Page 82 of Deadly Attraction
At her desk, she pulled out a yellow tablet—her favorite medium for freeing her brain. Starting in the center of the page, she drew a circle for her attacker, then a line, radiating out from that with a smaller circle attached. She labeled that one with the first incident:the break-in.
Another line. Another circle. On and on she went, drawing and writing down everything she could remember. The man in the woods, Linda’s phone call, the red words on Chris’s cell wall.
After several minutes of analyzing, she sat back and tapped the pencil on the pad. “First of all, his goal is to terrorize me, not kill me. At least not yet. There are three possibilities as to why.” She ticked the options off on her fingers. “Either he’s waiting for permission from someone to kill me, he’s alone and not able to take on you and Will, or he’s playing a cat and mouse game with me.”
Mitch stared out the window, his eagle eyes sweeping over everything. “What’s your gut say?”
“All three, actually.”
He glanced back at her. “All three?”
She stared at her notes. “He’s keeping me on tenterhooks, but he’s waiting for something. Either for me to be alone or for someone, Chris, perhaps, to give him the go-ahead to kill me. In most cases, the head honcho—such as Chris or Linda—would want to do the killing. At the very least, they’d want to watch.”
“Jesus.”
The softness of his voice brought her head up. His eyes were troubled, unsettled.
“You wanted an analysis. This is it. My stalker is waiting for Chris, and/or Linda, to get here. We’ve established that Linda is indeed capable of murder. Chris as well. Meanwhile, whoever is outside is going to terrorize me and try to take out you and Will. He’s probably a survivalist like you thought. He obviously knows stealth, knows how to use a knife, knows how to instill fear.”
Mitch turned back to the window. “Here comes Will now.”
“With my truck?”
A shake of his head dashed the spurt of hope. “On foot.”
“So my stalker disabled that vehicle too.”
“That would be my guess.” He punched the wall. “Dammit.”
Abandoning her freestyle circles, she took her gun and followed Mitch down the stairs, her pulse kicking hard.
Her refuge had been turned into a place of fear, of death.
“So what are his weaknesses?” Mitch said as they jogged down to meet up with Will. “This guy outside. How do I stop him?”
The dogs, having followed the two of them up to her office, barreled down the stairs, pushing by her. Breathing deep to keep her voice from shaking, she resolved not to let whoever her stalker was control her.
Easier said than done.
“A person who likes to instill fear in others is often scared themselves. He wants to be in control so he feels powerful. Take away his power and he ceases to be able to control the situation. Survivalists, too, often feel powerless so they plan for every outcome, including the end of the world. Their name says it all—they’ll do anything to survive.”
They entered the kitchen and Mitch unlocked the door for Will.
“No go,” Will said, shaking his head. He was out of breath from running all the way to his cabin on the outskirts of the property and back. “He stuck a knife in all four of the truck’s tires, just like yours. I checked the juvie van. Someone punctured the gas tank. It’s going nowhere.”
She expected Mitch to swear or punch something again. Instead he smiled. “I’m so going to enjoy making that little weasel pay for this.”
Will leaned back on the counter. His hair and clothes were matted to his body from the rain. “You and me, both, brother. I found some tracks. Size 11 and a half boot. Give or take the half.”
“Combat boot?”
A nod. “Or someone playing at military. The treads look like desert boots that any idiot can get at the local farm supply store.”
“Desert tread isn’t ideal in the woods, even when there’s been a drought.”
Another nod. “By the way, there’s a ranger station a couple of miles inside the park on that south entrance you two were checking out. The park service hasn’t used it in years, and from what I can gleam from the news, the fires never touched it.”
Emma handed him a towel from the stack she had on the dryer. “How do you know about that?”
