The mudroom door slammed shut, the bang reverberating through the dark cabin. Elliot spun, the incautious move sending pain flashing through the damaged nerves and muscles of his knee. He ignored it and sprinted for the back of the cabin.
The mudroom door swung back and forth in the wind. The breeze sighed. As Elliot checked in the entrance way, the door languidly sailed back and then flew forward again, bouncing off the door frame with a loud bang.
Elliot was across the mud porch in three steps. He stepped out onto the stoop training his weapon on the yard before him.
Nothing moved in the clearing behind the cabin.
Nothing moved along the black wall of trees.
Even the wind seemed to hold its breath and wait.
After a long, long moment, Elliot went back inside, locking the door behind him. He was now sure he was alone within the house but his nervous tension did not ease. The thought of the destroyed miniatures set his heart drumming in mingled fury and outrage. This invasion of his home offended him on every level and—though he refused to admit it—scared him.
He continued to search the cabin for further signs of his intruder.
When he was confident the bottom level was secure, he started slowly up the stairs. Knowing how badly disadvantaged he was on stairs, his disquiet spiked with each careful step.
Midway up, his nostrils twitched and disquiet turned to alarm.
His heart was galloping in the fight or flight response as he reached the last step and advanced toward his bedroom.
His left arm started to shake with the strain of holding the flashlight high, and the circle of light jittered over floorboards and paneling. He flattened himself to the wall outside the bedroom.
His stomach churned with nausea—and not merely because dynamic entries were some of the most dangerous. He knew that particular stink. Once experienced it was never forgotten.
Death.
He shoved the flashlight in his waistband. Using the cover of the doorway, he whipped his pistol around the frame and snatched a quick look.
Nothing.
Slowly canting his body around the corner, he rapidly scanned the moonlit room, swiftly covering the perimeter with his weapon.
There. A large shadow in the middle of his bed. Someone crouching against the headboard?
Elliot yelled, “Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off.”
The figure didn’t flinch. Didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t take a breath.
Elliot’s ears strained the quiet.
It was too quiet. Nothing alive could be that quiet.
He brought the pistol high and close to his chest, gritted his jaw, and stepped out into ready stance, training his Glock on the unmoving bulk sitting on his bed.
No movement.
No sign of life.
He had known halfway up the staircase what he was going to find. He forced himself to face it, reaching for the wall switch.
Mellow light flooded the room, made visible the tidy bedroom: the Ivan Shishkin prints in rustic frames, the ginger jar lamps with their cheerful yellow-and-gold leaf patterns, the wide double bed with the brown-and-white-striped duvet. Every detail seemed startlingly vivid, as though he were seeing the room and its furnishings for the first time.
But in fact there was only one new addition to his bedroom. Steven Roche sat in the middle of the bed, slumped against the headboard. His half-open eyes were dull and fixed. A corkscrew was jammed in the base of his throat.
* * *
The sheriffs arrived first, red and blue lights flashing eerily through the trees as their SUVs wound up the island road to the cabin. Elliot met them outside the cabin, making his report in the wood-smoke-scented night while the police radios crackled with reports of other emergencies and disasters and the stars twinkled overhead. He had been through the grim routine of crime scenes many times—though never as a victim—and he kept his answers brief and to the point.
Maybe too brief and to the point.
He got the impression, though no one came right out and said so, that there was something suspicious about a homeowner who didn’t have hysterics upon finding a dead neighbor in his bed.
“If you didn’t give Mr. Roche a key to your cabin, how did he get in?” the deputy who took Elliot’s statement asked him twice.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have any idea what Mr. Roche wanted?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Was Mr. Roche in the habit of waiting in your bedroom for you to arrive home?”
“No.” Elliot stared at him coldly and steadily until the deputy’s gaze fell.
It probably didn’t help when he advised them to leave the crime scene for the FBI, but by then he didn’t care.
Tacoma police arrived about an hour after the Sheriff Department. Elliot watched in relief as Tucker unfolded from the backseat of a white-and-gray police vehicle. Tucker looked around the crowded front yard, spotted Elliot and came straight over to him.
It was the first time they had met since Saturday and Elliot was unsure of what their new protocol was. He told himself he was braced for anything, including Tucker grilling him like any suspect.
“Are you okay?” Tucker demanded.
Elliot relaxed infinitesimally. “Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
They didn’t touch, but that was merely a technicality. Elliot could see from the way the sheriff deputies were eying each other that no one had missed the connection that rippled between them like a live current.
“I’ll be right back.”
Elliot nodded.
Tucker disappeared with the detectives inside the cabin. Fifteen minutes later he was back, crossing the yard to Elliot, who leaned against the paramedic truck. “Bring me up to speed,” he ordered.
Elliot went through his story once again, and Tucker’s face grew darker and more dangerous with each word.
“What the hell was Roche doing in your place to begin with?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t have a key.”
“You didn’t leave a spare with him?” An expression flitted across Tucker’s face that might have been jealousy. It was unexpected. Even more unexpected, and probably unreasonable, was that Elliot found it reassuring. He was having a hard time in his role as victim, and it helped to see that crack in Tucker’s hard professionalism.
“No. The only person with a spare key to the cabin is my dad.”
“All right.” Tucker was scowling and Elliot could read his thoughts as though he’d spoken them aloud.
“No way.”
Tucker’s brows drew together. “Elliot, your safety is the priority now.”
“I’m not going into protective custody.”
“You are if I say you are.”
“Is that so? Somebody assign you executive powers when I wasn’t looking?”
They were attracting an audience. Tucker lowered his voice, but it clearly took effort. “Look, I don’t want to argue with you.”
“Good. I don’t want to argue with you either.”
“But you are in protective custody until this thing is resolved.”
Elliot squared his shoulders. “Not unless you plan on arresting me.”
Tucker forgot himself so far as to grip Elliot’s arm. Hard. “Goddamn it, Elliot. This freak has tried for you twice. You may not be as lucky the third time.”
Elliot freed himself and said with a calmness that was probably more about fatigue than genuine cool, “Well, Special Agent Lance, then I guess you better figure out how you’re going to catch him before he catches me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The argument didn’t end there, of course.
They argued all the way back to the ferry—Tucker choosing to drive with Elliot rather than Detectives Anderson and Pine—they argued on the ferry crossing and they argued on the drive back to Tucker’s apartment.
