Free My Deadly Valentine by Valerie Hansen Page B

bought to add to those Becky had loaned her had already been delivered to her house and were, hopefully, waiting. There had been little salvageable among her damaged personal belongings, making the incident even more traumatic.
    Leaving Jace to follow at a discrete distance, she started up Main and turned down Third Street, walking boldly with her head held high, knowing that each step was bringing her that much closer to finding out who was so bent on destroying her peace of mind.
    “If that’s all they end up doing, then praise the Lord,” Rachel murmured, trying to reason away some of her fear.
    It was no use. The nearer she got to her house, the more she trembled. Her throat felt as dry as the native creeks in August. Her hands shook like leaves in a gale.
    She paused in the street and stared at the neat, brick-fronted home that she had always viewed as her one sanctuary. Now, it loomed like a forbidding cave filled with unnamed monsters. The windows were dark as if hiding an unspeakable terror that was lying in wait. For her.

TEN
    J ace took the first official watch. And the second. He figured it was best to give himself something constructive to do rather than simply pace the floor. Besides, he was the one actually living in the house they were using as a base of operations so that made more sense than having Logan come over and do it.
    Jace had been on plenty of stakeouts before. Basically, they consisted of hours of boredom interspersed with a few seconds of sheer bedlam. So far, all he had to show for his efforts in respect to Rachel was a throbbing headache and stiff shoulder muscles.
    He rubbed his neck. Walked back and forth. Grabbed a sandwich even though he wasn’t hungry and ate it sitting next to the monitors.
    The cameras that were trained on Rachel’s place were set to record when there was movement within range. Otherwise, they merely showed a live feed and let him listen to her humming as she spruced up her house after being gone so long.
    If he hadn’t been looking right at the screen when she said “I’ve missed you. Did you miss me, too?” he might have thought she had company. Instead, she was bending over a large, fernlike plant and tipping up a watering can.
    “The woman talks to her houseplants,” he murmured, disgusted by the way his heart had leaped when he’d heard her voice.
    He took out his cell phone and did what he’d been wanting to do for the past hour or more. Rachel’s home number was on speed dial, as was that of her shop.
    She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
    “It’s just me. You scared me silly.”
    “Why?” Jace saw her stare directly at the hidden camera. Her eyes were wide and she was definitely apprehensive. “Is somebody sneaking up on me?”
    “No, no. You were talking to your fern, I guess, and I thought for a wild second that it was a person.”
    “Nope.” Relaxing, she grinned. “Very few people sit around in clay pots and have green fronds for hair. That’s how you can tell the difference.” She giggled. “It always works for me.”
    “Thanks for the tip.” Jace knew he shouldn’t have called her but something inside him had insisted. “Sorry I bothered you.”
    “It’s no bother,” she said, once again smiling at the camera.
    “You might want to stop talking to that lens as if it was me,” he cautioned. “If somebody is watching, you might scare him off.”
    “Scaring him off sounds good to me.” Rachel sobered and shrugged. “I get the point, though. You want me to seem vulnerable.”
    “It’s an illusion. You’re perfectly safe. I can be there in seconds if you give the word.”
    “Oh, sure, but how am I going to find a way to work Valentine into my conversation to tip you off?”
    “You run a card shop. It shouldn’t be that difficult.”
    “Right. Okay. I just want this all to be over.”
    “Believe me,” Jace said, “so do I.”

    When there was a loud thud at her door, Rachel’s first instinct was to hurry to