The Seven-Day Target Read online

  “My sister. That’s it.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual at home? Any signs of entry?” Nick placed his hand on her back and lowered his head to peer at her.

  She shook her head. “No, nothing. I would’ve called the police.”

  “Did you leave windows open? Forget to lock a door?” Dom was perched on the edge of his desk.

  Leave her windows open? Geez, she wasn’t stupid. “No, of course not. I’m a prosecutor. I see the awful things people do to each other every day. I have an alarm system. And yes, it works, and yes, I turn it on.”

  She slumped forward. This was a nightmare. Less than twelve hours ago the biggest problem in her day had been the fact that she was seeing Nick again. Now she was wondering whether she had days left to live. How had her existence managed to unravel to this point?

  She was aware of Nick’s hand moving in circular strokes across her back. His hand felt too warm, his touch too good, to move. She allowed him the contact.

  “We don’t know that he was in your house,” Nick said softly. “It could have been your office, or your car, even.”

  She nodded. She could handle someone rifling through her office files, but the thought of a psychopath violating the sanctity of her home was too much to bear. Libby pressed her forehead against the palms of her hands. “So now what?”

  “We’re going to check for fingerprints, and our lab is processing the evidence from the crime scene already. The medical examiner is conducting the autopsy tomorrow. Believe me when I say that we’re taking this matter very seriously. In the meantime you’re going to go somewhere safe.”

  “Somewhere safe,” Libby echoed. “Does that mean I can’t go home?”

  “We’ll go home and get your things.” Nick removed his hand from her back. “But I think it would be best if you stayed somewhere else for a little while.”

  “He must be following me, right? Do you think he knows I stayed at Cassie’s last night?” The thought that she’d unknowingly put her sister and her young nephew in harm’s way made her stomach ache. “Are they safe?”

  “They will be,” Nick assured her. “We’ll make sure of it.”

  “They?” Dom asked.

  “Cassie and her baby,” she said.

  “Dom, maybe you can send someone over to park in front of the house and keep an eye on them. From what I understand, Cassie’s all alone.”

  “Of course.”

  Libby shook her head. “I don’t want Cassie and Sam in that house. It’s not safe.”

  “We’ll get them somewhere safe, then. Let me work it out with Dom. I want you to focus on keeping your cool.”

  “Keeping my cool?” There was a shrill peak to her question. Her entire life had changed in the span of the afternoon, and he was telling her to stay calm? “That’s easy to say when no one’s leaving photographs of murder victims in your files.”

  “Libby.” Nick wrapped both of his hands around hers and looked into her eyes. “I know you’re hurting, and when you hurt you like to take control. I’m telling you that you’re better off controlling yourself and leaving the rest to us. Can you trust me?”

  She studied his face, running her gaze from one dark eye to another. Controlling. That had been a buzzword in that last fight they’d had. Nick complained about Libby’s need to count the calories she consumed and to regiment every minute of her day. Could she help it if she hated surprises? Organization was the hallmark of success, and frankly Nick could stand a little more neatness in his life. Did he expect her to go blindly along with his plans for her now of all times, when she was feeling so out of control?

  “I’m not a victim,” she said. “I’m your partner. If you can promise to work on treating me like an equal, I can work on trusting you.”

  After a moment of consideration Nick nodded his head. “Okay. We’ll work on it.”

  They left soon afterward, walking in silence to the parking lot. Libby stared at the front seat of Nick’s beat-up coupe. There were scattered junk food wrappers and balled up napkins on the passenger floor. It was nothing short of a miracle the vehicle wasn’t crawling with rodents. “Should we just leave my car at the office, then?” She lifted a napkin by its corner and tried not to wrinkle her nose.

  Nick swiftly cleared the floor and threw all of the wrappers into a paper bag. “The lot is monitored by security cameras. It will be safe.” He took the napkin from Libby’s hand and added it to the bag.

  “I don’t know. This guy seems pretty bold.”

