Absolute Fear. Lisa Jackson

He just missed you this morning, ran into the house, took one call, and left not long after you did. Some emergency at work. A breakdown of some computer system he set up for a local bank. They suffered a major crash. Their entire system is down, and with all of the identity fraud and scams out there, the owner of the bank freaked. Insisted all of the computers in every branch have to be up and operational by the time the bank opens tomorrow, so Kyle’ll be pulling an all-nighter.”

      “You’d think they’d have a backup system.”

      “Probably do, but Kyle’s their guy.” She sounded totally disgusted with the situation.

      “Bummer.”

      “Don’t get me started.”

      Eve didn’t dare. She knew the drill. As much as Anna professed to believe in wedded bliss, her own marriage was a train wreck; she was just too stubborn and too Catholic to do anything about it. “Listen, I’m about ready to call it a day, so I’ll talk to you later.”

      “Have you called your father?”

      “No,” Eve said quickly then bit her tongue. She and Terrence Renner hadn’t been on good terms for a long while. “I’ll call him in the morning.”

      “Right after you get the puppy?”

      “What? Oh.” Eve smiled at Anna’s clever way of calling her a liar. “No, right before.”

      Anna laughed. “Good. I’ll talk to you in a couple of days. Bye.”

      “Bye,” Eve said, but the connection was already severed. Anna had hung up.

      Making a face, Eve considered dialing her father and letting him know she was in New Orleans then decided it could wait until morning. Even if he were still awake, Terrence would have already downed a couple of stiff drinks.

      She’d prefer to talk to him when he was sober.

      Adding a little hot water from the kettle to her cup, Eve sipped at her tea then stared some more at the newspaper articles still scattered over the scarred oak table.

      You should go to the police.

      She read the clippings over again, taking mental notes. Faith Chastain’s obituary, over twenty years old, was included, and within it were the names of the loved ones she’d left behind: her husband, Jacques, and two daughters, Zoey and Abigail. Abby Chastain. Why did that name ring a dim bell?

      Who had done this? How? There was no evidence that her car had been broken into. No windows smashed, no locks pried or jimmied. It was almost as if someone had used her own key to get inside.

      A duplicate?

      Her insides turned to ice. If someone had somehow gotten hold of her key ring, then any of her keys could have been copied, including the keys to this house.

      She heard a scrape.

      The sound of a fingernail sliding against glass.

      Her heart clutched before she realized that it was the sound of a branch against a window on the second floor. Still, she dropped her cup onto the counter, and tea slopped over the sides of the rim. She didn’t care. She ran up the stairs, stopping at the landing. Sure enough, the wind had picked up, rattling the limbs of the trees outside, causing a small branch to rasp against the glass. That’s what she’d heard. No one was trying to get in.

      Forcing her pulse to slow and her mind to think clearly, Eve concentrated on the keys.

      Don’t go there, Eve! Don’t think anyone can let himself into your house at will. Your keys were never stolen. They were never missing. Someone slipped into your car when you inadvertently left it unlocked. And they did it today. You know that. Otherwise you would have found the packet earlier, when you put your sunglasses into the glove box.

      She tried to think dispassionately about the guy in the wraparound shades. She’d panicked at the sight of him, imagined him to be the embodiment of evil tracking her down. When she’d calmed down a bit, she’d blown off her fear as the bothersome result of an overactive imagination, but was it really? Could he be the culprit, the one who’d left her the clippings?

      If only she’d seen his license plate.

      “Get a grip,” she said, then nearly tripped on Samson, who was lying on the bottom step. “Careful there, guy.” She picked him up and carried him back to the kitchen.

      Turn these clippings in to the police.

      Eve grimaced. The local detectives already thought she was at least three cards shy of a full deck. Taking in this bundle of news articles would only up the ante on the theory that whatever brains she once had were destroyed when a bullet ricocheted against her skull.

      Maybe the police could pull off fingerprints, find out who broke into your car and left the envelope in the glove box.

      All too clearly Eve remembered the harsh, no-nonsense visages of Detectives Montoya and Bentz and the skepticism of the Assistant District Attorney who had been chosen to prosecute Cole.

      “You’re certain about this?” ADA Yolinda Johnson had asked Eve, her dark eyes narrowing. She was a slim, smart African-American woman of about thirty-five who wasn’t about to walk into the courtroom without all of her facts straight and her ducks in a row. Eve was seated on one side of a large desk, Yolinda on the other. The office was small and close, no window open, and Eve had been sweating, her pain medication beginning to wear off. “Mr. Dennis shot you.”

      “Yes.” Eve’s insides had been in knots, and she’d worried a thumb against the knuckle of her index finger.

      “But you don’t remember anything before or after the attack, is that right?” Yolinda had clearly been skeptical, her lips pursing as she tapped the eraser end of a pencil on the legal pad lying faceup on the desk.

      Eve’s stomach tightened. “That’s…that’s right…. I mean, I remember being with Cole at his house—”

      “In his bed, Ms. Renner. Let’s not mince words. The defense attorney certainly won’t.”

      Eve’s head snapped up, and she met the other woman’s gaze evenly. “That’s right. We’d been in bed.”

      “You were lovers.”

      “Yes.”

      “Go on.”

      “I received a call from Roy…Roy Kajak. He was insistent we meet. He said he had some kind of ‘evidence,’ whatever that meant. But then…then it gets kind of blurry.”

      “Mr. Dennis didn’t want you to go.”

      “That’s right.”

      “He barred the door.”

      “Yes…”

      “Did he follow you?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Did you see him leave the house?”

      “I…I don’t think so.”

      “But you’re not sure, are you?” the assistant DA had accused, leaning forward across the desk.

      “No.”

      “So it’s all a blur. Until you saw Cole Dennis leveling a gun at you through the window.”

      “Yes.”

      “Even though it was dark.”

      “Yes!” Eve’s guts had seemed to shred.

      Yolinda frowned, her lips rolling in on each other. Her pencil tapped an unhappy tattoo. She stared at Eve a long minute that had seemed punctuated by the ticking of a clock on the credenza behind her neat desk. “Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat this, okay? The jury will understand why you don’t remember anything after the shooting. You were wounded. Passed out. Unconscious. That works. But possessing no memory leading up to that moment in time is a problem.”