A Stranger's Baby. Kerry Connor
she echoed with a pang of guilt, all too aware she hadn’t really lived up to that unspoken rule. She’d done what she always did, kept to herself. Because it was easier. Because she was a coward. But then, until tonight, so had he.
“The back door is locked. I can get the front on my way out.”
His way out. He was leaving. And she’d be alone. “Great,” she said, her tension tangling in knots in her stomach.
Her nervousness must have come across loud and clear. “If you don’t feel safe, maybe you shouldn’t stay here. Call a friend.”
Sara shook her head, embarrassed to admit the truth. “I don’t know anyone around here.”
If he wondered why she didn’t when she’d lived here longer than he had, he didn’t comment on it. His expression didn’t change. “Get a hotel room for the night.”
“Maybe I will,” she said halfheartedly, already thinking of all the things she’d have to do. It would take her a while to get some things together—another reason she should have put her overnight bag for the hospital together by now—and she’d have to call a cab to take her, since she didn’t trust herself to drive in her current state. Given how fast she moved these days, it would probably be dawn by the time she made it to a hotel. Hardly worth the trouble, since she didn’t think they would try anything in broad daylight.
It was the hours until then that worried her.
“Well, if you stay, I wouldn’t worry about it,” her neighbor said. “You’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she replied, because there didn’t seem to be anything else she could say.
For a long moment he didn’t say anything either or make a move for the door. She felt a brief hope that he might linger. Desperation fueled the feeling from a flicker to a full-blown inferno that swept through her.
Please stay.
It was such a ridiculous impulse she didn’t even start to open her mouth to form the words. She didn’t know this man. He didn’t owe her anything, had already done more for her than most people would have bothered with, risking himself to come over and investigate. Asking for anything more would be too much.
But if he offered to do it himself…
He cleared his throat, not looking at her. “Okay, then. Good night.”
Disappointment washed over her, the feeling too familiar to have much of an impact.
“Good night,” she murmured.
He turned and walked out of the doorway. She listened to his heavy tread retreating, the sound of the front door closing, then to the empty silence echoing around her.
Apprehension clawed up her spine, prickling at the nape of her neck. She scanned the familiar space of her living room. The bookshelves filled from top to bottom on one wall. The comfortable, mismatched furniture, each piece personally chosen. She tried to tell herself that she was just as safe here as she’d been before she’d gone to bed. Maybe the officers were right. Maybe it had just been a bad dream.
Maybe…
But try as she might, she couldn’t make herself believe any of it. The truth remained too vivid in her memory.
She unconsciously rubbed a hand over her belly. “Just you and me, little guy,” she whispered, getting a kick against her palm in response. She couldn’t be disappointed. It was how she’d expected it to be from the beginning. Just her and the baby.
She’d just never felt more alone than she did in that moment.
Or more afraid.
JAKE TRIED NOT TO FEEL guilty as he left his neighbor’s house. She’d be fine. He’d talked to the cops himself, heard how they hadn’t found anything. They’d seemed convinced she’d just had a bad dream, fueled by pregnancy hormones and a lack of sleep, and suffered an extreme reaction, firing at phantoms that weren’t there. It made more sense than people breaking in to her house to attack her and leaving no trace of their presence behind.
Besides, he couldn’t let himself get involved. A pregnant woman, with no sign of a father in the picture, was exactly the kind of woman he couldn’t be around. She could grow attached too easily, come to depend on him. And he didn’t have anything to offer her, or her kid.
His reasons made sense. They just didn’t help erase the uneasy feeling that dogged him as he made his way back to his house.
She’d seemed so sure.
The look in her eyes tugged at him. When she’d stared at him over the gun. When they’d said their goodbyes moments ago. There’d been dark shadows beneath her eyes, a sign that she wasn’t sleeping much, as she’d said. But her eyes had been clear and focused. Afraid.
And sure.
His gut clenched. Was it possible? The cops hadn’t ventured much beyond the house, finding enough, or not enough, there to satisfy their belief that she’d imagined the whole thing. But then, there’d only been two of them, not really enough to do a thorough search. If they thought something had really happened, they might have called for more officers.
He stopped midway between his house and hers, considering. If someone had broken in to her house, they’d probably used the back door, the one he’d found unlocked. And they likely wouldn’t have approached the house from the front and made their way to the back from there, in plain view of the street. They would have approached from behind.
He slowly turned in that direction. Several rows of trees lined the backs of their houses, forming a thick natural border with the homes on the other side. If someone had broken in to her house, the best way to approach—and to disappear—was through the trees, maybe even parking in the driveway of the house on the other side. He didn’t know for sure, but he thought he remembered something about that house being empty. There would be no one to notice a vehicle arriving in the middle of the night and making use of its driveway.
Before he could question the impulse, he quickly moved back to his truck and retrieved a flashlight, then headed toward her backyard. It was a cloudy night, the moon only briefly and occasionally showing itself. The trees lay covered in darkness.
Switching on the light, he reached the edge of the woods behind her house and floated the beam across the ground. It didn’t take him long to spot where the dirt had been disturbed. He crossed to the location and leaned closer, having no trouble identifying the marks.
Fresh footprints.
There was no reason they should be there. He couldn’t picture his neighbor wandering around back here, leaving a cluster of footprints in shoes that looked too big to be hers. He didn’t know why someone from the other side would be over here, even if the house was occupied. She might have had somebody working in her backyard, although he couldn’t think of a reason they’d have been back this far. Not to mention the lawn didn’t look like it had been mowed that week.
The prints were messy and indistinct, as though whoever had made them had been moving too quickly to leave much of an impression. Quickly, as if they were running from a pregnant woman with a gun?
Jake stared at the marks for a long moment, trying to convince himself he wasn’t putting more stock in them than he should be. He had no reason to believe the impressions were connected to what had happened in her house tonight, and every reason to believe nothing had occurred.
Unless the intruders had been so careful to leave no trace of their presence that in their haste they overlooked this one, maybe counting on someone to discount it.
Unless he’d just missed them disappearing into the darkness as he came around the side of the house.
Unless he was already inside when they started their vehicle and drove away, if the sound had even been audible from the house.
Troubled by where