She knew. “That they might have been here first.”
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Ah, there’s a cop here I need to talk to. Don’t go to sleep right away, Tess. Stay alert. They probably went home, but just in case.”
He didn’t have to say what he was thinking. I don’t have any transportation. Even if you need me, I can’t get to you tonight.
“I’ll listen for trouble.” She sounded steadier than she felt. “I can call 911 and Chad next door. He told me to if anything else happens.”
“Good. Okay.”
She sensed he wasn’t okay at all. “Do you want me to come over?”
“More than you can imagine,” he said quietly, a new tension in his voice. “But, no, Tess. I want you to stay safe where you are. I mean that.”
“Will you call me in the morning?”
“I’ll do that. You call me if anything makes you the slightest bit nervous. After you call 911 and your neighbor. Got that?”
“Yes, sir,” she said crisply.
He sounded a little bit amused when he said goodbye, which had been her goal.
Tess sat on the edge of her bed, phone still tight in her hand, and discovered anger had once again supplanted her fear.
CHAPTER TEN
“HAYES HAS A girlfriend who claims he was with her all night,” Zach reported grimly.
He had leaned on her doorbell before ten o’clock that morning. It was just as well that Sunday wasn’t a working day for either of them. Tess, for one, had a headache. It didn’t help that, as Zach seemed so often to do when he was at her house, he was pacing, which meant her head swiveled back and forth to allow her to keep him in sight.
Put her in the stands at Wimbledon and she’d fit right in.
Unfortunately not watching him didn’t seem to be an alternative. How could she look away from his broad-shouldered, long-legged, lean body in motion? The angles of his face seemed starker than usual today, too, more compelling than ever. She’d never been a big fan of the two-day beard, but had to admit Zach was incredibly sexy with his jaw shadowed by stubble. Obviously he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. Or to comb his hair, either, although the wild dishevelment might have more to do with his habit of thrusting his fingers into it when he was agitated.
With an effort she gathered her thoughts. “Who interviewed his girlfriend? Not Detective Delancy, I hope.”
His mouth tipped up on one side. “No. A detective with the Clear Creek PD. His name is Guy Easley. Seems okay.”
“Oh. That’s right. You live within the city limits.”
“Easley was already up to date on your problems. I was able to give him names of a couple of Hayes’s friends.”
A sense of betrayal balled in her stomach. “You didn’t tell me you know who they are.” What else hadn’t he told her?
“Because they may not be the ones involved in this. Easley expects to have a long list of names by this afternoon. He’s really beating the bushes. Turns out Hayes has a brother, by the way, which I didn’t know. A logger who lives in the area. A couple years younger.”
“He’d have a splitting maul.”
“That’s an easy connection, but the truth is, everybody who burns firewood has one. Which is half or more of the households in the county.”
Of course, he was right. Even her dad doubtless still kept his maul and ax, although he hadn’t split any wood in a few years. Until she’d left home, she’d used both plenty of times herself.
“There are probably other things they could have used to smash your truck,” she suggested.
Zach shrugged. “Sure. The butt side of a single-bladed ax would have worked, as well. Against the headlights, all I could see was that they were each carrying something with a long handle, and from the dents we can tell whatever they were swinging had a bigger head than the typical mallet or hammer. No sharp cuts, like the blade of an ax would have made. It had to be metal.”
She winced. “Have you talked to your insurance agent?”
“Yeah, he came out first thing this morning. It sounds like I’ll be covered, fortunately, but of course I’ll lose money. The truck was less than a year old.” Frustration tightened his voice.