look.
“If somebody’s acting foolish over me, that’s their business, darlin’. Nothing you or I need to worry about.”
His voice was deathly calm, the tone so chill that it sent a shiver down my spine.
Some of the heat came out, though, when he added, “But when it comes to Carrie, that’s a different story. Nobody threatens my family and walks away.”
“Are you sure it’s a threat?” It felt like one, but I was trying—hard—not to freak out, and to keep an open mind, just in case I was overreacting. It didn’t feel like I was overreacting, but I was doing my best to stay calm. “I mean, there isn’t anything particularly threatening about it. Carrie does look like you.”
“Someone I don’t know gets close enough to our baby to take a picture of her, that’s threat enough.”
He took the turn into the parking lot outside Beulah’s on two wheels and slammed to a stop just at the bottom of the stairs. The car quivered. I did, too.
He pushed his door open. “Stay here.”
Normally, I would have told him that I’m not a dog and he can’t order me to sit and stay, but under the circumstances, I figured he’d get more done on his own, and besides, I didn’t want to remove Carrie from the car. I wanted her safe, cocooned, where I knew no one could get at her. I waited for him to slam the door and then I locked the car from the inside, and watched him take the steps up to Beulah’s front door two at a time. When he wrenched the door open and strode in, like the wrath of God in human form, the look on his face and the tension in his body ought to have been enough to have any evildoers scurrying for cover.
No one did. Or at least nobody came out of the restaurant after he went in, so if our unknown photographer was still in there, she was sticking it out.
I was pretty sure she was gone, though. I wouldn’t have been. And not only that: from where I was sitting, I had a view of the entire parking lot, to the left in front of the building, to the right, beside the building, and the area next to the entrance. There was no small, light-colored compact anywhere.
Unless our unknown stalker had access to more than one car, and if so, all bets were off.
The phone rang, and I took my eyes off the parking lot, and the front door, to see who it was. It came as no surprise that it was Charlotte. “Are you OK?” she wanted to know.
I told her where I was and what I was doing. “Rafe’s inside, putting the fear of God into whoever is left in there. I don’t think the person who took the picture is still inside, but if anyone knows who she is, he’ll get it out of them.”
Charlotte made an agreeing sort of noise. She knows how scary Rafe can be when he puts his mind to it, and besides, Yvonne probably wouldn’t be OK with this either, and would put her own weight behind his to get whoever knew something to spill.
“Are you OK, though?” Charlotte asked again.
“I’m…” I hesitated. “I’m not sure what I am. It was frustrating and a little funny when it was Rafe getting the attention. I only got worried because of Elspeth, and I didn’t worry much, because I know he can take care of himself. I figured, if this person went around the bend and came after me, I’d deal with it. But Carrie…”
“She’s a baby,” Charlotte said, stating the obvious.
Yes. She was. And she was my baby. I wasn’t any more inclined than Rafe to sit back and let anyone threaten her. My first instinct hadn’t been to go on the warpath and flex my muscles and yell at anyone, though. What I did first, was to lock all the doors and hunker down, where I could keep my eye on her.
Some sort of ancestral memory thing, probably. The man goes out and beats his chest, killing the mammoth and dragging it home, and the woman tends the home fires and the babies, and beats off any predators that happen by with a stick.
The door to Beulah’s opened, and Rafe came out, with Yvonne right behind. For a second it looked like she was escorting him out, sort of forcibly. But as he stepped down to the ground and turned to talk