Perhaps she’d be better off taking her chances with the murderer.
WHEN THEY GOT back to Cameron’s house, Jack’s first order of business was to make sure that the doors had been repaired per his orders—first the front lock, and then the French doors off the master bedroom balcony. As he’d instructed, the agency had sent over a maintenance crew to board the door and clean up the glass.
Cameron eyed their handiwork skeptically. “It definitely adds that certain ‘vandalized’ quality I was going for with my renovation.”
“It’s safe. We can worry about style later,” Jack said.
The second thing he did was conduct a thorough check of the premises, with Cameron by his side until he was sure they were clear. This was no quick feat, given the size of the house.
“Did you used to be married?” he asked as he opened the closet in one of the guest bedrooms.
“No,” she said, seeming surprised by the question.
Rules out the rich ex-husband idea, Jack thought.
Another mystery he would soon get to the bottom of.
Third on his list was to get settled in. He took the room closest to Cameron’s—which luckily, unlike the other guest bedrooms, actually had furniture—and unpacked his bag. He shrugged out of his blazer and hung it in the closet. He put his spare gun on the nightstand, then opened one of the drawers of the dresser in the corner.
He discovered a man’s sweatshirt inside.
Jack slammed the drawer shut and chose another.
He moved next onto the fourth item on the evening’s agenda: taking care of Cameron.
She was doing a pretty good job with the tough criminal prosecutor routine, pretending to be fine with everything that had happened that afternoon. But he had seen the exhaustion that had set into her eyes in the car ride to her house, had heard the nervousness that belied the sarcasm in her voice as she’d commented on the boarded-up French doors, and had noticed the way she’d momentarily hesitated when she’d followed him up the stairs that led to the second floor, undoubtedly thinking back to the masked intruder’s earlier attack.
He guessed she hadn’t eaten in hours. That seemed as good a place as any to start. Pausing at her bedroom door to make sure everything sounded okay, Jack headed downstairs into the kitchen. He found her junk drawer and a well-worn menu from a Chinese restaurant a couple blocks away and figured that was a safe bet. He had no idea what she’d want to eat, so he ordered a bunch of things—screw it, he’d charge it to the Bureau. Besides, this way they’d have leftovers. From the looks of her refrigerator and freezer, she was an even worse cook than he was. Thank God for delivery, because a six-foot-two-inch man couldn’t last more than an hour on those skimpy frozen meals. He’d been stranded in a jungle in Colombia for five nights with four other guys on his Special Forces team and still had seen larger rations than those things.
Next, he checked out the liquor cabinet in her dining room. From the looks of it, she liked wine and she liked it red, so he went with the safe bet and chose a cabernet. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, he knew she would need some help falling asleep that night. While listening to the sound of water running upstairs, he made his way around the kitchen and poured her a glass of wine. The doorbell rang a few minutes later, and, after a brief moment of confusion when Jack frisked the delivery guy, asked him for his I.D., and called the restaurant to confirm his status, they were set to go.
Jack set the bags of food on the counter, grabbed the wineglass, and headed upstairs. Cameron had left her bedroom door partially open, as he’d asked her to. He knocked.
“Come in,” she said in quiet voice.
Jack pushed the door the rest of the way open. He found her standing in front of her closet and walked over. “I thought you might want a glass of wine to help you . . .” He trailed off as she turned around, stunned by what he saw.
There were tears in her eyes.
Of course, he realized. The closet where the killer had been hiding, waiting for her.
He set the wineglass on the floor and went to her. “Cameron . . . everything’s okay now. You know that, right?”