She pantomimed whacking him with the flashlight and held the pepper spray up to his face.
Gently he caught hold of her wrist above the splint. His fingers encircled her arm. His grasp electrified her. Though he was careful not to hold too tightly, she could feel his hot steely strength.
“Annie, I’m sorry about this. About all of this.”
“What do you mean? What—”
“Stay here.” He yanked the handle of the cellar door and pulled it open. “I’ll be right back.”
He was halfway down the stairs before she could object, and it was just as well she didn’t attempt to speak coherently. Her brain seemed muddied, drowning her common sense. Every fiber of her body was pleasantly numbed. With one touch Michael had turned her into a trembling blob of vanilla pudding.
This had to stop! She sank into a straight-back chair and rested both hands flat on the kitchen table. Moonlight shone through the upper half of the windows between the gingham café curtains and the matching valance. Crickets chirped outside the windows. If she stepped outside, Annie would be gently bathed in starlight. If she stepped outside with Michael, if he took her in his arms…
The fingers of her left hand curled into a fist and she lightly pounded the oak tabletop. Why couldn’t she control her emotions? She shouldn’t care about him. When he ran away and left her, he’d branded himself a liar, someone who couldn’t be trusted. Michael wasn’t her lover or her boyfriend. If anything, he was a suspect.
When he emerged from the basement, his white shirt was streaked with grime. “Nothing down there,” he said. “The door leading to the outside was still barred shut.”
She remained seated, struggling to gather her senses. She had to find out why he had been at her apartment. “I don’t think we should search outside by ourselves. We should follow proper procedures.”
“Right,” he said. “We’ll call 911.”
“Why don’t you use your cell phone?” She rose and approached him so she could see his reaction in the dim light. “I know you have one.”
“Do you?”
“You used it four nights ago, remember? In the parking lot outside my apartment building.”
His dark-eyed gaze betrayed a total lack of emotion—a characteristic typical of a born liar. Calmly he asked, “How long have you known?”
“Why were you there, Michael?”
“I promise to explain.” He went to the wall phone in the kitchen and picked up the receiver. “First I’ll call the police station.”
“No,” she said. Her voice sounded firm in spite of the fluttering of her heart. She really wanted to believe in him, wanted him to offer a rational excuse. “I need an answer, an honest answer. If you’re going to stay here, there can’t be any more lies.”
“Lies? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“A long time ago you promised you’d never leave me. Then you were gone. You betrayed me.” And it still hurt. “Now, after eleven years, you come back in the middle of another strange situation. You weren’t a good Samaritan, just a stranger passing by. You were in my parking lot for a reason. What was it?”
A stillness fell between them, separating them. The gentle sounds of night—the crickets and the groans of the old house settling on its foundation—seemed deafening. Annie could almost hear the seconds ticking, widening the gulf that divided her from Michael. If he lied to her now, she could never trust him again.
“I was following you,” he admitted.
He’d been watching her, and she hadn’t even known. Annie felt violated and strangely excited at the same time. “Why?”
“Off and on, I’d been tailing you for almost a couple of weeks—ever since Bateman got out on parole. I knew he had a vendetta against your grandfather. Since Lionel was relatively safe in the hospital, I decided I’d better keep an eye on you.”
“The standard procedure in such a situation is to follow the suspect—not the victim.”
He raised one eyebrow and a slow grin curved his lips. “I figured it’d be more fun to watch you.”
“Jeez, Michael. You sound like a weirdo stalker.”
“I learned a lot about you.”
“Like what?”
“A lot,” he said. Once he’d gotten over his initial reticence about invading her privacy, Michael had enjoyed watching her. Annie had turned into the kind of woman he’d expected her to be. She had a healthy lifestyle and went jogging almost every morning. But she also had a taste for junk food. There was no special man in her life, and her partner on the Salem police force was happily married. Though her car radio was tuned to a classical station, she occasionally listened to and sang along with country-western songs.
“You could’ve picked up a phone and called me,” she said. “All I needed was a simple warning that I was in danger.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d believe me. I expected you to hate me after the way I left.”
“Ancient history.” But her sudden frown told him that he’d guessed correctly. He wasn’t her favorite person.
“Did you manage to uncover any useful information?” she asked. “Was it Bateman who attacked me in the parking lot?”
“I’m not sure.” He hadn’t expected the assault. Not in the rain. “After the paramedics took you to the hospital, I went looking and found Bateman at his favorite tavern in Salem. The bartender said he’d been there all night.”
“Is that a solid alibi?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, Michael, I wish you’d left this to a professional investigator. What else do you know about Bateman?”
“He had a reputation in prison as a ringleader with a lot of connections.” Like a poisonous spider in the center of his web, Bateman knew how to pull strings and get other people to do his dirty work. He was surprisingly intelligent and had a natural slyness that made him adept at playing manipulative games. “He’s a true sociopath, completely without conscience or any sense of right or wrong.”
“I’m familiar with the profile,” she said. “It explains something to me.”
“What’s that?”
“When I first encountered him on the street, he scared me. I don’t usually get rattled, but there was something about him that triggered my fears.” She hesitated. “Even though he didn’t actually threaten me, my gut instinct was warning me to be careful.”
“I don’t know how far his influence reaches, Annie. But we can’t be too cautious. That’s why I don’t want you going out alone on dates that might be a trap. It’s best if you stay away from Jake Stillwell or anybody else.”
“I’ll think about it.” She nodded toward the phone. “Go ahead and call the police. Please tell them not to use the siren. I’d prefer if Grandpa slept through the night.”
Picking her way through the dark house, she went upstairs to change clothes before the Bridgeport police officers arrived. If the gossips in town heard she’d been wearing a slinky nightie and sleeping under the same roof as an unmarried man, they’d assume the worst, even with her grandpa there as chaperone. She had no intention of being paired up with Michael Slade again.
Before returning downstairs in her jeans and baggy gray sweatshirt, she tiptoed to her grandpa’s bedroom door, intending to close it tightly. There was no need to disturb him. He needed his rest.
“Annie?” he called from the bed. “What’s going on?”