Everyone had failed Lauren. Law enforcement had failed her. Her husband had failed her. God had failed her. In her mind there had to be only one person she could rely on: herself.

She had come to Oak Knoll because she had known Ballencoa had set up shop here.

She drank too much.

She had a gun.

“You can’t help me,” she’d said. The look in her eyes haunted him. The word desperation came to mind, but that wasn’t even it. There was something beyond that. Resignation. She had accepted the fact that she was alone in her fight.

He got out of the car and found a way over the fence. Easily done. So much for her sense of security behind the gate.

Maybe her car was in the garage. Maybe she was in the house—in which case he needed to make himself known before she shot him.

“Lauren?” he called. “Mrs. Lawton? It’s Tony Mendez. Are you home?”

He went to the door and rang the bell, hearing it sound inside the house.

Damnit. Where was she? Was she stalking Roland Ballencoa while he stood here like a moron ringing her doorbell?

He got back in his car and headed toward Ballencoa’s neighborhood.

Lauren drove around the block and parked at the far end of Ballencoa’s street. She wanted to know what he was doing. How was he reacting to her having violated his space? Not well, she suspected. She remembered the rage that had spewed out of him the night before at the tennis courts when she’d broken his camera.

He liked to be in control. He wanted to be the one trespassing on boundaries. That a woman had turned the tables on him had infuriated him.

The rush she got from knowing that was exhilarating.

She watched his front door. Was he inside calling the sheriff’s office? What would he tell them? The same thing she had had to tell the police after he had broken into her home: that someone had broken in but had taken nothing. He couldn’t tell them she had stolen his stalking journals.

She imagined with pleasure his frustration as the detectives gave him their blank cop looks. Someone had broken into his house and messed up his neatly made bed. Some crazed person had come into his home and torn his clothes from the hangers.

She hoped Mendez answered the call. He would see the significance. He would probably know it had been her doing.

The front door of the bungalow opened then and Ballencoa came out. She was too far away to see if he was red in the face. She hoped he was. She hoped he was choking on his rage.

He went to the garage and backed out in his van. Lauren’s pulse picked up as she waited for him to turn in her direction, but he turned the other way.