A Bride By Summer. Rebecca Winters
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and a handful of men and women like you are courageous enough to make the bad people go away. There isn’t a way to repay you for what you have to face twenty-four hours a day in order to protect someone like me.”
Cy put his hands on one of the chair backs. “I get my payment every time I lock up a criminal and throw away the key. There’s no satisfaction like it.”
“Then you’re an amazing breed of man.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking about you when I saw you perform in Bandera. Only a few exceptional women have the patience and the skills to work year in and year out to thrill the thousands of people who can only dream about what you do on your horse. The heart of a champion is inside you. All I could do watching you at the rodeo was sit back and marvel.”
She eyed him with a frank stare. “What you do and what I do aren’t comparable, but I appreciate the compliment.”
“It was heartfelt.”
“You enjoy the rodeo?”
“All my life.”
Her eyes lit up. “Really?”
“I love it. Growing up we had horses and always went to the rodeo. I still keep my horse on my parents’ small ranch and ride when I have time. Like most of my friends when I was young, I thought it would be fun to try bull riding and calf roping. But our pitiful attempts that ended in pain and suffering let me know it takes a lot more than just wanting to do it. You know...like possessing the skill, like being born to it, like having the guts to go at it again and again.”
Her chuckle delighted him. “That’s my father.”
“Some of us have it. Some of us don’t.”
“Instead, you face a terrifying human enemy with no thought for your own life.”
Cy laughed. “Don’t be deceived. I give a lot of thought to my own life, believe me.”
Her smile slowly faded. “I’ve given a lot of thought to your life, Ranger Vance. Please take care of yourself.” The throb in her voice resonated inside him. “It’s almost ten o’clock. Unless you need me for anything, I’m going to go upstairs.”
He reached for her phone and handed it to her. “You can have this back. Forensics got what they needed from it, but they still have your laptop. I’ve removed all the messages.”
She gripped it. “Did they find a voice match?”
“Yes.”
“A Texan accent?”
“No. The stalker sounds like certain people who live in either Virginia Beach or Charleston, South Carolina.”
Kellie’s surprise over the news caused her to groan. “Charleston was the place where he killed one of his victims.”
“Listen to me, Kellie. If I have anything to do with it, there won’t be any more.”
She nodded. “As I told my mother earlier today, I believe in you. Now I’m going to call some of my friends who left messages with my mom.”
“After you do that, turn the ringer off. If the stalker intends on calling you tonight, I don’t want you bothered by him. You need sleep.”
A pained expression broke out on her face. “What are you going to do?”
“Coordinate with my backup crew.”
She slid him an anxious glance. “You think something might happen tonight?”
He watched a nerve throbbing at the base of her throat. Cy was determined to make her fear go away. “If not tonight, perhaps tomorrow night or the next. Either way we’ll be ready.”
“Then I’ll say good-night.”
“If you need me, phone me. But by no means come downstairs until I let you know it’s all right.”
“Okay.” She held his gaze for a moment longer before she went upstairs. Soon after, Cy’s phone rang. It was Vic.
“I’m walking down the alley to the garage.”
“I’ll open it.”
“Did you know the boss has supplied extra backup?”
“He told me.”
“Chris and Jose will be in a taxi in the alley. Lyle and the rest of the crew are in place.”
“Good. We’re set. This is the window of time the stalker has been waiting for. I’m counting on his making a move any night this week. Next week he knows she’ll be leaving for Colorado. If he thinks she could be married, he’s got to find out and get rid of her husband before he takes her off someplace and strangles her. He’ll need his brother.”
“Yup.”
“See you in a minute.”
Cy hung up and went out to the garage. He lifted the door partway. In less than a minute, Vic came crouching in before Cy lowered it. They both walked through the garage and kitchen to the living room.
“Has Kellie gone to bed?”
“As far as I know.”
“How’s she handling it?”
“The woman is tough. I’m beginning to understand why she’s such a fierce competitor in the arena. That’s the only reason this setup is working.”
“I think it’s more a case of the right two people being thrown together.”
Cy knew where his friend was going with that remark, but now wasn’t the time. “The thing I keep wondering about is why this pervert targeted Kellie specifically. Her beauty provides one obvious answer. But there’s more to it than that. Nothing we’ve learned so far, not even after collaborating with the FBI agents back east, has shed any light. I’m trying to find the missing link.”
“Maybe it will have to come after we catch them.”
“You’re right.” He glanced at Vic. “What do you say we do this in shifts? I’ll take the first watch.” He fixed the hide-a-bed so Vic could stretch out when he was ready. “Since we know there’s no side or back door to this place, my hunch is he’ll come in through the garage with a device to let himself in the door into the kitchen.”
Vic nodded. “That makes the most sense. The fence isn’t that high. He’ll be able to scale it easily. I did a patrol of the town houses on the other side of the alley. The tenants don’t have garages and park their cars in covered parking across their street. If someone wanted to hide out, they’d have to jump the fence from this alley into one of the backyards and wait so they wouldn’t be seen.”
After talking strategy for a while, Vic lay down. Cy turned out all the lights in the condo before going into the kitchen. He took out his .357-caliber SIG Sauer and put it on the table. After pouring himself a hot mug of coffee, he sat down in front of his laptop in the dark. Time to catch up on the paperwork for Kellie’s case while he could still remember times and details of their trip to Colorado.
Once he’d finished, he went back to Kellie’s website and scrolled through her scheduled events, starting with the first rodeo of this year. To his shock he discovered she’d entered the Salem, Virginia, Annual Stampede on January 9. His adrenaline surged.
She’d gone back east!
Cy should have thought about that before now, but he’d been so concentrated on the months since the stalker had appeared, only now had he started to explore all the possibilities.
After consulting a Virginia map, he saw that Salem was on the opposite side of the state from Virginia Beach.
He scrolled down quickly. More shocks. She’d ridden in the Walterboro, South Carolina, Rodeo two weeks after leaving Virginia. Cy looked up the South Carolina map. Walterboro was only forty minutes away from Charleston.
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