“Or what,” she said, automatically joking with him as she had in the past, though she wasn’t in the mood for any kind of humor. Her nerves were still strung tight, the cottage seeming to have its own electrical current running through it. She walked swiftly, her bare feet slapping through the puddled footsteps still on the kitchen floor. “Sorry,” she said as she reached the door and flipped open the latch.

“Something wrong?”

“I . . .” Was there? Really? Or was it her imagination? The old demon of her dreams returning to haunt her? “I don’t know . . .”

“What?”

“It seems kind of silly now, but . . . I think someone might have come in while I was taking a shower, although that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, I think I saw someone and heard him, but . . .” She threw up her free hand. “Oh, I don’t really know. I’ve been jumpy lately.”

“We all have.” Slade walked into the kitchen, and as he slid onto a bar stool, he said, “Tell me.”

She did. Wrapped in the damned towel, she told him what she’d felt, what she’d heard, and finally ended with “But who knows? It could have been the wind, I suppose, catching the door.”

“And the footsteps?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. My imagination, I guess. Just like the shadow passing by the door. Bo had barked, but it wasn’t really a warning.... Oh, hell, I don’t really know,” Val admitted, frustrated. She thought about telling him of the dream that kept her up at night, of the nightmare with the horrid demon dressed in black and chasing her down rainy alleys and slick, humid streets, holding its glinting chain and whispering, “Husssssh.” Hissing like a snake.

But she didn’t.

In the light of day, the nightmare sounded silly, a terrifying dream that had no bearing on anything and only made her question her sanity. She, who had once been so strong. Fearless. A woman who had worked her way up the ranks to become a detective with the sheriff’s department, a spot once reserved for good old boys. She’d made it!

And now . . . now she was shivering in the heat of the night, and Slade, damn him, reached around and placed an arm over her bare shoulders. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re here.” She trembled again; this time it had nothing to do with the cold. The strength of Slade’s arm around her, so familiar yet so foreign, so wanted and so unwanted, caused the trembling deep inside.

“We?” she managed.

“Bo and me.”

“What would I do without the two of you?” she mocked, and he let out a huff.

“I don’t know, woman,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be pretty.”

“Right.”