Cold Feet. Brenda Novak

would you like me to start, Caleb?”

      He smiled as he moved away, feeling a sense of victory. It was only a matter of time before he knew everything Madison did. “How about tomorrow?”

       CHAPTER FIVE

       “C ALEB, WHERE have you been? I’ve been calling your cell for the past hour.”

      Holly. Again. Between Caleb’s run to his folks’ house for his things that morning, and his trip to the grocery store in the afternoon, he’d met her at the university and helped pass out flyers with Susan’s picture and description. Every time his ex-wife had called since then, he’d jumped for the phone, thinking she’d heard from someone who’d seen Susan. Shortly before Johnny had pulled up outside, Caleb had finally realized she was just stressed and worried and wanted to go over the same things she’d been saying all day. Only he’d already done everything he could until morning and didn’t want to hold her hand anymore. He was comfortable in bed, once again flipping through satellite channels on television and enjoying the solitude.

      “It’s after midnight, Holly,” he said. “Can’t this wait until we get together in the morning?”

      “No, it can’t,” she replied. “Someone called me about the flyer a little while ago.”

      At last! Caleb hit the off button and sat up, giving Holly his full attention. “Who was it?”

      “I’ll tell you all about it when I get there. I have something to show you.”

      “ Show me?”

      “I’m on my way.”

      “Wait, I’m not staying at my folks’ place,” he said before she could hang up.

      “You’re not?”

      “No, I rented a small house.”

      Silence. Eventually she asked, “Why would you rent a place? You could’ve stayed here for free.”

      “Holly, we’re divorced.”

      “I know that, Caleb. It isn’t as though I’m asking you to sleep with me. I only offered to put you up for a few weeks. You’re helping me, after all. I feel it’s the least I can do.”

      “There’s no need,” he said. “I’m fine where I am.”

      “And where is that?”

      “Whidbey Island.”

      “Whidbey! What made you move there?”

      “It’s closer to the mainland.”

      “If you wanted to be close to the mainland, why didn’t you rent an apartment on the mainland?”

      Caleb considered telling Holly that he was renting from Ellis Purcell’s daughter, but decided not to. He didn’t want her badgering him for information until he was ready to share it. Just because he might come across answers no one else had been able to glean didn’t necessarily mean he would. It was possible that Madison was too secretive to let anything slip. It was also possible that she didn’t know anything. But he was willing to bet against both of those possibilities. She’d been living with Ellis during his killing spree. At a minimum, she should be able to tell Caleb bits and pieces of conversation she’d overheard between her parents, whether her father was really at home when he’d claimed to be, whether she sometimes heard things go bump in the night, whether she ever saw him move something heavy that just might have resembled a dead body….

      “This place is nice,” he said instead.

      “How much is it costing you?”

      “It doesn’t matter.”

      “Waste your money, then. I don’t care,” she said. “You’re so stubborn. I don’t know why I married you once, let alone twice.”

      He thought she might hang up in a huff, but she didn’t. “Are you going to give me directions?” she asked after an extended silence.

      A quick glance at the clock told him it was even later than he’d realized. But she’d said she had something to show him. “What do you have?” he asked.

      “You’ll see.”

      If she had a lead, he needed to know about it as soon as possible. He told her how to find him. Then he got up, dressed and put on some coffee.

      Across the yard, he could see that the lights were still on in Madison’s house, and he wondered what she was doing. Earlier, it had looked as though she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders….

      Guilt about masquerading as a random renter flickered inside him. He could already tell Madison wasn’t the ice princess he’d assumed from her television interviews and that one strongly worded letter. Her behavior wasn’t strange, either, like her father’s. Actually, she seemed pretty…normal. And there was no question she’d been through a lot.

      Leaning against the wall, he stared out the window at her light. She might be nice. She might even be one of the most attractive women he’d ever met—but being nice and attractive didn’t change the fact that the truth had to be told.

       M ADISON COULDN’T SLEEP . She was tired yet wound up, and didn’t dare take a sleeping pill, for several reasons. Brianna could wake up in the night. Johnny, or whoever had been with him, could come back. And she wasn’t yet comfortable with having a stranger living on her property. Especially one who knew she and Brianna were alone. Caleb Trovato’s credit references had checked out; he seemed like a pretty solid citizen. But still…

      Pulling out her sketchpad, she sat at the kitchen table and began to draw. She had tons of paperwork to take care of. She needed to review the purchase offers her agents had generated in the past week. As their broker, she was liable for any legal repercussions if they made a mistake. She also needed to revise the independent contractor agreement she was having her agents sign when they came to work for her, decide whether or not she was going to hire the young woman she’d interviewed this afternoon, and review the lease for the new copier she was buying for the office. But she was too tense to delve into work-related matters tonight.

      Because she couldn’t forget Johnny, she drew his eyes. Because she was worried about Brianna, she drew her daughter’s full lips. She even sketched Danny’s angry brow—something that had come to symbolize their relationship. The scratch of her pencil and her intense focus usually eased the stress knotting the muscles in her back and neck. But nothing seemed to help tonight. She still felt as though she were walking a tightrope with the ground frighteningly far below.

      Her eyes slid to her briefcase. The urgency to make her business successful was part of the problem. Sales weren’t going nearly as well as she’d hoped when she’d purchased South Whidbey Realty. She knew she was crazy to be wasting time while Brianna was sleeping, but Madison simply couldn’t face the work she’d brought home with her.

      Flipping to a new page, she considered drawing her mother’s hands. But anything to do with her mother reminded Madison of her father, and she didn’t want to confront her doubts about him. Not right now. Not in the middle of the night with the clock on the wall ticking and the rest of the house so silent.

      She sorted through the faces she’d seen lately: an obese woman with beautiful blond hair she’d met at Brianna’s school; a wiry, angular man who’d just started doing the janitorial work at the office building where she leased space; a baby she’d seen at the mall. None interested her enough to attempt them. But the gruff old man who worked on the ferry seemed to have potential—

      A car pulled into the drive, and Madison’s heart began to race. Was Johnny back? What could he possibly want now?

      Dropping her pencil, she went to the window, but the car that parked behind Caleb’s Mustang didn’t look anything like the one Johnny had been riding in earlier. This car was a late-model Honda. And the person getting out of it was a woman—a tall woman who wasn’t approaching her house.