Page 57 of The Clover Chapel (Jamison Valley 2)
“Nick,” Sam called from below us. “Better come see this.”
Grabbing my hand, Nick led me down the stairs and into a tan leather chair in the living room. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
He rounded the kitchen corner and disappeared into the small hallway at the back of the house. If the alarm had been tripped by the sensor leading to the basement, then whoever broke into my house did so through the garage and then tried to come inside from the interior staircase.
As the minutes passed, my eyes wandered back and forth over the windowed walls. Was my intruder lurking outside watching me? The thought gave me chills. I hated being alone up here, feeling exposed and vulnerable. Where were Nick and Sam? What was taking them so long?
Footsteps on the marble kitchen floor captured my attention. Nick came directly to me as Sam walked to the foyer and pulled out his phone.
“Did you find something?” I asked, standing from my seat.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “We’re going to call Jess over. Hang tight. We’ll run through it all with you once he gets here.”
“The waiting is wrecking me, Nick.”
His large hand wrapped around the nape of my neck as he leaned his forehead down to mine. “I’m sorry, Emmy. But it will be better if we talk when Jess gets here. That way we only have to do this once.”
“Okay,” I whispered. Nick’s warmth and gentle voice soothed my nerves. “I’m going to make myself a cup of tea.”
“I’ll do it,” he offered.
“I need to do something other than sit and worry. Keep me company?”
As my Keurig brewed, I hopped up to sit on a counter. “How did you know to come?” It was almost two o’clock in the morning. He had probably been dead asleep.
“Heard the call come through dispatch.”
“Oh. Were you awake?” I asked, confused why he’d be monitoring 9-1-1 calls on a Tuesday night.
“Nope. I have a scanner by my bed. When I don’t have a volunteer on call, I monitor dispatch from home.”
“Right,” I muttered. I sipped my hot tea, hoping it would calm my nerves, but it wasn’t helping. “I’m freaking out.”
Nick crossed the kitchen and pulled me off the counter, into his arms. “I’m freaking out too. Worst ten minutes of my life, driving here not knowing what I’d find.”
“I’m okay,” I said, hoping the words would comfort us both.
“I never realized how Jess must have felt when Gigi was taken,” he said. “Not until tonight. I don’t know how he managed to keep his shit when he came home and she was gone. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here.”
“I’m okay,” I repeated.
Headlights flickering outside caught our attention and we broke out of our bubble to rush to the door. Five minutes later, Jess and Sam had finished examining the back hallway again and we were all sitting in the living room.
“Thanks for being patient, Emmeline. Sorry for making you wait. But we wanted to go through this once. That way we all get the same story,” Jess said.
I nodded.
“Someone did get into the garage,” Jess said.
Tears pooled in my eyes and I sucked in a jagged breath.
A part of me had hoped this was all just a false alarm. That my state-of-the-art security system had just malfunctioned and tomorrow we would all laugh about how we had overreacted. Instead, the reality was that a stranger had invaded my home.
“They managed to get past your alarm sensor on the garage’s side door. Must not have been expecting the one at the top of the stairs. From what we can tell, as soon as the alarm sounded, the trespasser took off,” Jess said.
“I dusted for prints on both doors,” Sam said. “Didn’t find a thing. Means the burglar wiped both doors clean.”
“So what do we do? How can we catch him?” I asked.
