a little frisson of heat curling down her spine. She lifted her chin at him. “Did you know that Raine is required to do a background check on anyone she hangs around with?”
He folded his arms across his chest, looking more relaxed than ever. “Doesn’t surprise me.”
“She’s done one on everyone with the exception of you. Said she didn’t want to raise any flags in case you had enemies that might have alerts on your file. She also said she didn’t want you paying her a visit in the middle of the night. Is there a possibility of that if she had alerted an enemy? Or if any of the people who find out about me do rat me out?”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation.
Stella’s restless fingers gripped the sheet. “I don’t want that for you, Sam. You said so yourself, you put in your time. If something goes wrong, I’m a big girl, I can handle it. We can handle it without you going back to that place, whatever it is or was. We both came here because the Eastern Sierras offer something beautiful and unique, something we couldn’t find anywhere else. It’s my place of peace, of happiness. I think it’s yours as well. We started over here and we’ve got something good. Nothing can take that away, not even this serial killer.” She sent him a small smile. “You get me?”
His answering smile was slow in coming. “Woman, you’re about as good as it gets. A gift. Write up your report and make your sketches. I’ll make your hot chocolate for you.” He stood up, took a step and stopped, turning back to her. For a moment he just stared at her with those dark, fathomless eyes.
“What?”
Sam shook his head. “Don’t want to lose you, woman. Not for any reason. If I lose my mind and fuck up, you hang in with me and let me know what I did and how to fix it.” He stood a moment longer and then turned his back on her and sauntered out of the room as only Sam could.
Stella let her breath out. As declarations went, it was a good one, a Sam one, and she’d take it because he always meant every word he said. He could melt her heart when he did unexpected things like grill salmon for her at the end of a long day when she was so tired she just wanted to curl up in her egg chair and forget everything. When he brought her an ice-cold beer, or watched her favorite movie for the tenth time without complaint, those were Sam things. He bought books she liked, treats for Bailey, he remembered to get the particular kind of chocolate she loved. He was quiet about it. The books would show up occasionally, the chocolate would be in the kitchen and Bailey always had treats. Sam was thoughtful and he kept them uppermost in his mind.
Stella switched on her lamp and pulled the drawing pad and journal out of the drawer of her nightstand. The moment she illuminated the bedroom, she had that eerie feeling she didn’t like, the one that told her someone could see in. She wished she’d gotten black-out screens for the windows instead of the shades that allowed her to see through them to the lake. She loved her views and hadn’t wanted to compromise them.
She glanced at the window. She was being silly, wasn’t she, letting her imagination get the better of her? The aftereffects of the nightmare. She put one hand in the air and it was still trembling. It wasn’t as if she could say she wasn’t still freaked out by her dreams just because she was being proactive and Sam and Zahra were helping her.
She forced her mind to be meticulous about remembering every component she could, writing it all down, and then she began to sketch. She was better at drawing. The details emerged when she fleshed out her illustration. She got lost in the picture, no longer thinking in terms of it being a serial killer’s view, or a witness’s view, but simply an artist’s rendition of two backpackers on a trail in the very early morning hours as they started on their journey.
It was dark and she filled in that darkness with charcoal, adding the woman’s brief spotlighting of the floor of the trail, various rocks and the walls by putting each separate image in its own square, much like a graphic novelist might