When the Flood Falls. J.E. Barnard

it’s my job to make sure our corporate sponsorship is well managed. But that excuse is going to run out in another week, and then my real job will be on the line. If I lose my salary over this, I’ll lose the house, too. Everything.” She clutched Lacey’s hand. “I need to know, 100 percent, if it’s in my mind or if there really is, or has been, a prowler. Please say you’ll stay with me. At least until the Centre’s big opening gala.”

      “I’ll stay,” said Lacey without hesitation, “until we’ve sorted this out one way or another. Now, drink your tea. If there was someone out there tonight, they will have realized that you’re not alone, and they won’t come back. In the morning I’ll have a good look around, and we’ll talk over everything, identify anybody who might think they have a reason to creep around here at night. The lights can stay on for tonight, and tomorrow I’ll see if Wayne has any spare motion sensors he can loan me.”

      “You won’t tell him why? I can’t have people at the museum site talking about me. I can’t look weak right before the opening.”

      “I’ll tell him there’s a bear or something bugging the dogs at night. Okay?” Lacey lifted her mug and paused. “You do have bears out here, right?”

      “Bears, cougars, other predators.”

      Including humans, Lacey thought, but she didn’t say that. Neither did she say just how disturbed she was by Dee’s near-hysterical fear of a possible prowler. Either Neil had left her more afraid of him than she was willing to admit, or she was utterly overwhelmed by her job, her divorce, her injury, and now the crush of the museum’s grand opening. The stress of any two of those might bring on some paranoid imaginings to a woman living alone in the forest. Dee was never one to be crushed that easily, but she’d carried this terror alone since there was snow on the ground. If she cracked now, it wouldn’t be surprising at all. That wouldn’t happen, though. Lacey would be here to keep her fear at bay until the museum was successfully opened for tourists.

      As she followed Dee up the stairs a few minutes later, having very visibly rechecked every door and window, she thought that Dee might never sleep again if she ever shared the third possibility that sprang to mind: that someone might be prowling out there, careful not to leave evidence, not trying to enter or to do obvious harm, but deliberately playing on the frayed nerves of an isolated woman recovering from an injury. But gaslighting someone needed a motive. Who stood to gain if Dee fled back to the city and sold her log McMansion at a loss?

      

The following morning, Dee surprised her again, this time by saying, as Lacey followed the smell of coffee to the kitchen, “You know, I never realized how crazy I would sound until I heard myself trying to explain it to you. I’ve been alone with this for so long I’ve lost all perspective. Thanks for not telling me I was nuts last night, but I kind of am. So I’ve got an action plan.”

      That was more like the old Dee: action plans at an hour when other people were barely able to open both eyes at the same time. Lacey accepted the offered mug. “And your plan is?”

      “First, I’m going to refill my prescription for anti-anxiety meds. I was taking them for a bit after the accident but they ran out months ago. Second, you’re going to — if you will, that is — help me get my bike down from the garage rafters. I always used to go running or biking to burn off the stress, but I’ve gotten away from the habit. My physiotherapist even suggested I try biking again, but I was busy and just put it off. Now I know I need that stress busting, and after yesterday I realize running is still a long way off. So biking it is.”

      “Those ideas both sound sensible. Er, do you still want me to stay for a few days?”

      “God yes! You’re the first breath of sane air in this house for months. Do you have a mountain bike? If not, I can borrow one for you.”

      “Mine’s at Tom’s. I can bring it out tonight when I fetch more clothes.”

      “Great.” Dee slapped the top on a travel mug. “I’m off to the office. But I’ll be back by eleven for a press conference at the museum. See you then.” She headed for the back door, then paused to un-clip a secondary ring from her car keys. “You’d better have a door key. I’ll get my spare back from the neighbour if I get home before you. House is the maple leaf one and the square, plain one is for the garage. Mi casa, su casa. Just like old times.” She flashed a smile so confident, so at odds with last night’s fright, that Lacey couldn’t quite stifle the idea that Dee had been a bit too deep into the prescription pills already.

      Chapter Three

      They were working inside the loading bay, stringing camera cable up above the ceiling tiles, when Lacey got around to asking her boss about loaner lights.

      “And who is your roommate that I’d trust them with my equipment?” Wayne’s voice was dry in the way that every sergeant’s voice Lacey had ever heard was dry, like he couldn’t quite believe a rookie was asking such a stupid question, but then, what better could be expected of a rookie? She flushed without meaning to and found she was standing at parade rest without having consciously shifted position. Working for another ex-RCMP officer was supposed to ease her transition back to civilian life, but it reminded her every day that she hadn’t been strong enough, in the end, to cope with the strains of a cop’s life. Quitting on Wayne wasn’t an option; she needed something besides RCMP on her resume. And now she needed to stay near Dee, too.

      “Dee Phillips,” she said.

      His flat stare assessed her. “Well, aren’t you the savvy operator? Moved in with the boss of the whole job, just like that.”

      “We were university roommates. She heard I was out here and offered me a bed until the Centre’s wired. Saves me the commute from Calgary.” She eased out of the formal stance and repeated the request. “May I borrow two motion-sensor lights to monitor her yard for a few nights, please?”

      “No.”

      So much for that option. Maybe there were cheap versions at Canadian Tire. She could rush in right after work to buy some and whatever tools she would need to install them. Getting back to do it before dark would be tricky, especially if she went to Tom’s to pick up her stuff.

      “No,” said Wayne again. “Since she’s the president of this whole job, we should do better by her. Get me photos of the area you want covered and I’ll draw you up a plan. There are five or so spare lights in the van you can take. Is her house close enough that you can get there on your lunch break?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      He nodded, his mind already moving to the next task. “Get me the small crimpers from the van, and a half-dozen AV ends.”

      Lacey headed up the stairs to the staff exit and pushed open the flat steel door. A camera flashed in her face. She froze for a nanosecond, but the photographer was merely testing his equipment. Of course — the press conference Dee had mentioned. Out on the freshly laid lawn, a half-dozen microphones and cameras ignored the usual nutty protester by the road and focused on a grizzled cowboy in a battered beige hat and boots. He looked a hundred years old. The slender blonde leaning on his shoulder was barely a third his age. Her perfect teeth were aimed at the cameras while the fitful breeze flung strands of her glossy hair across the cowboy’s weathered face. His hand rested on a sturdy wooden sign that gave, in authentically rustic burnt lettering, the facility’s twin titles of Arts Centre and History Museum.

      The woman looked faintly familiar and the cowboy not at all, but then Lacey had been on this job for barely a week. The only person she could name in the throng was Rob, the curator/manager of the new facility. With his pleated khakis and frosted dark hair, he stood out among the worn jeans and hard hats that infested the building. She veered behind a log pillar to avoid the media and came face-to-heels with a pair of scuffed workboots on a ladder. A workman on a ladder and a second up another ladder were stretched to full height, hooking a rolled-up banner between two of the fat logs that made up the building’s colonnade. Similar banners hung between other sets