Capitol K-9 Unit Christmas: Protecting Virginia. Lenora Worth

didn’t want to relive the weeks and months and years before she’d nearly died.

      What she wanted to do was go back to her safe life working at All Our Kids. She wanted to forget about her inheritance, her past, all the nightmares that plagued her.

      The front door of the house opened, and Officer Forrester appeared, the responding officer right behind him. They looked grim and unhappy, and she braced herself for bad news as she followed the female officer across the yard and up the porch stairs.

      * * *

      Virginia looked terrified.

      John couldn’t say he blamed her. Finding someone in a supposedly empty house would scare the bravest person. From what Gavin had told him, Virginia wasn’t exactly that. As a matter of fact, Gavin had said Virginia tended to panic very quickly. Which was why he and Cassie were on their way to the house.

      He wasn’t going to call and tell them not to come, but Virginia seemed to be holding it together pretty well. No tears, no screams, no sobs. Just wide blue eyes, pale skin and soft hair falling across her cheeks.

      “Did you find anything?” she asked, directing her question to the other officer.

      Leonard Morris was a DC police officer. Well liked and respected, he knew just about every law enforcement officer in the district. “Nothing to write home about, ma’am,” Officer Morris responded. “I’m going to dust for prints, but I thought you could come in, see if there’s anything missing.”

      She hesitated for a heartbeat too long, her gaze jumping to the still-open front door, her skin going a shade paler. “I... Is that really necessary?”

      Morris frowned. “If there’s something missing, only you’ll know it. So, yeah, I guess it is.”

      “I... Don’t you want to dust for prints and look for evidence before I go in and contaminate the scene?”

      “I think,” John said, cutting in, taking her arm and urging her to the door, “it’s been contaminated. You were already in there, remember?”

      “I’m scared,” she responded. “Not senile.”

      “Anyone would be scared in these circumstances.”

      “Maybe I didn’t state my position strongly enough,” she muttered as they stepped into the house. “I’m terrified, completely frozen with fear and unable to deal with this. Plus, up until today, I hadn’t stepped foot in the house in eight years. I have no idea what Laurel had.”

      “You know what she had before. Maybe that will help. And you seem to be dealing just fine,” he said, because she was. He’d seen people panic. He’d seen them so frozen with fear they couldn’t act. Virginia didn’t seem as if she was any of those things.

      “For now. Let’s see what happens if Kevin jumps out of a closet,” she responded with a shaky laugh.

      “Kevin?” Officer Morris asked.

      Virginia frowned. “My husband. He died eight years ago.”

      “I guess he’s not going to be jumping out of any closets, then,” the female officer said, her gaze focused on the opulent staircase, the oil paintings that lined the wall leading upstairs. They screamed money. The whole place did.

      “No. I guess he wouldn’t, Officer...?”

      “Glenda Winters. You want to tell me why you’re worried about your dead husband jumping out of closets?” she asked.

      John had worked with her before. She was a good police officer with a knack for getting the perp, but she was straightforward and matter-of-fact to a fault, her sharp interview tactics often getting her in trouble with her supervisor.

      “I’m not,” Virginia replied, walking into a huge living room, her gaze drifting across furniture, paintings and a grand piano that sat in an alcove jutting off from the main room. “It’s just that the man who was in the house looked a lot like Kevin.”

      “They say everyone has a twin,” Officer Morris commented.

      “He called me Ginny. Just like Kevin used to,” Virginia said, and for the first time since she’d come screaming through the bushes, John could actually see her shutting down and freezing up.

      “Did Kevin have a brother?” he asked, and she shook her head, her eyes a little glassy, her skin pale as paper.

      “No.”

      “How about cousins? Uncles? Extended family?” Officer Winters asked. “Because I have a cousin who looks so much like me, people think we’re twins.”

      “If he does, I never met any of them.”

      “This was Laurel Johnson’s place, right?” Officer Morris walked through the living room and into a dining area that could have seated twenty people comfortably.

      “Yes. I’m her granddaughter-in-law.”

      Morris nodded. “She left you the property. Interesting, huh?”

      Something seemed to pass between them, some unspoken words that John really wanted to hear, because there was an undercurrent in the house, a strange vibe that Virginia had brought inside with her. He wanted to know what it was, why it was there, what it had to do with the guy she’d seen in the house.

      “I guess it is.” Virginia took one last look around the living room. “As far as I can tell, nothing is missing,” she said, then hurried into the dining room, the kitchen, up the back stairs and onto the second floor. With every step she seemed to sink deeper into herself, her eyes hollow and haunted, her expression blank.

      Officer Morris whispered something in her ear, and she shook her head.

      “I’m fine,” she murmured, opening the first door and stepping into a nearly empty room. A cradle sat in the center of it, a few blankets piled inside. Pink. Blue. Yellow. There was a dresser, too. White and intricately carved, the legs swirling lion claws. No mementos, though. Not a picture, stuffed animal or toy.

      “Everything looks okay in here,” Virginia said, and tried to back out of the room.

      Only John was standing behind her, and she backed into him.

      He grabbed her shoulders, trying to keep her from toppling over. He felt narrow bones and taut muscles before she jerked away, skirted past him.

      “Sorry.”

      “No need to apologize,” he said, but she was already running to the next door to drag it open and dart inside.

THREE

      Laurel had kept the nursery just the way it had been the day Kevin died. Being in it brought back memories Virginia had shoved so far back in her mind, she hadn’t even known they were there—all the dreams about children and a family and creating something wonderful together, all the long conversations late at night when she and Kevin had shared their visions of the future. Only every word Kevin uttered had been designed to manipulate her, to make her believe that she could have all the things she longed for, so that he could have what he’d wanted—complete control. She’d believed him because she’d wanted to. She’d been a fool, and it had nearly cost her her life.

      She wanted out of the house so desperately, she would have run downstairs and out the door if three police officers and a dog weren’t watching her every move.

      The dog, she thought, was preferable to the people. He, at least, looked sweet, his dark eyes following her as she moved through Laurel’s room.

      This was the same, too. Same flowered wallpaper that Virginia had helped her hang, same curtains that they’d picked out together in some posh bohemian shop in the heart of DC. Same antique headboard, same oversize rolltop desk that had been handed down from one generation to the other since before the revolutionary war.

      It had