Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right [The Chisholms of Texas 3] (Siren Publishing Classic) (17 page)

“You sure about this, Dillon? It’s going to be your house. What if things don’t work out between us? You might not want tangible reminders of me in your house.” She had really wanted to start that sentence out with a “shit,” but she was making a concerted effort not to swear so much.

Abby really wanted to put her own stamp on this house. She fully intended to be right by his side at the dinner table in that house and wanted it to reflect both their tastes. She just needed to hear his views on the subject. He had mentioned back when they first started dating that he wanted to marry her but they hadn’t really talked about the future recently. When the secret admirer stuff had come up, he switched his talk from marriage to living together. She knew he loved her and that she loved him. She just wanted to hear from him how he saw their future.

“Woman. I told you I wanted to marry you the first night we were together. Nothing has changed for me. I thought if I changed tactics, talked about moving in together instead, I could lull you into a false sense of security and could spring the marriage thing on you at a weak moment. Did it work?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. You’ll have to ask properly to find out.” She wanted him to formally ask her to marry him. The whole down-on-one-knee-with-ring-in-hand thing. She’d give him time to get that all put together.

“Okay, baby. When the time is right, I will. Get your answer ready, Abby.”

They were in the alley outside her apartment getting out of his truck and gathering some of the empty boxes to haul up the stairs when Dillon stopped, staring at the door to her apartment.

“What the fuck? I locked that door myself. Abby, call 911 and have them send Sheriff Decker out here ASAP. Then get back in the truck and lock the doors until he gets here.” He handed her the keys to his truck then reached in the back of his truck for a tire iron, hefting it in his hand like a weapon.

“Shit, Dillon. What are you going to do? Just stay here with me until the sheriff gets here. This is the only door—” She got cut off when the 911 operator came on the phone.

“Emergency Services. What is the nature of your emergency?” asked a disembodied voice on the end of the line

“Oh, uh. My name is Abby Barnes and I live at 1401 1/2 Main Street. It’s the apartment above Bach Florists. My apartment has been broken into and my boyfriend is going to go in and see if the person is still around. He says to send Sheriff Decker. There’s an ongoing case. Dillon, please don’t go in there. Wait for the sheriff.”

“Okay, I’m contacting the sheriff. Ma’am, tell your friend not to go in there. He should wait until the sheriff arrives. Do you have a car nearby?” The woman’s words grabbed Abby’s attention again.

“Yes, a truck.” She was trying to answer the operator’s questions and convince Dillon not to go into that apartment alone at the same time.

“Dillon,” she hissed. The last thing she wanted to do was to broadcast to whoever might be inside that Dillon was about to enter the apartment. “She said you’re not to go in. Get back here.” Shit. She couldn’t bear it if anything happened to him because of her. She had to get him to stay out of that apartment until the sheriff arrived.

“Good. Get in the truck and wait for the sheriff to get there,” instructed the calm voice on the end of the line.

“Dillon won’t come back. He’s almost to the door.” Dillon had stopped on the landing and was listening at the open door intently with the tire iron raised over his head.

Just then, a car came barreling down the alley. It was the sheriff’s car with the lights flashing on top. It came to a screeching stop right in front of the steps to the apartment, and the sheriff and one of his deputies sprang out as soon as it was put in park.

“Dillon. Stand down. My deputy and I will clear the apartment. Come back down and let us do our jobs.” As he was talking, he hustled around the police car and took the stairs two at a time. His deputy followed him, his gun drawn.

“Wait here. Better yet, go give your woman a hug and wait in your truck. Looks like she could use one. We’ll clear the apartment then come back to let you know what we find.” They headed up the stairs, guns drawn.

When Dillon looked back at Abby, she tried to stop the tears that were rolling down her face as she cried softly. He descended the stairs rapidly and she unlocked the door to the truck. He took her in his arms, trying to comfort her.

“It’ll be fine, baby. You’ll see. Everything will be fine.”

“I don’t care about the apartment, Dillon. What the hell did you think you were doing, going up there? Whoever it was could still be there. You could have been seriously hurt or even killed. You idiot. You should have waited for the sheriff.”

