The following morning, with a headless gingerbread man in her hand and a full mouth, Krista parked her car behind the station. Winter sucked. Even now, working banker’s hours, it was still dark when she started and finished work,wasting the day away inside concrete walls like some common prisoner.
Today, Mallory had her working in booking and processing and then possibly organizing the evidence locker. Slamming her car door and shivering from her lack of gloves, Krista paused. Eyes were on her. She felt them like a mosquito perched on her arm. A slight prickly sensation wended its way up her spine. Myles? No. He had no reason to watch her. He could see her any time he wanted, and so far, since she’d moved upstairs to the offices, she’d barely seen him at all. No, these eyes were different. They didn’t feel altogether sinister, just … curious.
Spinning around and checking for anything nefarious or out of the ordinary, she surveyed the area. But there was nothing out of place. A pair of crows nattered on a power line, and a black cat sprinted across a nearby driveway. Yet despite all that, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.
Giving the area one final sweep but seeing nothing shady, she shook it off, crossed her fingers that it wasn’t Myles, and headed inside.
Krista was dead on her feet and absolutely starving by the time she clocked out from the station. She had completely missed lunch, being caught up in the evidence locker with Mallory. The two had decided to reorganize and refile everything. Thankfully, they both appeared to have a touch of OCD and a penchant for alphabetization, so the system they devised together worked well.
She drove to the grocery store and trudged inside, dodging other weary patrons who were probably going to buy far more than they needed because they were shopping hungry. And once again, like earlier that day, the feeling of being watched was back, tickling the hair on her neck and putting her whole body on high alert.
She was being followed.
Someone in the grocery store was only there because Krista was. They were watching her, following her, tracking her, which couldn’t have been easy givenhow busy the place was.
But that didn’t matter. She was being spied on, stalked, and come hell or high water, she was going to find out who it was and what they wanted.
Making sure her belly was hidden beneath her heavy winter coat, Krista put her best cop face on, pulled her badge from her purse and began canvasing the place.
Up and down the aisles she roamed, no longer aware of her growling stomach but on an impromptu manhunt. She was hunting her hunter, determined to confront him and find out why she currently felt like a bug under a scope.
And then she saw him, sticking out like a sore thumb, standing by the checkout reading a fish and wildlife magazine, with his ball cap drawn down over his brow and a dark gray hoodie. He was big, like Brock big. His shoes and clothes were clean, and the Tissot watch on his wrist said that he had taste and style but wasn’t pretentious. This was not some junkie or homeless man out to exact revenge because she’d made him move sleeping spots. This was a guy with a job and money, and yet he was making it his sole mission to keep tabs on her. Why?
But unlike Mr. Ball Cap, Krista was going to play it cool. It would do no good to march up to him and demand to know what he was up to. He could simply feign ignorance and claim that she was some crazy lady who thought she was being followed but wasn’t.
Instead, she continued to wander up and down the aisles, perusing and shopping, stopping to check the ingredients on a box of cereal or compare prices of salsa. Every time she turned the corner onto a new aisle, there he was, his basket loaded with miscellaneous items to make it look real, but it was the way he stopped and the way he walked that said he wasn’t there to shop.
Krista had been shopping with her dad, her brother and now Brock enough times to know that men didn’t wander when they shopped. They shopped like they were on a mission. And that mission was to get in and get out in as little time as possible, and then carry all twenty-seven bags into the house in one trip.
She made sure to establish a pattern of how she was roaming the aisles, a pattern that he could anticipate and follow, and once she knew he had it, she deviated and doubled back, coming up behind him, until she was close enough to smell him. He smelled good.
“Why are you following me?” she asked, just a hint of accusation in her tone, but not enough to make him think she was off her meds or something.
He spun around and gaped at her, a look of utter shock on his face. His eyes went wide. That’s when she noticed that they were the same color as Brock’s, and the longer she looked at him, the more she saw the similarity. This one was younger for sure, but their build was the same; big bulldozer bodies, Christmas ham hands, and dark caterpillars that bobbed and furrowed along the forehead. Only where Brock’s hair was close-cut, this brother apparently preferred to shave it all off and was sporting a bald head beneath the ball cap. She remembered asking Brock his brothers’ names before but couldn’t for the life of her remember them at the moment. Which one was this?
“I’m not following you,” he replied, managing a hangdog expression. But his glittering eyes betrayed him.
Krista rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid. You’ve been following me for the last half hour. Now which brother are you, and why is Brock having me followed?”
Giant twin dimples flashed back at her, like someone had taken a nail gun to his face. “Ah, you got us.” He grinned.
Us?
She blinked and shook her head, planting her hands on her hips and hating that she had to crane her neck to look up at him. “Why is your brother having me followed?”
He scratched the back of his neck and removed his hat, revealing a very round and shapely bald head. If it weren’t for the dazzling smile and the soulful green eyes, one look at the man and you’d think “killing machine.”
“Brock said you’re having some trouble with a guy at work, so he asked us to keep an eye on you. We don’t follow you while you’re at work … ” He lookeddown the aisle and then raised his eyebrows as a man of equal size with a very bald head, but no hat, came swaying toward them. Another brother? “Well, at least not when you’re not partnered with Slade.”
Hmm, so Brock hadn’t mentioned the baby or her switching to light duty yet.
Good.
She was already pissed at him enough for siccing his brothers on her, let alone spilling their baby beans too early.
“He’s gottwoof you following me?” she asked, taking in the other bald brother, one who was apparently much better at covert operations, because she hadn’t spotted him at all. “He’s got you following me while I’m getting groceries?”
Brother number two stopped in front of them, only he didn’t offer a smile. He simply scowled and nodded at his doppelgänger.
