Free Blindsided by Kate Watterson Page A

neck of his shirt, her fingers warm against his skin.
    “Amen. And may I say I’m damned glad.” Jesse let his mouth graze her hair. Then he asked simply, “Can I help?”
    “No.” A small sob came, and then another, and she began to cry, quivering against him, her face pressed into his shirt. It came and went quickly, which didn’t surprise him because whatever was happening, he’d already discovered she was both intelligent and normally self-confident.
    Eventually she lifted her damp face and swiped at her damp cheeks with one rolled up sleeve. She whispered, “Sorry.”
    “Don’t be. We all need a meltdown now and again.”
    “Artemis is missing.”
    Since he had no idea who Artemis might be, he struggled to come up with an appropriate response and finally decided not to say anything and just let her talk.
    She gave something between a watery hiccup and a sigh. “He’s just a stray, but I started feeding him and I could see where they might think he was my cat. Well, maybe he is my cat. Or was anyway.”
    The hollow tone of her voice made Jesse holder just a little tighter, as if the clasp of his arms could protect her. “They?”
    “Whoever is…after me.”
    That didn’t sound promising. He remembered all too well how she’d acted when they first got to the cabin. “Stray cats, well, they stray, Kerin.”
    “His food bowl was smashed to pieces. I leave it on the back deck.”
    Shit, that did sound malicious. “Maybe you’d better start from the beginning.” Jesse added, “If you want, that is. No pressure.”
    “The trouble is, I have no idea why this is all happening.”

    62
    Kate Watterson
    Still holding her in the cradle of his arms, he felt an unexpected surge of protectiveness at the vulnerability in her tone. “What has happened? Tell me.”
    The fire crackled into the resulting silence. Then she cleared her throat. “It started a month ago with a burned out light bulb.
    Something so simple. I went to change the bulb and noticed there was this…thing. Some kind of electronic device stuck up under the fixture. Obviously I’d changed the bulb before and though it was very small, I noticed there was something strange where it shouldn’t be.”
    “What kind of thing?” Jesse frowned.
    “A bug. When I called the police they told me it was the kind of thing that monitored any sound in the room. I couldn’t believe it. I’m actually not home all that much to begin with, and even so, I can’t imagine why anyone would bother. It isn’t like I lead an interesting life particularly. I mean…why?”
    Since to him she was damned interesting, he suppressed the urge to argue the point, too concerned over the revelation. “Someone is spying on you?”
    “I’ve been followed, also. Unless I am imagining it and I don’t think so. It’s escalating, too.” She shivered against him. “It sounds paranoid, but it’s true.”
    “All right, I believe you.” He believed that, at the least, she really believed it, remembering how frightened she’d been when he first picked her up. He prodded gently, “Define followed.”
    A small sigh escaped, brushing his throat. “This is going to sound really circumstantial, I’m afraid. But when you’re living it, it isn’t.”
    “Try me.”
    “On at least three different occasions I’ve seen a dark car, sedan of some type, behind me in traffic. I don’t mean for a few blocks, I mean from almost the time I leave the house to my destination. The first time it happened I really didn’t think much about it because you know how it is, every once in a while someone just happens to be going to the same place. In my case, it was the hospital, so since Blindsided 63
    plenty of people go there, I dismissed it. But later the same day I noticed the car again, this time when I went to the office.”
    “You’re sure it was the same car?”
    “I was sure enough it bothered me. It has happened a couple of other times also, and I’ve even changed my route