It made Abby even more mad that Dillon thought she was crying over her apartment being broken into when, if she had to choose between her things and Dillon, she’d choose Dillon in a heartbeat.

“I’m sorry, baby. I just wanted to catch this asshole if possible. I don’t want you to be scared anymore.”

Just then, the sheriff and his deputy came out of the apartment and descended the steps. Dillon and Abby met them at the bottom of the stairs.

“What did you find?”

“The apartment has been trashed, Abby. And I do mean trashed. Everything’s been torn apart or tipped over or broken. Whoever it was, and I think we can safely assume it’s a stalker based on what was written on the wall, did a lot of damage. I’m glad you’re with Dillon. I hate to think of what might have happened had you been here when this guy showed up.” He turned away to make a call into dispatch asking for the forensics team to be sent out to his location.

“I want to see. Can I go in?” Abby needed to see what the damage was. Not everything in the apartment was hers.

“I’ll take you in, but you can’t touch anything. Here, put these booties on your feet when we get up to the door and put this cap over your hair. I think you need to see this, but we don’t want to destroy any evidence that he might have left behind.”

So Abby and Dillon put the surgery caps over their hair and climbed up the stairs to the door. Putting the paper booties on over their shoes, they entered utter chaos. Nothing in the apartment was untouched. The furniture had all been slashed, the stereo and television had been slammed to the floor, lamps were strewn about, their lightbulbs broken out of them. She could see into the kitchen. All the appliances that had been on the countertop had been savagely slammed to the floor. Even the plates and other glassware had been swept out of the cupboards onto the floor.

“Shit!” Abby couldn’t speak except for that one expletive. She looked around at her things and tears started rolling down her cheeks. Dillon put his arm around her in comfort. “You said ‘he.’ What makes you so sure this wasn’t a bunch of teenagers?” Dillon asked the sheriff.

“Why don’t you to come down to your bedroom, Abby? He left a message for you there. It’s pretty clear it’s your stalker. Be prepared. He trashed that room, too.”

That got through to Abby. “A message? What, like ‘I’m sorry I trashed all your stuff. Will you go out with me?’ Shit! You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Dillon and Abby followed Sheriff Decker down the hallway to her bedroom. The pictures she had hung up down the hallway had been ripped off the walls and smashed. There was glass everywhere. “Remember, don’t touch anything.” The sheriff entered her bedroom and stood aside to let them enter. Abby’s attention was drawn to the mess of the clothing that she had left behind when she had packed last Wednesday that had been tossed around the room. The bed had been slashed with what appeared to be one of her large kitchen knives. The handle was still protruding out of the mattress.

Dillon’s sharp inhalation drew her attention, and she looked at him. Her eyes followed the direction of his gaze as he looked at something on the wall over the dresser. Looking up to where his eyes were drawn, she saw the message that was left for her in black marker.

Bitch

I loved you

How could you do this to us

You belong to
me

“Shit! What does this mean? Who the hell is this guy? Why does he think he’s in love with me, and what is he so upset about?” Abby had moved beyond scared and was fast approaching pissed off.

“Who the hell does this shithead think he is to disrupt my life like this? Trash my home? Ruin all my things? I don’t get it. What did I ever do to him? Why is he fixated on me?” Abby was becoming incensed and wanted answers. Her attention was diverted to the bedroom doorway as Rio walked in, booties and surgical cap in place.

“Shit!” he exclaimed in anger.

“My thoughts exactly. What do we do now?” Her words were directed at Dillon, the sheriff, and Rio.

“Abby, I need you to look around and, without touching anything, see if you can tell if there is anything missing.”

“In this mess? How would I even know? What do you think he might have taken?” Abby was at a loss. This person had destroyed everything he could get his hands on, she couldn’t even identify some of the piles of debris as her belongings.

Dillon took her by the arms and pulled her close. Looking into her eyes, he told her, “Baby, I think the sheriff wants you to pay particular attention to the clothing you left behind, especially your lingerie.”

“My linger…Shit. This pervert is taking my panties now?” She looked incredulously at the men standing around her. Several faces turned various shades of red and they looked away.

