to put together. He seems to like to have me following his clues. I wish I could see another way past this, but . . . I can’t.
I sit tense and silent the rest of the ride until I’m dropped at my house.
Sam’s putting his keys in the tray on the table, and I can’t help but notice that he’s wearing his gun on his belt. He looks down at it, noticing my glance, and unclips it. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess I’m a little jumpy. I’ll put it away.”
“Where did you go?”
“I took Vee home. She said she wanted to change clothes. I’ll pick her up later.”
“She get inside okay?”
“Yes. And her new alarm system was installed yesterday; I made sure she set it after she went in. But it’s anybody’s guess how diligent she’s going to be with it. You know Vee.”
“You see anything odd?” I’m transferring the contents of my pockets to the table, and taking off my shoulder holster to put that away too. “Anyone watching her?”
“Nothing,” he says. “But God knows it’s easy enough to set up a surveillance camera these days. Our guy doesn’t even need to be close to be watching her. Or us, for that matter.”
That is a particularly specific paranoia that I hadn’t tripped over until now, and I have to resist the urge to storm out the front door and check the trees for cameras. And our neighbor’s trees and eaves too. Which will just make me look strange, so I rein myself in. If he’s watching, there’s not much I can do about that.
I wasn’t going to tell Sam everything, but now I realize that I need to. He needs to understand where things stand and what might happen, and so I tell him about chasing down Len at the mailing store, about tackling him, about being seen and noticed coming and going. And he takes it about as well as I could have expected.
“Gwen, dammit—” He stops, takes a breath, and shakes his head. “I know you didn’t deliberately put yourself in danger, but damn. If he’d had a gun—”
“I had a gun,” I point out. “And he didn’t draw one. Which is good, because I don’t know how I’d have played off a broad-daylight gunfight.” I sound confident, but I’m not. “Sam. I’m okay. Really. But we do need to be aware that this could trace back to me, if the KPD really, really wants to take an interest. And then it could get rough.”
He nods, but his eyes stay dark. “Okay. Would you consider handing all this over to J. B., or Kezia, or, well, anyone? Just get out of the middle of it, please. I don’t like where this is going.” He doesn’t ask me for things like that often; he knows me all too well. But he’s right. This isn’t just a simple harassment campaign.
“I’ll give everything I have to J. B. as soon as I look into the Melvin message boards and groupies,” I tell him. My boss is damn good at what she does, and she hires people who are even better at specific things. One of them will be able to make this work where I might not.
He doesn’t really believe me—as well he shouldn’t, as obsessive as I usually am when it comes to anything Melvin Royal–related—but he lets it go. I take a few seconds to use the login info I swiped from the mailing store and find the footage of myself; I wince when I realize it probably would be a pretty clear tipoff that something was up, and erase it. I put the thumb drive containing the probably useless surveillance footage on my desk, kiss him, and go and hug my kids. They’re fine, of course. Connor, ever observant, says, “You’ve got dirt on your pants. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I tell him. “I brushed up against a dirty bumper.” I don’t like lying to him, but I don’t want to spark any worry either. Bad enough for me and Sam to be on edge. I don’t need the kids to be there with us. “Hey. So. Counseling. You ready?”
He nods and closes his laptop. I give him a pat on the knee and get up to get Lanny in motion, but she’s already putting on her shoes. I don’t know where my daughter gets her excellent taste in footwear, because I’m very utilitarian, and I’m always startled how well she coordinates. “Half an hour until our appointment,” she