  He sighed. “Do you want to drive separate cars? You know what, don’t even answer that, because it’s not going to happen. He knows your car, but he may not know mine, and we need every advantage over this bastard we can get.”

  Fair enough. She climbed into the bucket seat and inhaled. The car smelled like Nick—soap and aftershave with undertones of something musky and masculine. Also French fries, but he sometimes smelled like that, too. She felt a nostalgia for better times, when Nick had been her entire world and she’d been his.

  She shivered, and Nick turned on the heat without asking. Then they drove in silence to her house, riding along the same roads that Nick always used when he drove her. Libby had avoided that particular route for years.

  As the car rolled to a stop in her driveway, Libby reached to open the door. “Wait,” Nick said, lightly touching her arm. “I want to make sure it’s safe first.”

  She waited as he walked around the house, presumably checking for signs of a break-in. When he disappeared into the backyard, she glanced around her, watching for the slightest movement or shadow. Her mouth was dry and she gripped her house key in her fist like a weapon. She’d use it if necessary.

  After a few minutes he returned to the car and opened her door. “All clear.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “You’re better than an alarm system.”

  * * *

  He felt cold grip the inside of his stomach as he walked up the front steps to Libby’s house. This was where he’d finally rid himself of the heavy burden of being in love with Libby Andrews since middle school. Funny the way she’d helped him do it so effectively.

  She turned to him as she opened the door. “Come in, I guess.” She swallowed, clearly uneasy.

  Nick caught his breath. There she was, the sweet vulnerable girl he’d fallen in love with. He’d never forget the first time he saw her, walking to school with her books clasped against her chest, talking with her best friend. She’d worn her black hair short then, and it curled slightly around the back of her ears. He’d wondered why he’d never seen her before but then he’d learned that she’d been out of school the previous year with cancer. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She never wanted to talk about it, and when she discussed that period at all she simply referred to it as “the time I had cancer.” But even today he’d noticed the scar that was seared above her left breast, which was visible every time she wore a blouse that buttoned down. That, she’d once grudgingly explained, was where the doctors had placed the port to administer the chemotherapy. “They told me I needed the port or else the drugs would have ruined my veins. Or maybe that’s the way I understood it.” She’d changed the subject after that, and he’d never pushed her to say more, respecting that the topic was a painful one.

  Her sister, Cassie, had only been ten years old at the time, but she’d talked openly to him about it. “Libby was bald,” she’d said. “My mom had to shave her head one night because clumps of hair kept falling out. I remember Libby crying for hours, and my mom, too. I think that’s why she’s always kept her hair long since then.”

  Libby had no reason to cut her hair short, anyway. It was thick and black, richly wavy, and it fell halfway down her back. It smelled sweet, like vanilla. Gorgeous hair that fell like silk ribbons when it was wet. Hair like that should never be short.

  Walking across the threshold of her home boiled something in his stomach. He’d helped her choose the paint for these walls, and he’d refinished the hardwood floors h
imself. The day she’d moved in, they’d eaten pizza on the living room floor. He thought he’d buried these memories when he’d walked away from Libby that last time. He’d never intended to return here.

  He raked his fingers through his hair, trying to clear his thoughts. Protecting Libby wasn’t a choice. He couldn’t allow someone he’d once cared about to be alone under such terrifying circumstances. He understood terror. He still had the scars from his father’s beatings and so did his mother. Nick had stood by as a child when his father stumbled home, stinking of alcohol and cigarette smoke, and looking for a fight. He still woke in the night imagining the sound of her body being thrust against the wall, or the “strum” of his father’s leather belt as he pulled it through the belt loops and clicked it against his palms, stalking toward Nick’s bedroom. His mother had kicked his father out of the house, but she couldn’t keep him away forever. The routine had continued for years, interspersed with brief periods of reconciliation and sobriety.

  Then Nick had gathered the courage to fight back. One evening, when his father had come calling, Nick was waiting. He didn’t know how many of his father’s bones he’d broken. All he knew was that he’d brought his father to the ground and warned him that if he ever came back to the house, he’d do worse than that. That time his father had listened.

