Guarded Secrets. Leann Harris

slammed the car into Park, jerked the keys out of the ignition, and both men ran toward the stairs. The man spotted them, turned on the stairs and ran back up them. On the second floor, he darted in the opposite direction from Peter’s place.

      “I’ve got him,” Dave yelled, reaching the second-floor landing.

      Jon raced up the steps and to the open door of Peter’s apartment. “Lilly,” he yelled.

      Inside the door, he saw Lilly sprawled on the floor. He knelt by her side and swept a glance over her body. She didn’t have any obvious wounds, and there was no blood. It was a good sign, but he’d encountered more than one murder victim who had died of internal injuries. Carefully, he ran his hands over her torso and limbs, searching for any hidden wounds. Finding nothing to cause him alarm, he ran his hands over her head. She wasn’t bleeding, but he noticed the red welt on her chin.

      “Lilly, wake up.” He gently ran his hands through her hair.

      She moaned. Jon welcomed the sound.

      “C’mon, Lilly. Open your eyes.” He brushed away the hair from her face.

      Her eyes fluttered open.

      He let out the breath that he’d been holding. Thank You, Lord, he thought.

      “Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked in a quiet voice.

      She tried to focus on his face. He saw her struggle to make sense of things. Finally, things snapped into place. “My jaw feels like an elephant sat on it.” She tried to smile, but winced instead.

      She struggled to sit up. Jon helped her.

      “What happened?” he asked.

      “I came to finish packing up Pete’s clothes and things. When I opened the door and stepped into the living room, a man appeared behind me and punched. That’s the last thing I remember.” She tried to get up.

      Jon caught her arm, helping her to stand. He directed her to a kitchen chair. “Take a moment to gather yourself.”

      “How is she?” Dave asked from the doorway. Jon glanced at his partner. Dave shook his head, letting Jon know that the suspect had got away. He motioned to Lilly. “Is she okay?”

      “I’m fine. I just got punched in the face,” Lilly answered. She moved her jaw and winced.

      Jon went to the refrigerator and removed several ice cubes from the ice bin. He took a kitchen towel, wrapped the ice cubes in it and brought it over to Lilly. “Here. Put that on your chin.”

      She took the towel and followed his suggestion. “What does the guy who did this to me want?” she asked after a minute.

      That was the burning question that Jon was mulling. “Obviously, whoever he is, he’s looking for something he hasn’t yet found, and he came back to look for it again.”

      “I don’t understand.” She put the towel on the table. “Pete doesn’t have anything worth taking.”

      “You sure?” Dave asked. “He wasn’t into anything illegal?”

      Lilly shook her head. “I don’t know. But it wouldn’t make sense given the fact that there were so many signs that he took his faith seriously. Penny commented recently that her daddy had started reading her children’s Bible to her when she spent the weekends.”

      Jon pointed to the towel with the ice and pointed at her chin. “Keep it on your face. You don’t want Penny to see her mom with a huge bruise on her face.”

      She obeyed and placed the towel on her chin again.

      Jon sat down at the table. “Whoever was in here today, yesterday, and at your house yesterday is looking for something. We need to figure out what it is, because it looks like this guy isn’t going to quit until he gets what he wants. Do you have any idea what this person is looking for?”

      Worry colored Lilly’s eyes, turning them deep chocolate. “I don’t know.”

      Jon placed his hand over hers. The electricity that ran up his arm shocked him. He pulled his hand back. “Can you call someone to come and help you with things here at the apartment? I’d feel a lot better if someone was here with you. And I know Penny would appreciate it, too.”

      He got the smile out of her that he wanted.

      “Who can you call?” Jon asked, pressing the matter. They weren’t leaving until someone was here with Lilly.

      “I can ask the pastor to come and help me. And he knows several people who would gladly help.”

      “Then do that. Dave and I will stay here until someone arrives.”

      “You don’t have to do that,” she protested.

      “I do.” Jon’s tone made it clear that he would brook no argument. “Remember the condition of your house?”

      He had a point. They didn’t know what was going on and until they did, there was danger.

      

      “You got security cameras?” Jon asked Mark Rodgers, the owner and manager of the apartment complex.

      “There are a couple in the parking lot, but the security tapes are erased after a couple of weeks.”

      “Let us have what you’ve got,” said Jon.

      Rodgers hesitated. “You going to bring them back?”

      Jon glared at him.

      Rodgers shrugged. “Hey, they’re expensive.”

      “File it with the insurance company,” Dave told him.

      Rodgers didn’t look happy, but he walked back into his office. He reappeared a few minutes later with seven tapes. “I use one a day and have one for each day of the week.”

      “If you keep two weeks worth of tape, how come you only have seven tapes?” Jon asked.

      “Because, the tapes are not on all the time. I have the tapes running only when the tenants go to work and come home,” Rodgers explained.

      It wasn’t an uncommon practice. They’d be lucky if the argument Peter had in the parking lot was caught on tape, but miracles still did happen.

      “Hey, do I get a receipt for those tapes?” Rodgers asked.

      Jon stepped into Rodger’s office, looked around the man’s desk, saw an envelope, turned it on its back and wrote a receipt.

      “That’s my electric bill,” Rogers complained from the doorway.

      “It’s also your receipt. Don’t lose it.” Jon slapped it down on the desk.

      Jon and Dave headed for the patrol car.

      “You’ve got to work on your technique,” Dave muttered, trying to hide his smile.

      Jon threw him a look. “He wants his tapes back?”

      “We’ve heard stranger things.”

      Jon tried to fit the pieces of this case together as he sat behind the wheel without turning the key. “The more we look into Burkstrom’s murder, the more sense Lilly’s words make. I mean about her husband warning her about his death.” Jon glanced at his partner, wondering if they were on the same page.

      “You’re right. There seem to be red flags popping up everywhere.”

      “Let’s go to Sunbelt and see if anyone knows a reason why Burkstrom was murdered.”

      It took only ten minutes to drive to the offices of Sunbelt Securities. One of the managers, Bryon Sands, whom they’d talked to earlier, looked up from his desk.

      “Detectives? Aren’t you early?” He glanced at his watch. “The guys are still out on their run.”

      “We thought we might stop by and see if the team might’ve