The Man from Nowhere. Rachel Lee

out there every night might get your attention, and you’d watch him, but you wouldn’t worry about him.”

      “Maybe I wouldn’t.” She hesitated, then finally said, “I’ve got a little thing going on at work. I think I found that some product is missing, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. So I notified the CFO about it, but I haven’t gotten an answer yet. And I’m wondering if I messed up.”

      “Messed up how?”

      “Well,” she admitted with a wry smile, “I’m the chief accountant. If it turns out I did my numbers wrong, I’m likely to be the ex-chief accountant.”

      “Ahh.” He took a deep drink of his coffee, then shook his head. “Relax, Trish. Nobody gets fired for one mistake.”

      “Yeah, maybe.” And he was probably right. She should just stop worrying, check her office e-mail before she turned in for the night in case the CFO replied, and then put it out of her mind.

      But part of what made her such a good accountant was her accuracy, and sitting around wondering if she’d made a mistake, no matter how many times she had rechecked her numbers, made her feel utterly unsettled.

      And that, she decided, was the only reason she’d even gotten paranoid about the guy sitting in the park. She was just in a paranoid mood to begin with. “Sorry I put you to so much trouble, Gage.”

      He shook his head. “No trouble at all, Trish. Tell you what I can do.”

      “Yes?”

      “I can do a stop and identify. Ask for his ID. Maybe we can get a little more info on the guy. But that’s all I can do unless he does something he shouldn’t.”

      She nodded. “Thanks. Thanks, Gage. I’d appreciate it. But I guess I should just forget about it. It’s probably all perfectly innocent.”

      “That’s what I’m supposed to be telling you. And most of the time it is. But since I can’t say so for absolute certain, I’ll try to get a little more information.”

      She thanked him again. He finished his coffee and headed for the door. “We’ll keep an eye out, Trish. We won’t just ignore it.”

      She was certain of that.

       Put it from your mind, girl. Let it go.

      But not until she checked her e-mail.

      Powering up her laptop in her tiny home office, she checked her work e-mail account. And there, answering her uneasiness, was finally a response from the company’s CFO, the man who had trained her at the corporate headquarters in Dallas:

      Trish, thanks for alerting me to this. Sorry my reply was so slow in coming, but your memo somehow got routed to the bottom of the stack on my desk. Apparently my secretary didn’t see the urgency.

      I’m having an independent auditor come look it over. Of course, I hope you just mismatched some things, but if not, we’ll find out. Either way, you’ve done your job exactly as you’re supposed to. I tried to call this morning and they told me you’re on vacation. Enjoy the time. And thanks again for the great job you do. Hank.

      There it was. Done. No need to remain on tenterhooks any longer. No suggestion that if she’d screwed up she was in trouble. The head office in Texas had basically said she’d done exactly what she should.

      She put the message in her private file on her home computer, then logged off.

      Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

      Except the stranger who sat out in front of her house every night.

       Chapter Two

      He was out there again. This time she started watching early and saw his painful approach as he limped down the sidewalk and finally dropped onto the park bench with evident relief.

      She had twitched the curtain aside just the tiniest bit so that she didn’t have to hold it as she peered out, because she didn’t want him to know she was spying on him.

      And now, watching him, seeing the way he stared at her house as if nothing else on the street existed, made her feel like a creep herself. Was she losing her marbles or something? Her house was locked. She had a shotgun upstairs, a hand-me-down from her father, which she could load with birdshot in no time at all. If the guy tried anything, he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. With birdshot she wouldn’t even need a good aim to plaster him painfully enough that she could escape.

      So what was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she just ignore it? What if it had been someone local, someone she knew by sight, doing the same thing? She wouldn’t be at all worried.

      But he wasn’t local, and that made her nervous.

      Okay, she told herself, try being rational. The guy obviously had suffered some kind of injury, which made him less than threatening to begin with. Maybe the injury had also affected his neck and he was having trouble turning his head.

      Possible, yeah. That stare might be nothing but a stiff neck.

      Maybe she just needed to cool it and stop acting and thinking like someone on the edge.

      Of course she did, but the realization didn’t help. At some level something was niggling at her and wouldn’t give up.

      She saw a deputy’s cruiser pull up near the bench. The man didn’t move, so apparently he wasn’t disturbed by the approach of the police. Then Gage climbed out after training his spotlight on the man, who made no attempt to shield his face from the light.

      Man, she thought, Gage was working a long day. And all because of her. But his concern warmed her. He wasn’t treating her nervousness as if he thought she was simply a ditzy spinster with too much time on her hands.

      She watched as Gage walked over to the bench. Apparently he said something, because the man pulled out his wallet from his hip pocket and passed something to Gage. Gage took it, spoke for a minute, then returned to his patrol car.

      No doubt running the guy’s ID. Finally Trish allowed relief to trump over nerves. Gage would sort it out, and the stranger was on notice that he had been seen. Good.

      The man had turned on the bench so that he was looking directly at the sheriff’s car and away from her. So maybe he did find it difficult to turn his head.

      All right, she should just go to bed and forget it. Gage would let her know if anything should concern her.

      Except that she remained rooted. A sign, she decided, of having had too much time on her hands. She wasn’t the type to stand at her window and watch the goingson outside, unlike some of her nosier neighbors.

      After a few minutes Gage climbed out of his vehicle again, approached the man and handed him something—probably his ID or driver’s license. They chatted for a moment and then Gage got back in the car and drove off.

      Okay, so there was no immediate evidence that the guy was a threat. She glanced over at the digital clock on her DVD player and realized there were only minutes before the guy moved on again, assuming he followed his usual, almost compulsive, schedule.

      Driven by some impulse, maybe the need to put the matter to rest now, she hurried into her kitchen, poured two mugs of the coffee she’d made a couple of hours ago, still hot and rich-smelling. Then she slipped on her jacket and went out the front door with the two mugs.

      As she approached him, the man on the bench appeared startled in a way he hadn’t when Gage had stopped to speak with him. She guessed he hadn’t expected a homeowner to come out at this hour.

      Reaching him, she could finally make out his features. Nicely chiseled, although not Hollywood handsome. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes and could see only that his hair was dark, short, but unkempt. The rest of him, seated as he was, remained mostly a mystery within a heavy jacket, jeans and