As she was turning to re-enter the building, a hard metal object was pressed to the small of her back. She stiffened, having no doubt it was a gun. How had she not noticed someone on the street?
“Open the door and get inside,” a male voice commanded in her ear, his breath hot on her neck.
The thought that this was a simple robbery never crossed her mind. This was the person responsible for the sabotage, which meant he was willing to kill. Knowing her life depended on it, she went through the door. Inside, she whirled around to face the man, putting a little distance between them and keeping her hands clear. Her heart was racing with fear, but on the surface, she remained calm.
She studied the intruder, taking in little details about him. A narrow scar ran from his right ear to his chin. He limped slightly, favoring his left leg as he prowled back and forth in front of her. She searched her memory. Those two things together added up to someone she’d met. But where?
“I know you,” she said, opening the conversation.
“I’ve been here before, talked to you on the phone even.”
The cadence of his voice filled in the blank for her. “You work for my IT company.” He’d been one of the techs who had come to set up equipment for them after the remodel.
“Very good, princess,” he snarled. “What’s my name?”
She searched her memory. Dan? No. Dale. She didn’t think he’d ever given his last name, but she couldn’t shake the idea that she knew him in some other way. She’d seen him more recently, but in what capacity? The memory of an image she’d seen during her online research came to her. Except it wasn’t him. It was someone he resembled. She took a guess. “You’re Dale. Dale Huntly.” The son of her mother’s former partner. Carolyn’s instinct had been right. The sabotage was connected with Marta Huntly. It was a hollow victory, considering he had a gun pointed straight at her.
“Smarter than I thought you were, princess,” he said.
“You’re the one trying to destroy my business?” She wanted the truth from him.
He smiled, a terrible smile. “How’s it feel to finally face me?”
Raw anger was how it felt, she wanted to yell at him, but she needed to buy some time so she could plan how to get away from him. Her mind was drawing a blank, too dominated by fear and loathing.
“The robbery?” she questioned to get him talking.
“Yeah, I started with that. Robberies look bad to customers. I thought you’d take a hit there. Damn druggie I hired screwed that all up, but you finished him off for me. Thanks for tying up my loose end.”
She wanted to shiver at his gratitude. “And the orders and email? That must have been easy for you, considering your access to my accounts.”
“Sure. I just did a little dancing around in the coding to hide my tracks. Since I work with morons, I didn’t think they’d be able to track it back to me. I was right until you sent in the expert.” His expression changed to one more sinister.
“Steve?”
“Yeah, the guy knows his shit. He was closing in on me, but I got a little revenge.”
“Against him?” She hoped not. Zach’s friend was doing her a favor.
“You, princess. It’s all about getting you and yours. Just so you know, I rearranged your employees’ direct deposits and transferred money out of your accounts. Going to clean you out.” He seemed to feel a sense of triumph. “But the fire was the best. It was fun watching it burn.”
He’d been in the crowd, then. She’d done some reading about arson and had seen that the arsonist usually enjoyed watching their work.
“At first I was hoping you were the one in the building,” he continued, “but it was your sister. Then I decided that seemed fitting. Too bad, she lived.”
Carolyn’s fear was dissipating, and she’d mastered her anger, even in the face of his comment about Charlotte. She needed to be calm, to face him as an adversary as she’d learned in all her years of martial arts training. Anger would solve nothing. Control and mastery of her movements were all that mattered.
“You haven’t said why,” she said, keeping her voice bland. “Why target me and my store?”
“Your mama didn’t explain it to you?”
“I know our mothers were in business together, and they dissolved it.” She didn’t bring up that his mother had been sleeping with her father.
“Screwed her over is more like it.” His tone became belligerent. “Stole the business right out from under her.”
“I—I’m sorry to hear that,” Carolyn said instead of objecting to the falsehood.
“Do you know what that did to her?” Dale kept rolling up on the balls of his feet and back down as he spoke, putting himself off balance. She might be able to take advantage of that.
“Tell me,” she invited softly.
“No one would hire her, and she had me and Gloria to raise. We lived on nothing, while you and your sister had everything you wanted. Regular little princesses.”
That wasn’t true, but he seemed to believe it. Had his mother fed him a steady stream of lies about her family?
“She went to your mother once,” Dale continued, “asking for help, and she told her to go away—threatened to call the police on her and have me and my sister taken away. We hid for a couple years after that.”
Faith had no love for Marta after breaking up her marriage, but she’d never denied a person in need, especially children. Carolyn didn’t believe that incident had ever happened.
“And then Gloria died.”
“That’s too bad,” Carolyn said, sympathetically. “She must have been young.”
“Nineteen. She had cancer, and we couldn’t afford the treatments.” He waved the gun at Carolyn again, his finger poised over the trigger. “That’s your family’s fault, all of it. Gloria’s death and Mama’s. They died because your mother took everything away from us.”
His conclusions weren’t rational. Her family had nothing to do with their misfortunes, but his mother must have painted a very different picture. Carolyn imagined her being an embittered woman after losing her friend and business partner. And, of course, Carolyn’s father had left Marta, too, adding to the problem. Marta had felt abandoned and placed the blame on Carolyn’s family. Marta had poisoned her son with lies that he’d internalized, apparently going over the edge after his mother’s death. He’d been planning this for a while, she realized with a shiver.
She heard her phone ring from the office. She’d left it there while talking to the adjuster. The buzzing seemed to spark something in Dale. His eyes gleamed with hatred and fanaticism.
“Now it’s time to even the score.”
16
Zach drove back to Carolyn’s house that afternoon feeling like an asshole. He owed her an apology, a big one. The fact had nagged at him throughout the sleepless night and all day at work. His supervisor had even sent him home an hour early because he wasn’t focusing. Zach hadn’t bothered to argue the point, because the man was right. He didn’t have his head on straight and would be a liability if the security company had a call he needed to respond to.