Copper Lake Confidential - By Marilyn Pappano Page 0,84
was good, smooth, burned her throat and heated her core temperature to almost normal. It felt pleasurable enough that she took another drink. Even her fingertips and toes were warming, and her knees had stopped knocking. If it weren’t for the subject, she could almost pretend this was just a man and a woman who were attracted to each other having a drink together in the middle of the night.
“What did Scooter do when you let him outside?”
The unexpected question made her blink. “He raced out the door, ran into the shadows near the back fence and presumably did his business there, then sniffed around the pool and all the way back to the house. Usual dog stuff.”
He was quiet a moment before saying, “I should have told you, Mace, so you would’ve known but...Scooter doesn’t go out at night.”
Chapter 13
Her grip tightened around the cup, and she took a third drink, larger than the first sips. Her mouth thinned and shadows darkened her eyes. Stephen shrugged. “I suppose it could happen. I can’t remember him ever doing it before, but that doesn’t mean he can’t. It’s just his routine is to go out before bed, then sleep like a log until morning. Unless...”
“Something wakes him,” she said flatly. “You think whoever lit those candles was in the house when he got me up?”
He hesitated to answer. She’d had enough scares already. But that was the point, wasn’t it? She’d had plenty of scares by someone, ghost or human, who had access to her house. If one more fright put her on edge enough to keep her and Clary safe, it would be worth it.
As long as it didn’t push her over the edge.
“More likely the guy woke him as he was leaving. Scooter would have let you know if someone was actually in the house when he was awake. Maybe his point for going out was to make sure the guy was gone.”
“But the alarm was set. I had to disarm it to let him out. I had to reset it when he came back in.”
He summoned his calmest doctor voice. “Honey, if someone’s been moving things, they’ve been in the house before. They have the code and the key.”
“But—but who? I haven’t just given out codes and keys to random people. There’s no reason.”
Random people. That was the problem. Whoever was doing this wasn’t some acquaintance.
When she reached for the cup, he took her hand instead and pulled her over onto his lap. Her slender body was trembling again, nowhere near as badly as when she’d dragged him from a deep sleep, but enough to make him hurt for her. Enough to make him want to hurt whoever was doing this to her. “Who has access?”
She dragged her fingers through her hair before settling her head on his shoulder. “Me. Brent and Anne. Robbie Calloway. The alarm company. Possibly the cleaning service Robbie hired when I told him I was coming back.” A defensive tone entered her voice. “Who has access to your house?”
“Me, Marnie and my landlady.” He trusted Marnie with his life, the same way Macy trusted Brent.
But Stephen didn’t really know Brent, and he hadn’t talked as much to Anne as he had to Brent. His gut instinct was to trust them, but with Macy’s sanity on the line, if not her life, he couldn’t rule out anyone automatically.
“Okay. Robbie. Could he have a motive to hurt you, scare you, make you think you’re crazy?”
“No. No one does.” She lunged to her feet to pace, and he missed the warmth and weight of her body immediately. “I’m just an average woman, Stephen. I’ve got a daughter, and we’ve both got some money. There may be people who don’t like me, but no one who cares enough to qualify as an enemy. No one feels that intensely about me.”
“That’s not true. I feel intensely about you.”
Slowly she smiled, though the stress didn’t leave her face. “But in a good way. No one dislikes me enough to want to hurt me.”
She wanted to believe that. So did he. But the events of the past few days suggested otherwise.
Okay, so he knew Robbie and figured he could dismiss him. The Calloway family had multiple fortunes of its own, one with Robbie’s name on it. He would have been careful about the access granted to the cleaning service, and as for the alarm company, Macy was just one more customer. There was nothing personal between them and her.