Now he’d be sleeping in the bedroom next to her.
Perhaps she’d be better off taking her chances with the murderer.
WHEN THEY GOT back to Cameron’s house, Jack’s first order of business was to make sure that the doors had been repaired per his orders—first the front lock, and then the French doors off the master bedroom balcony. As he’d instructed, the agency had sent over a maintenance crew to board the door and clean up the glass.
Cameron eyed their handiwork skeptically. “It definitely adds that certain ‘vandalized’ quality I was going for with my renovation.”
“It’s safe. We can worry about style later,” Jack said.
The second thing he did was conduct a thorough check of the premises, with Cameron by his side until he was sure they were clear. This was no quick feat, given the size of the house.
“Did you used to be married?” he asked as he opened the closet in one of the guest bedrooms.
“No,” she said, seeming surprised by the question.
Rules out the rich ex-husband idea, Jack thought.
Another mystery he would soon get to the bottom of.
Third on his list was to get settled in. He took the room closest to Cameron’s—which luckily, unlike the other guest bedrooms, actually had furniture—and unpacked his bag. He shrugged out of his blazer and hung it in the closet. He put his spare gun on the nightstand, then opened one of the drawers of the dresser in the corner.
He discovered a man’s sweatshirt inside.
Jack slammed the drawer shut and chose another.
He moved next onto the fourth item on the evening’s agenda: taking care of Cameron.
She was doing a pretty good job with the tough criminal prosecutor routine, pretending to be fine with everything that had happened that afternoon. But he had seen the exhaustion that had set into her eyes in the car ride to her house, had heard the nervousness that belied the sarcasm in her voice as she’d commented on the boarded-up French doors, and had noticed the way she’d momentarily hesitated when she’d followed him up the stairs that led to the second floor, undoubtedly thinking back to the masked intruder’s earlier attack.
He guessed she hadn’t eaten in hours. That seemed as good a place as any to start. Pausing at her bedroom door to make sure everything sounded okay, Jack headed downstairs into the kitchen. He found her junk drawer and a well-worn menu from a Chinese restaurant a couple blocks away and figured that was a safe bet. He had no idea what she’d want to eat, so he ordered a bunch of things—screw it, he’d charge it to the Bureau. Besides, this way they’d have leftovers. From the looks of her refrigerator and freezer, she was an even worse cook than he was. Thank God for delivery, because a six-foot-two-inch man couldn’t last more than an hour on those skimpy frozen meals. He’d been stranded in a jungle in Colombia for five nights with four other guys on his Special Forces team and still had seen larger rations than those things.
Next, he checked out the liquor cabinet in her dining room. From the looks of it, she liked wine and she liked it red, so he went with the safe bet and chose a cabernet. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, he knew she would need some help falling asleep that night. While listening to the sound of water running upstairs, he made his way around the kitchen and poured her a glass of wine. The doorbell rang a few minutes later, and, after a brief moment of confusion when Jack frisked the delivery guy, asked him for his I.D., and called the restaurant to confirm his status, they were set to go.
Jack set the bags of food on the counter, grabbed the wineglass, and headed upstairs. Cameron had left her bedroom door partially open, as he’d asked her to. He knocked.
“Come in,” she said in quiet voice.
Jack pushed the door the rest of the way open. He found her standing in front of her closet and walked over. “I thought you might want a glass of wine to help you . . .” He trailed off as she turned around, stunned by what he saw.
There were tears in her eyes.
Of course, he realized. The closet where the killer had been hiding, waiting for her.
He set the wineglass on the floor and went to her. “Cameron . . . everything’s okay now. You know that, right?”
She blinked, and a tear ran down her cheek.
It killed him.
Jack wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. He whispered in her ear. “He’s not getting near you again, baby, I promise. No one’s laying a finger on you ever again.”
She turned her cheek against his chest and peeked inside the closet. He could’ve sworn he heard a sniffle.
“It’s such a beautiful dress,” she finally said.
Jack took a look. A long, silky, deep-pink dress hung front-out in the closet. No clue why she was crying over it, but he figured it was best to simply nod and be supportive under the circumstances. Maybe the killer had wrinkled it or something.
“It’s a very nice dress,” he agreed.
Cameron pointed at a pair of silver high-heeled shoes on the closet floor. She’d positioned them directly underneath the dress, as if an invisible woman was wearing them. “And the shoes . . .” She peered up at him, all weepy-eyed. “They would’ve gone so perfectly with it, don’t you think?”
Yeah . . . maybe he should just skip past dinner and put her straight to bed instead. Somebody was clearly a bit out of sorts.
He cleared his throat. Frankly, this was the kind of thing Wilkins was better at. “And now. . . you don’t want to wear the shoes again because . . . the killer might have touched them?” Hell, he was a guy, what did he know? Maybe shoes were as sacrosanct as purses and bachelorette parties.