Watch Me (Last Stand #3)(74)
Author: Brenda Novak

And maybe she was right.

Sheridan could smell Cain’s aftershave as he passed and was tempted to reach out and touch his arm. She’d missed him. But she told herself that was her sixteen-year-old self talking and kept a two-foot buffer between them as she closed the door and followed him into the living room. “Robert’s been filming the street?” she asked when he turned to face her.

“He put up some security cameras a few weeks ago. One of them catches a large section of the street.” He gave her a penetrating look, as if he was trying to sense what she was feeling, but she averted her gaze and waved him toward the kitchen, where Skye’s computer was set up.

He means nothing to me. I will never be such a sucker again. Even if he’d changed as much as Sheridan believed, her life was in Sacramento. And she had to admit the thought of him with Ms. Stevens upset her, even if that was twelve years ago.

She tried to focus strictly on the subject at hand and not the undercurrent of attraction that seemed to flow so powerfully between them. “What does he need a security system for?”

“He says it’s to make sure my father doesn’t get robbed.” He passed her the DVD.

She checked both sides of it. It came with no case—and there were no markings. “Have there been recent burglaries in this neighborhood?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. Robert’s always loved electronics. It’s probably more about playing with a new toy.”

She opened Skye’s CD-ROM and slid in the DVD. “But why didn’t he say something before now?”

“He claims he watched the recording, that there’s nothing interesting on it. And I don’t know any different, so don’t get your hopes up.”

She could feel his closeness as she sat down and he bent over her shoulder, looking at the screen. “He’s watched it?” she repeated to hide the shiver that went through her when his warm breath stirred the tendrils of hair that’d fallen out of her ponytail.

“Quite a few times, apparently. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at it, too. There might be something here that’ll trigger a memory for you, or be more significant to you than anyone else.”

They fell silent as the image of the street materialized on the computer screen. There was no audio, of course. But a time and date stamp in the bottom left corner showed it to be the evening of the day she’d been dragged into the woods. “The camera’s angled away from my house,” she said.

“It’s supposed to be covering my dad’s drive. But whoever kidnapped you had to have had transportation. I’m hoping it caught his vehicle.”

“He didn’t park in front of the house. I would’ve seen him as I was putting away my groceries.”

“But once he tied you up, he had to have some way of transporting you to the woods.”

“Who’s to say he didn’t drive out of the neighborhood in the other direction, though?”

“No one. We have a 50/50 chance, that’s all.”

They stopped talking as headlights appeared on the screen. Sheridan held her breath when she saw a car roll into view but released it, once she realized it was only Robert. He pulled into his own drive, then went out of range.

The seconds and minutes crept by as they continued to stare at an empty street. A neighbor walked by with his dog on a leash. Karen came to John’s house, went inside for a brief visit, and left. Ten minutes turned into fifteen, which turned into twenty.

“I think it’s past the time I was attacked,” she said, disappointed.

“When did you get back from the store?”

“Around eight-thirty.”

The tape showed eight forty-five, and the street was still empty.

“Let’s give it another couple of minutes,” Cain said.

“He must’ve gone out—”

Another pair of headlights lit up the screen. They belonged to a truck. But not just any truck. Once she’d gotten a good look at it, Sheridan shifted in her chair to see Cain’s face. “That’s Tiger, isn’t it?”

There were lines of concentration on Cain’s forehead. “Back it up.”

She reversed the DVD and played that part again. Sure enough, a vehicle resembling Tiger’s traveled down the street—very slowly.

“Can you freeze it?” Cain asked.

It took several tries to get the playback where they wanted it, but soon they were staring at a fuzzy image of what appeared, based on size alone, to be a man behind the wheel of a black 4×4 with a lift kit. “Does anyone else in town drive a black 4×4?” she asked.

“There might be one or two, but—” he pointed to the lower portion of the screen “—see that dent?”

She could, now that he’d brought it to her attention. “Yeah…”

“The white paint on it is from an accident at the Roadhouse. I was there when it happened. That’s Tiger’s truck, all right.”

A hard knot formed in the pit of Sheridan’s stomach. “What would he be doing in this neighborhood that particular night?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t as if he has friends here.”

Cain would certainly be aware of it if he did. He’d grown up on this street, still visited on occasion.

She pushed the play button. “Let’s see if there’s anything else.”

There was more—more of Tiger. He drove by three times in the next five minutes, going slower with each pass.

Uneasy, Sheridan rubbed her arms. She’d just entertained Tiger in her living room for thirty minutes and thought they’d made peace. As they’d talked, she’d recognized signs of some lingering resentment. But, for the most part, she’d gotten the impression that Amy’s death had made him realize how unimportant such petty grudges were.

Or had that been fun and games for him? Was he enjoying the fact that he could attack her one night and sit in her living room like a guest two weeks later?

“You don’t think…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. Although it was years ago, she’d been his girlfriend. Surely, he wasn’t the one who’d tried to kill her, who’d taken Jason’s life.

Cain’s whiskers rasped as he rubbed his chin. “Bitterness is a powerful emotion.”

Tiger had been bitter—but bitter enough to shoot her and Jason for being together at Rocky Point? “Do you know where Tiger was the night Jason and I were shot?”