* * *
Tristan didn’t wait for Ariel to respond. He assumed she’d do what he’d asked her to. For the baby’s sake as much as her own.
He jogged back into the office, called for Jesse to heel and then made his way to the front door. Someone was outside. That much was certain. Jesse knew the difference between a person walking past and someone lurking nearby. He only barked when he sensed danger.
He was barking loudly, doing everything he could to get his message across.
“Cease,” Tristan commanded, and Jesse went silent.
The office window looked out into the backyard. They’d go out the front, move around the side of the building, and hopefully surprise whoever had been trying to peek inside.
The sun had set, hints of light still flecking the horizon and turning the evening a dusky blue. There were few houses on Ariel’s street, the dead-end road isolated. Maybe she’d intended it that way, but it wasn’t the best situation for a woman alone. A pregnant woman alone. She might be fit and tough, but the baby would slow her down if she ran into trouble.
He surveyed the front yard, eyeing the house across the street. The lights were on there, a Toyota Camry parked in the driveway. To the left, a small rancher stood about a half-acre away. To the right, an empty lot stretched toward a fenced property. Plenty of places for someone to stay hidden. Watching a house like Ariel’s was as easy as taking out binoculars and looking through them. She had no large trees. No shrubs. Nothing to block a person’s view of the front door.
That worried him.
Someone had been outside.
He was certain of that. Jesse never issued a false alert.
The gunman? If so, the guy was taking his sweet time acting. He could have fired a few shots in the window in the hope of hitting his target. That’s what he’d done at the school, firing blindly as Ariel disappeared around a corner, and then again while she was on the other side of the door.
Why wait this time?
The question made him cautious. He didn’t pull his gun, just let Jesse have his lead, following the dog around the corner of the house. Tristan stopped there, listening to the night sounds—a few birds calling in the distance, an animal rustling in the bushes a few feet away.
Not a sound from the backyard. No footsteps. No sign that the perpetrator was attempting to enter the house, no indication that he was leaving. But someone was there. Jesse clawed at the ground, twitching in his desire to finish what they’d started.
Tristan held him back, creeping closer to the edge of the house and peering around the corner. He could see someone, a dark shadow backlit by the porch light, pressing against the screened window.
A man?
If so, he wasn’t a tall one.
“Police!” Tristan warned. “Don’t move.”
The person jumped, nearly falling over in his haste to move away from the window.
“One more step, and I’ll release my dog,” Tristan warned.
The person either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He took off, running down the porch stairs, flying across the yard, a hood pulled up over his hair and shrouding what looked like a pale face.
Caucasian. Five-six. Slight build.
He filed the information way as he released Jesse’s lead.
“Get him!” he commanded, and the dog took off, closing in on the perpetrator in the blink of an eye.
A woman screamed, the sound chilling Ariel’s blood. She wanted to run outside, see what was going on, try to help if she could, but Tristan had been right—she had more than herself to think about.
She pressed against the hallway wall, her heart thundering in her chest, her stomach in knots. Everything had been fine that morning. Sure, she’d had the eerie feeling she was being watched as she’d left for school. Sure, she’d thought she heard someone walking through the hallway behind her as she’d made her way to her classroom, but she’d always had a big imagination, and she’d chalked it up to that.
No way could anyone have followed her from Las Vegas. Even if someone could have, why would they? She had no enemies. The only person she’d given the police information about was dead.
She should be safe and happy and preparing for her daughter’s birth. She wasn’t any of those things, and if she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she hadn’t been in months.
The house fell silent, whoever was outside was quiet. Jesse wasn’t barking. The woman wasn’t screaming. Tristan was obviously handling whatever he’d found.
Whoever he’d found?
Had there really been someone outside the window? Jesse had sure been acting as if there was.
The faint sound of voices drifted into the house. A man’s. A woman’s. Or, maybe, a girl’s. No gunshots. No more screams. Whatever danger had been there seemed to be gone. She turned on the light, the crystal prisms on the chandelier sending rainbows across the gleaming floor. Tristan had closed the door when he’d walked outside.
She could open the door, go outside and see what was going on.
Or...she could stay where she was and hope that Tristan returned eventually.
She’d never been one to wait around for others to do what she could. She walked to the front door and had her hand on the knob when someone knocked.
She jumped back, biting back a scream.
“Ariel?” Tristan called through the thick wood, and she opened the door.
Tristan looked furious.
That was her first thought.
Her second thought was that he had good reason to be.
His sister, Mia, stood beside him, her face set in the perpetual scowl that Ariel had been seeing every day for weeks.
“Mia!” she said, surprised that the teenage girl was on her front porch. “What are you doing here?”
“That’s exactly what I was trying to find out,” Tristan muttered, giving his sister a gentle nudge into the house.
“I...” Mia began, and then shook her head, her straight dark bangs falling across her eyes.
“Spill it,” Tristan demanded, and Mia scowled.
“How about we discuss it over some lemonade or ice tea?” Ariel suggested. There was no sense standing in the foyer staring each other down, and it was obvious Mia had no intention of speaking. Not yet.
“I don’t believe in rewarding poor behavior,” Tristan replied. “She was outside looking in your back window. That doesn’t earn her a glass of lemonade.”
“What does it earn me? More time alone at the house?” Mia retorted.
“No phone,” he growled. “No TV. No visits with Jenny, either.”
That seemed to get Mia’s attention.
The teen scowled and crossed her arms over her stomach. “That’s not fair. I only came here because I heard someone had been shot at the high school. I knew you and Ms. Martin were supposed to be meeting there.”
“You went to the school?” Tristan’s jaw tightened. “I told you to go straight home after school and get some of the work that you’re missing done.”
“I did go straight home.”
“And