  Law enforcement was more than a job, it was his calling. He’d spent the rest of his life protecting women and children from abuse. Libby was just another victim, and when he’d helped to capture the bastard who was threatening her, he’d leave and he’d never think about her again. The thought strengthened him.

  “So, everything’s messy.” She was a little breathless as she spoke.

  Nick glanced around the house. Her countertops practically glistened; the window treatments were arranged just so. She’d placed fresh flowers in a vase on the kitchen table, an arrangement of pink-and-yellow tulips. He opened his mouth to compliment the selection but then halted, because those flowers were probably from David. Her new beau. He turned his back to them.

  “Your home is beautiful, as always.”

  She grimaced and hurried to place a stray coffee cup in the dishwasher. “Where are we going if we’re not staying here? A hotel?”

  “I thought we’d go to my place.”

  She froze. “In Pittsburgh?”

  “I meant my parents’ place. My mom and stepdad are in Florida. They won’t be home until the middle of May. You know how it is. The temperature has to reach a consistent seventy degrees before my mom will set foot in the Northeast.”

  Libby nodded slowly. “Your mom is doing well, then? And your stepdad?”

  “Yes, they’re well.” He walked to a cabinet and helped himself to a drinking glass. “And Bio Dad has been sober for a while now. We talk sometimes.” A real father was a supportive role model to his children. A biological father contributed DNA. Nick had a strictly biological father.

  She filled Nick’s glass with water and handed it back to him. A silence settled between them. “I guess I’ll pack.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No. I don’t need you to watch. I have to pack personal things.” Her cheeks flushed and she looked down demurely.

  “I’ll stand outside your door, then. I won’t look.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake—”

  She was interrupted by a knock on the door followed by the chime of the doorbell.

  * * *

  Cassie. She’d completely forgotten that she’d promised her dinner. Nick made a macho show of looking out the window, one hand on his gun, before giving Libby the nod to open the door. She tried not to roll her eyes at him.

  Cassie’s normally wild blond curls were even wilder, if such a thing was possible. She was bouncing on her toes as she held Sam, who was crying impressively. “I swear I’m going out of my mind,” she said. “He’s been crying for the past half hour. Babies are supposed to sleep in the car, right? Well, not Sammy—” She froze. “Oh, my God, Nick!”

  Cassie gave him a one-armed hug. Libby had almost forgotten how close they were, but Nick had been part of Cassie’s life for so long that he’d been like an older brother to her.

  “Cassie. And this is Sam? Congratulations.”

  She made a noise like a severed laugh and handed the baby to Libby. “Thanks. I’m so overwhelmed right now. Sleep deprived. I don’t know what I’d do without Libby.”

  Libby held the bawling infant closely and bounced gently on her toes with him. “He looks even bigger than he did yesterday,” she told Cassie, knowing that her sister worried incessantly about his weight. Sam had been premature and had spent his first two weeks in the neonatal ICU.

  Cassie half listened as she babbled excitedly to Nick. Libby took the opportunity to walk back into the house with the baby. She nuzzled her nose against his scalp, inhaling his sweet scent of powder and warm milk. She loved the way he grasped her finger tightly when she held it out to him. She loved everything about him.

  A pang struck her under her rib cage. Didn’t it figure that Cassie would get pregnant unexpectedly, without even trying, while Libby, the sister who’d always loved babies, was still reeling after learning that chemotherapy had left her infertile? Libby had been so filled with rage at the universe that she hadn’t fully accepted her nephew until he was born. Then, the first time she saw him in the incubator, the tubes and monitors covering his body, she’d talked to him and he’d turned to her. It had taken her until that point to realize that he wasn’t some cosmic irony. He was a miracle. And he was quieting in her arms.

  “He had to burp. Now he’s feeling better.” She placed him in the little swing Cassie had brought over a week ago.

  “Oh, thank God.” Cassie heaved a sigh. “Maybe he’ll sleep for a while.”

