“Be careful.”
“Always.” Rawley left the office, his boots clicking on the linoleum. He returned to his desk, slipped into his coat, as hechecked his phone one last time, and pulled his hat down low over his brow. The morning sun glinted off the snow almost blinding him as he left the department and headed for his truck. As he pulled out of the lot, he looked across the street and saw Timeless Treasures, the antique store, and remembered that Skylar had some in her home, so maybe he could find something in there for Christmas. He’d check but for now, he roamed the streets and roads of Clifton. As he drove along the streets, he saw it was beginning to snow again.
****
Skylar’s fingers flew across her keyboard, the rapid-fire clicking echoed in her office. Words cascaded through her mind like a waterfall today, demanding to be captured before they evaporated into the air. Too many brilliant midnight phrases had vanished by morning; perfect sentences that dissolved like sugar in hot coffee. The memory of those lost words had driven her to place a leather-bound notebook and her pen on her nightstand. Now, no matter if it was three a.m. with moonlight streaming through her curtains, she’d flip on her bedside lamp and scribble frantically.
She chuckled, remembering this morning’s words, her half-conscious handwriting resembling a doctor’s prescription, loops and lines dancing drunkenly across the page as she squinted, coffee in hand, trying to decipher what brilliant thought had seemed so urgent in the dark.
Once she finished the chapter, she pushed her chair back with a soft scrape against the hardwood floor, got up with stiff limbs, and picked up her coffee cup. The dregs at the bottom had gone cold hours ago. She headed to the kitchen, the floorboards creaking beneath her fuzzy slippers. She’d made the coffee strong this morning, dark as motor oil and twice as bitter, since she’d barely slept, tossing and turning between the sheets. Thosemen with their cold eyes would not get out of her head. She was terrified of what they could do. Not only to her, but to Rawley with that damn badge that glinted like a target.
Being so deeply in love with him also scared her, a feeling like standing at the edge of a cliff with the wind at her back. If he didn’t feel the same, she knew her heart would shatter into a thousand jagged pieces, but he had never said those three little words that could anchor her. She longed to tell him, but as Ryan had stated, it could scare him off.
“Well, if it scares him off, you’d have to deal with it,” she whispered to the empty room.
Entering the kitchen, sunlight streaming through frost-edged windows, she smiled when she spotted Cosmo on his windowsill as he stared out at the snow, tail twitching with predatory interest. She removed a K-cup from the carousel and placed it into the coffee maker, pressed brew and waited, inhaling the rich aroma that filled the air.
As she stood at the window, gazing at the pristine blanket of snow that sparkled like diamond dust, a dark movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. She stared out at the spot where the shadow had been, squinting against the glare, but saw only the untouched expanse of white.
“You’re getting paranoid,” she murmured, but the goosebumps rising on her arms told her she had every right to be.
Once her coffee finished brewing, she picked up the cup, stirring in two heaping spoonfuls of sugar and a splash of heavy cream this time, then headed back to her office. As she settled into her creaking desk chair, she swore she heard a noise, a faint scratching against the frost-covered window.
“Come on, Skylar. Who would be out in this blizzard if they didn’t have to be?”
But she knew if those men, those hollow-eyed strangers wanted to scare her, they wouldn’t hesitate. Howling wind and snow wouldn’t stop them.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, walked to her office, pulled out her chair, sat down and tried to focus on the glowing screen before her, but when she heard another sound outside, like boots crunching through ice-crusted snow, she snatched up her phone with trembling fingers and called Rawley. She hated disturbing him while he was working, but he’d insisted she call anytime, so she found his name in her contacts and pressed the call button. It rang twice before his deep, reassuring voice came through.
“Good morning,” he said, warmth in his tone.
“Rawley,” she choked out, her voice barely above a whisper.
“What is it?” he asked, his tone shifting to alert concern.
“I’m sorry to bother you—”
“Skylar, you’re never bothering me. What is it?” The firmness in his voice steadied her.
“While I was making another cup of coffee, I swore I saw a shadow move past the kitchen window, but when I looked, there was nothing there but swirling snow, and I thought I was just seeing things, but then I heard something scraping against the house, twice—”
“Did you look out to see if there were any footprints?”
She mentally groaned, wondering why she hadn’t thought of that, but she was way too scared to open the door and told him that.
“I’m on my way.” He disconnected.
She stared at the blinking cursor on her computer screen, knowing the words wouldn’t come until Rawley arrived, so she retreated to the living room and turned on the TV, the flickering images casting eerie shadows across the walls, but her attention remained fixed on every creak and groan of the house as itweathered the wind and snow. She perched on the edge of the sofa, every muscle tense, ears straining for the sound of Rawley’s truck in the driveway as the minutes crawled by like hours.
****
Rawley’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel as his truck crept over the snow-blanketed roads. The tires crunched through the fresh powder, leaving twin tracks behind him. Skylar’s panicked voice still echoed in his ears, the tremor in it unlike anything he’d heard from her before.
When he finally reached her house, he pulled into the driveway where untouched snow sparkled like diamond dust under the winter sun. The engine died as he shut it off and stepped out, his boots sinking ankle-deep. Fat, wet flakes now tumbled from a pewter sky, clinging to his coat and melting against his face. The storm had ambushed the county just minutes after he’d left the office, thickening with each passing mile.
The porch door open, and there stood Skylar, her blonde hair wild around her shoulders, her face pale. He quickly made his way to her and kissed her trembling lips, then enfolded her in his arms, feeling her heart hammering against his chest.
“I’ll look around. Go back inside, it’s too cold out,” he said, his breath forming clouds between them.
