Her cell phone was in the bedroom, but it was likely dead since she hadn’t put it on the charger. The landline would have to do. She forced herself to pick up the phone. She would call her sister. Lisa would send Remy out.

She didn’t know her sister’s number. There wasn’t a button for Lisa on this damn last-freaking-century piece of technology. Who used landlines?

She dialed the only number she knew.

“911, what is your emergency?”

She clutched the phone and prayed someone would come soon.

chapter five

Armie slammed the door to the SUV closed and was shocked at how hard his heart was pounding. Every bit of his training told him that this was likely nothing at all. She was new in town and unused to how things sounded in the bayou at night. It could be creepy and weird to outsiders. She was in a new home and she’d been through something terrible. If she didn’t have PTSD complete with nightmares, he would eat his hat.

Not that he had his hat. Or his uniform. He was in pajama pants, a T-shirt, and his sneakers. He’d slipped on a jacket emblazoned with the words Papillon Parish Sheriff that covered his shoulder holster and the gun he had there, but otherwise he was in civvies.

None of that mattered because from the moment he’d gotten the call that Lila Daley had a possible intruder trying to get into her house, his only thought had been to get to her as fast as he could.

He forced himself to slow down and take stock of his surroundings. If someone was trying to get to her, he couldn’t leave her alone to face it because the dumbass sheriff had let himself get shot.

He went still and listened. Nothing. Her house was on a half an acre and he could see the porch light on at Angie Jones’s place down the street, but the rest of her house was dark. Angie had motion-activated lights he’d helped her install. When they came on they stayed on for fifteen minutes at a time. They could have gone off by now.

He approached Lila’s house and vowed he would do the same for her. She might not like it coming from him but he would find a way to get more lights on her place. Like Angie, Lila was a single woman living alone, and there wasn’t a lot of traffic out this way. She wasn’t far from town, but it got dark out here fast. The highway was less than a mile away. It wouldn’t take much to find her.

Was she running from more than her past?

He was being paranoid.