“Roy, get pictures of this area here so we can move things around a little and get an idea of what’s been taken.” Sheriff Decker pointed an officer with a camera to the pile of destroyed clothing strewn across the mangled bed. After several shots, the officer gave the sheriff the go-ahead.

Giving Abby a wooden spoon from the kitchen, he directed her to move around the destroyed clothing to take inventory of the items. Abby took the spoon and methodically moved pieces of clothing to the side as she tried to remember what she had left behind when she had packed that night. It quickly became apparent that several pieces of lingerie were missing. A couple of teddies, a diaphanous nightgown, several thongs, and a couple of pairs of panties were all missing from the piles of destroyed clothing. She also thought an old pair of jeans and a blouse of hers were missing, but she couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t thrown both of them out. She didn’t wear either anymore, and tossing them had been on her list of things to do.

She returned to Dillon’s side where he was talking with the sheriff and Rio in low tones. Dillon put his arm around her and she leaned into his body. She told them which things were missing, or that she thought were missing, and the atmosphere got more grim.

“What? Is something more going on here? What aren’t you telling me?” Abby didn’t want to be sheltered. She needed to know what the significance was of what the pervert had taken, and she needed to know what was next in the investigation.

“He’s angry at you now for some reason. He’s getting bolder. He’s taking trophies now. This whole situation just ramped up.” The sheriff spoke to all of them.

“Has anything happened between his last phone call and yesterday that might have caused him to get mad at you, Abby? The wall clock was broken at eleven twenty-four. Don’t know if that’s morning or not, but it had to be yesterday or the day before regardless.”

“Well, we went out to Chaps & Spurs. I played pool for a while with my brothers and Rio while Abby sat with a group of her friends downstairs. I joined her about nine and we danced off and on until about midnight, when we went home to the Ranch.”

“No, I can’t think of anything else that happened,” said Abby.

“You forgot that you moved in with Dillon at the Ranch after what happened on Halloween,” said Rio quietly. “Maybe this guy found out about that and couldn’t deal.”

“I don’t know that it’s common knowledge yet, though. It would have to be somebody close to know already,” denied Dillon.

“Wait a minute. When you came down to find me after pool, you wrapped your arms around me from behind and called me your ‘roomie.’ Remember? The DJ was taking a break, so the music wasn’t as loud. Anybody hanging around the table that night could have heard you. Shit, it could be almost anybody that was at the club Friday night.”

“Hernandez was buzzing around you that night. In fact, he’s been trying to get your attention since before we got together.”

“You can’t be serious. Jaime is a nice guy. He wouldn’t do something like this. He’s a friend. We danced a few times. He taught me how to two-step. He’s never even tried to kiss me. It can’t be him.”

“We can’t afford to rule anyone out without an investigation. Rio, he lives on the Ranch in one of the bunkhouses, doesn’t he?” asked Sheriff Decker.

“Well, actually, he turned in his resident shield last week. Said he took an apartment in town to have more access to girls. Personnel would have his new address.”

“This is crazy. Jaime Hernandez is not the stalker.” Abby was sure of it. Wasn’t she? She tried to think back to Jaime’s behavior during her time at the Ranch as an intern. For the most part, she just remembered him as a nice guy she could dance with. She tried to brush off the times when his intensity while they were talking or dancing had made her uncomfortable. This was ridiculous. They were grasping at straws, and Jaime was a convenient scapegoat. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to let the sheriff and Rio take a closer look at him. If everything checked out, he would probably never even know he’d been suspected.

“By the way, why were you two here this morning?” asked Sheriff Decker.

“We were going to pack up the rest of my things and move them to the Ranch. Guess I don’t need to worry about that anymore. Everything will be going into the trash. Oh, shit, I need to call Samantha and tell her what happened. All the furnishings are ruined. I hope she had insurance. I don’t have renter’s insurance, since all the furniture came with the apartment.” Abby had just about reached the end of her rope. She needed to be away from here and get some peace and quiet.

“I’ll call Ryan and explain, baby. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure Samantha had insurance on the place. If not, we can reimburse them for the damage. They’re not going to blame you,” said Dillon, obviously realizing that Abby had had enough for today.