closed. But as she turned around, she heard footsteps heading down the hallway toward the back office.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Ivy crept slowly down her hallway.

He was here, wasn't he?

She pulled her phone from her back pocket, the number for the detective out front already on speed dial. Hitting the button, she waited, but even as the line rang, she turned the corner.

Holy shit.

Ivy pushed the button, hanging up and shutting down the sound.

Carlos was in here, talking. “Don’t talk out your ass, dear. I’m not letting you get away again, you stupid bitch.”

Ivy couldn’t see him, but it sounded like he was in the office talking toher. But she wasn’t there.

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