  Libby took her sister gently by the forearm. “I can’t do dinner, Cass. I need to leave the house. Can you come upstairs to help me pack? I’ll explain.”

  Cassie’s eyes widened in concern. “Yeah, okay. Is everything all right? Can Nick watch Sam?”

  Nick nodded and sat by the baby swing. He watched the baby drift into sleep, Sam’s lower lip jutting out in a pout. Something sad rippled through Libby as she watched the scene and remembered how much Nick wanted children. His own father had been terribly abusive, and she suspected that to Nick, having children represented a way to compensate for his own father’s failures.

  He reached out a hand, tentatively stroking Sam’s cheek with his fingertips and murmuring an apology when the infant stirred. She swallowed a tightness in her throat. Nick would be a great father. She hoped he’d get the chance some day.

  * * *

  Cassie dropped a four-letter word. “My God, Libby. This is like something out of a movie. This can’t be happening.”

  “It seems it is.” Telling Cassie about the events of that afternoon left Libby feeling sober, almost as if she were relaying someone else’s nightmare. “But I don’t want you to worry, I just want you and Sam to go somewhere safe. Away from me.”

  Cassie threw her hands into the air as she plopped herself onto Libby’s bed. “How can you tell me not to worry? And God, Libby, where is safe anymore? You think he knows where I live?”

  “I don’t know, but let’s not take chances. I don’t know how long he’s been following me or to what extent, but I don’t want to make anything easy for him.”

  This is where Libby excelled, in the role of patient counselor. She could speak calmly to her sister and assure her that everything would be fine, and she could momentarily forget about her own problems as she lost herself in trying to resolve Cassie’s concerns. Later she would come back down to the reality that someone was stalking her, but now? She could simply focus on Cassie’s wide eyes and the frown between her eyebrows. They were only two years apart in age, but her little sister had always been younger than her years where Libby was concerned.

  “Hey, it’s okay, Cassie.” Libby sat beside her on the bed and wrapped her arms around her shoulder
s. “You know I’m a target because of my work. Earlier today a police officer started shouting threats at me because I informed the judge that he’d fabricated his testimony. This happens. The police are all over it, believe me, and it’s possible that they’ll find a fingerprint or see something once they review the video surveillance footage from the D.A.’s Office.”

  “And Nick is here. That makes me feel better.” Cassie sniffed back tears.

  “Yes.” Libby stood stiffly and walked to her closet. She needed to pack.

  She flung the closet door wide and selected a few outfits for work. Her fingers grazed the clear plastic bag that held her wedding dress and Libby paused. She hadn’t thought about that dress in ages. The perfect dress for their perfect June wedding: a strapless gown that was fitted to her waist before collapsing in elegant layers of chiffon. The perfect dress to match the perfect cake, the perfect flowers and the perfect meal. She’d thought of every little detail for that day, a hundred ways to announce to the world that she and Nick were in love.

  Libby tightened her jaw and closed the closet door. Nothing was perfect.

  She turned to her dresser and opened her jewelry box. Libby didn’t wear much jewelry and she didn’t have anything of real value except for a small silver charm bracelet that had belonged to her mother. Even then, the bracelet was more valuable for sentimental reasons and she couldn’t imagine leaving it behind knowing that the killer could come back to her house. She clasped it across her wrist.

  As she looked up, she caught Cassie watching her in the reflection of the mirror. “You know, if someone like Nick swore to protect me no matter what, I’d be swooning. Especially if I’d told that person point-blank that I didn’t love him.”

  “Cassandra—”

  “Do you realize what he’s doing, Libby? He left his job, took a leave of absence, to be at your side. Do you know what I’d give for someone to be that devoted to me?”

  Cassie’s voice clipped as she fought her emotion. She’d never told Libby about Sam’s father and Libby had never asked, but more than once Cassie had suggested that the father had rejected her. Libby may have envied Cassie’s ability to have a child, but her heart broke for the circumstances under which it had happened.