At the word gifts, Monica shivered and her eyes slid to the white box resting in front of Detective Carter. Shaun wanted to comfort and protect her as he hadn’t been able to do for his sister.
As he hadn’t been able to do for any of the women in his life.
“Couldn’t the L.A. police find anything?” Monica asked him.
“They focused on the anti-abortion activists angle, but I thought that the notes Johnny got were different from hers. His were violent death threats, but one of her notes quoted from Don Juan by Lord Byron—the same quote as that.” He pointed to Monica’s note.
Her eyes became wide and dark in her pale face. “So that’s why it caught your attention.”
When he’d read it, he’d felt a burning in his chest like red hot barbecue briquettes. “I recognized the quote because I had looked it up when I saw it in Clare’s note. It was the only time he ever quoted from a poem. The LAPD even searched the database for any quote from Byron’s poetry being used in any other stalker or murder cases, but they never found anything that tied to Clare’s stalker.” Until now.
Shaun shouldn’t have let Clare go to L.A. He should have argued more with her. He should have been there for her rather than down south on the border patrol. She might have confided in him. He might have been able to do something about the stalker.
He happened to look up and he saw Monica’s eyes on him. She seemed to see through the expression on his face, past the words he said to the words he didn’t say, reading his thoughts. Her eyes and her face were filled with compassion, reaching out to him. It was as if she were trying to tell him that it hadn’t been his fault.
Except she was wrong. It had been his fault. He was supposed to have protected Clare.
“How did the stalker know she was consulting for the family planning clinic?” Detective Carter asked.
Shaun shrugged. “Everyone knew. She didn’t keep it a secret.”
“But how would the stalker have known if she was still consulting for them or if she had stopped?” Monica asked.
He hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know,” Shaun said. The notes had become more and more threatening, but he hadn’t considered how the stalker knew she hadn’t stopped working on the clinic.
Detective Carter made notes in his notebook. “I’ll look into that.”
“What happened to the family planning clinic?”
“It never opened, but not because of the death threats or Clare’s death. Funding eventually fell through.”
“And I’m working on funding for my free children’s clinic right now,” Monica said. “What does this guy have against free clinics?”
“Maybe that’s the connection,” Shaun said. Clare’s stalking had seemed so random, but maybe they’d found a clue that would lead them to the stalker. “We need to check all the other stalking cases involving women working for free clinics.”
“I’ll look into it,” Detective Carter promised. He then turned to Monica. “Stalkers are rarely rational, and they can also be unpredictable. Be careful. Keep an eye out for suspicious cars, try to make sure you’re not followed when you go home from work. Call me at the first sign of anything unusual.”
Monica nodded, but they were interrupted by a bustling at the front of the restaurant as her aunt, Becca Itoh, hurried into the dining room. Several of the other customers looked up at the disturbance she created in her panic, but Detective Carter rose to his feet and gave Becca a hard, meaningful look and a subtle gesture with his hand. Becca’s gaze flitted around the dining room, then she walked calmly to join them at their table.
“Are you all right?” She gave Monica a hug.
Monica’s hand grasping her aunt’s shoulder clenched once, then relaxed. “I’m fine.”
While Monica explained what had happened, it gave Shaun an opportunity to study her. She tucked her long, wavy hair behind her ear when she concentrated on something, and her clear eyes seemed to glitter like golden gemstones, framed by her dark lashes.
When their gazes had met earlier, his attraction for her had hit him like a train wreck. It was still the same today as it was when they’d first met years ago. Then, there had been an ardent fire in her eyes, which she hid behind a cool demeanor. Holding him at arm’s length, like he had Ebola or something.
Today, she’d again tried to be cool when he first came up to her, but for a moment during their brief conversation, before he’d angered her, he’d seen a flash of warmth in her amber eyes, a softening of her mouth. It somehow soothed him in a deep place inside.
He had been confused, so of course he ruined everything by getting into an argument with her about Phillip Bromley.
It was for the best. He would be stupid to get involved with a woman like Monica Grant. Any woman, actually. All the women in his life ended up dead.
He hadn’t taken care of Clare well enough. He hadn’t been able to save those illegal immigrants who had been killed at the border by the “coyote,” a smuggler those people had hired to help them cross into the U.S.
He felt like he’d failed all the people in his life he was supposed to protect, and he wasn’t about to let another one in.
She might end up dead, too.
But sitting here, looking at her, it was hard for him to remind himself that she was better off without him. As he studied the curves of her face, the color of her lips, he had to admit that she was even more magnetic than when he’d last seen her.
“Clare never found out who the stalker was?” Becca asked Shaun, drawing his attention from the glossy dark waves of Monica’s hair.
“He never met her face-to-face. She kept trying to find out who he was so she could issue a restraining order against him. She tried backtracking the packages he sent her, but couldn’t come up with any proof of who it was.”
He glanced at Monica and resolved to speak privately to the detective about his suspicions. No need to alarm her, but he had to give the police everything he knew so this madman wouldn’t slip away between their fingers. That frustration nagged and ate at him like an ulcer.
Although Clare was already gone, he had been driven to find her killer. If this were the same man, here was a chance for Shaun to catch him.
He hadn’t yet turned in his application for the Sonoma Police Department. He hadn’t quite understood why he’d been dragging his heels, but now he was glad because it gave him time to investigate Monica’s letter-writer—assuming the stalker followed the same pattern as he did before.
The man had already taken his sister’s life, and maybe others in the years since her death. He had to stop him from terrorizing any more young women.
He would find out who the man was. And this time, he wouldn’t let him get away with harming Monica.
TWO
“We’re not done with this conversation,” Monica’s dad said. “I think you should just lay aside the plans for this clinic for now.”
Her father was regaining mobility and strength in his legs daily, but he still required her strength to help him out of the car. She steered him into his wheelchair because the physical therapy he had been doing would have tired his legs too much for him to use the walker comfortably.
“Dad, I’m almost fully funded.” She set in place the temporary wooden ramp up the front steps of the house to the