Free Blindsided by Kate Watterson Page B

and it was still there.”
    “Okay. I can see with the listening device in the mix, you might have grounds to be suspicious of something like that.”
    “There’s more. A couple of days before I left I know there was someone inside my house while I was gone during the day, which absolutely freaked me out. Whoever it is can get in. I have a security system but it doesn’t matter.”
    His fingers lightly sifted through her hair and he had to tamp down the urge to swear out loud. “That would freak me out, too. How could you tell?”
    “When you live alone, you leave things in certain places. I’m pretty “A” personality. The door to the basement was ajar. If you don’t pull on it just a certain way, it cracks back open when the furnace comes on. I make sure to close it well because it’s a habit, and I hadn’t been down there in a week. My computer, too, should have been asleep but the screen was up. I don’t see how anyone could login without my password, but it made me think someone had tried.”
    A cracked door and a possible computer malfunction weren’t much to go on, it was true. “My computer has frozen up before and needed a shut down.”
    She quivered a little against him. “I know, but it also just felt like someone had been in there. It sounds stupid, but it was almost as if the minute I walked in, I knew.”
    For whatever reason, he found that the most compelling piece of evidence. He’d always believed human beings had perceptive instincts they didn’t use often enough.
    He now understood why she’d been so jumpy. “What made you run? The missing cat?”

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    Kate Watterson
    “No.” Her head shook where it rested against his shoulder. “Like you, I know they stray, even though the smashed bowl made me cry…”
    And she didn’t cry easily, despite what had just happened. That he’d already sensed about her.
    “I called the police. Again. I have a feeling they think I’m a nut.
    They asked a few questions about old boyfriends, that sort of thing, but basically told me since nothing had been stolen and no direct threat was made, there wasn’t much they could do. For several nights I couldn’t sleep, even with a can of pepper spray right next to me. I don’t even think I dozed off. I guess at that point, I was so strung out I just decided to leave so I could think about all of it, try to figure out why .” Her smile was a wan tremble of her lips. “I just headed north.”
    Wisconsin—this part of it anyway—was always a good place to go and feel you were away from the rest of the world in Jesse’s opinion.
    He relished the soft warm feel of her body against him, the fragrance of her hair drifting to him. “You’re safe here.”
    “Yes,” she agreed in a quiet voice, “but I can’t stay forever.”

    * * * *

    Why did the timing have to be so ironic, Kerin wondered. At any other point in her life she had a feeling she would be elated to have met what she was beginning to suspect was a really incredible man. In terms of time, he should be a stranger, but it didn’t feel that way. Yes, they were still exploring each other lives, digging out little facts as they talked, but—the fabulous physical part of it aside—she felt like she knew him somehow.
    Now she’d just cried all over him, told him what was going on in her life, and he merely held her and looked thoughtful rather than treat her like the police had, which was with a mental lifted brow and a shrug. She didn’t precisely blame local law enforcement because they Blindsided 65
    were overworked enough as things were with crimes that had already been committed, but she’d certainly felt let down.
    Jesse absently tangled his fingers in her hair, a frown bringing his dark brows together. “It would be interesting to find out why someone would go to all that trouble. Are you involved in a lawsuit of any kind?”
    “No, thank God.”
    “No problem patients or disgruntled colleagues who might want to find anything to