Ned touched Sheridan’s arm. “You’d be safer with a guard.”
“Your doctor’s willing to release you. You don’t need Ned’s permission,” Cain said.
“My brother knows what he’s talking about.” The distress on Amy’s face almost made Sheridan feel sorry for her. She wanted Cain so much she couldn’t even take a pity project in stride.
But if Sheridan couldn’t go back to Sacramento, Cain was all she had. She certainly didn’t know anyone as capable of keeping her safe. He was the one who’d pulled her out of the forest, who’d saved her life. Besides, she’d been through too many battles since she left Whiterock to run from this one.
“I’m not afraid of Cain,” she said. But she wondered, even as she made the decision, if she wasn’t asking for the same kind of heartache Amy had endured since high school. There were times, even while she was making love with the man she’d nearly married, that she thought of Cain.
Maybe she’d never gotten over her own infatuation.
Cain stood at the entrance of Sheridan’s late uncle’s house, which was obviously furnished just the way it’d been on the day he died, despite the interim renter. The door had been locked, but the key was stashed under the mat, so anybody could get in. He saw no sign of forced entry. Whoever had grabbed Sheridan had either opened the door after she’d unlocked it or simply used the key, as Cain had. Or maybe she’d let him in.
Ned and Amy, or one of the other two policemen on the Whiterock force, had visited the house while Sheridan was in the hospital and made a mess dusting for prints. Powder in contrasting colors covered almost every surface. But they hadn’t found anything useful. He knew because he’d called Ned to see if they’d located Sheridan’s purse, and learned that they had—the contents were spilled all over the kitchen floor.
Now that the police were done, Cain planned to gather up her belongings and take them to his place, where Owen was looking after her in his absence.
A radio played in a back bedroom. Cain assumed it’d been on since Sheridan arrived. Maybe she’d been hoping to make the house feel less empty. Set on a rhythm-and-blues station out of Nashville, it broke the silence, but given the stagnant air and closed-up feeling of the place, the music seemed more forlorn than comforting.
Several flies escaped as he walked in. Bees hovered amid the kudzu that had taken over the front planter areas. The yard smelled like warm earth, but a far less pleasant scent emanated from the kitchen, where Cain discovered a brown-paper sack of groceries sitting on the counter. Blood soaked the bottom of the bag.
After what he’d seen the night he rescued Sheridan, the sight made him uneasy. Surely whoever had dragged her out of here hadn’t left some sort of disgusting present….
No, the police would’ve found it first. He’d obviously seen too many horror movies.
A quick inventory of the contents revealed nothing worse than a pound of spoiled hamburger. Apparently, whoever attacked Sheridan had made his move just after she’d returned from the grocery store. Maybe he’d followed her home.
He frowned as he noticed blood spatter on the kitchen window and could instantly tell that it had nothing to do with the rotting meat. There’d been a struggle here. A chair had been knocked over. Everything in Sheridan’s purse was spilled out on the floor. Even the fridge doors were hanging open. The rattling, overworked motor managed to provide a faint puff of cool air in the otherwise stifling room, if he stood right in front of it, but the ice cream in the freezer had melted. And water pooled underneath. The police hadn’t bothered to turn off the radio and close the fridge?
“Callous ass**les,” he muttered. Amy had probably left it this way on purpose. She wasn’t happy about Sheridan’s staying at Cain’s place. But seeing the house exactly as it’d been the night Sheridan had been attacked gave him a clearer sense of what’d happened. At least he knew where the trouble had started.
Unfolding one of the paper sacks Sheridan had emptied before being interrupted, Cain began picking up the cosmetics, papers, pens and other things that’d been in her purse. Her compact was cracked, a tube of lipstick had melted and the battery in her phone was out of power. He wondered if her friends and family were trying to reach her, what they must be thinking after so long without word.
As he stood to go in search of her luggage and cell phone charger, he spotted a wallet he’d missed. After dragging it out from under the table, he realized it contained photos—photos he had no business seeing, but he was curious enough to look at them anyway.
There was a picture of her younger sister in a wedding dress, her parents standing by a Christmas tree, and her with two other women posing in front of a glass door that read The Last Stand. When he saw a picture of Sheridan sitting at a formal event with a man who had his arm around her, he took an extra second to study their body language. Was this man significant to her? Was he worried because she hadn’t been in touch? Had he made love to her the way Cain had twelve years ago?
Shoving that question—and the persistent memory that went with it—to the back of his mind, he flipped to the next photo. And froze. It was Jason’s sophomore picture.
Why was she walking around with a constant reminder of what she’d been through?
The sadness of his stepbrother’s death hit Cain as hard as it had the day it’d happened, as if no time had passed at all. Jason had been the best kid Cain had ever known. He’d been more positive and functional than Robert, more socially adept than Owen. He’d been the all-American athlete, the guy who should’ve been voted Most Likely to Succeed—had he lived to graduate.
Cain could still remember Jason’s excitement over having a date with Sheridan. He could also remember the gnawing jealousy—
“Hey, anyone home?” a male voice called.
Cain put the photo book in the bag. “Come in.”
The creak of footsteps sounded in the hall before Tiger Chandler ducked his head into the kitchen. “I thought that was your truck. There goes the neighborhood, eh?”
Cain returned his smile. “It went to hell a long time before I got here.”
“No kidding.” Although Tiger wasn’t the kind of guy who went to the gym, he had a stocky build and was naturally strong. Cain had seen him in a bar fight and knew he could be formidable. “You the cleanup crew?”
“More or less.”
He wrinkled a nose that was too small for his face. “Smells like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”