Survival Clause, стр. 42

“Anybody hurts her,” he informed me, “I’m tearing them limb from limb.”

No question. “I’ll help you.” I don’t really have limb-tearing in me the rest of the time, but I’d realized that when it came to my daughter, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do.

Rafe smiled faintly, and some of the tension left his face. He leaned his head against the seat and closed his eyes. “Christ. I went in there looking to kill somebody.”

I was well aware of that. I’d seen his face. “She wasn’t there, right?”

He shook his head. “And nobody could identify her, either. Not a regular, they said. Nothing special. She came in a little after we did, so I guess she musta followed us there.”

Guess so. All the way from the police station to Aunt Regina’s house and back to Beulah’s. “How come you didn’t notice her?”

“No idea,” Rafe said. “I usually keep track of stuff like that. Maybe I’m losing my edge.”

Maybe. “Is there any reason I would need to call Aunt Regina and make sure she’s all right?”

“I don’t think so.” He finally turned the key in the ignition and brought the car to life. “She’s got no reason to be interested in your aunt.”

No. Whereas Carrie… “That might not have been a threat, you know. It probably wasn’t. She just had a chance to take a picture of your baby and post it online. And she does look like you. Carrie does. That might be all it is.”

“Prob’ly is all it is,” Rafe nodded, as he took the turn onto the Columbia Highway with a lot less panache than he’d taken the turn into the parking lot ten minutes earlier. “No reason to assume the worst. Just because she thinks our baby’s beautiful and looks like me, don’t mean she’s gonna want her. Or gonna wanna hurt you to get at her.”

That second idea hadn’t occurred to me yet, in the panic over Carrie. Now it did. And Rafe let me sit with it for a few seconds longer than strictly necessary before he added, “But no reason to assume good intent, either. Better safe than sorry and all that.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said.

He nodded. “I want you to promise me you won’t go nowhere alone for the next few days. Take Charlotte with you, or your mama, or Dix or Darcy. And keep Pearl by you when you’re home alone. Make sure all the doors are locked and don’t open’em to strangers.”

I promised I wouldn’t, even as I hated the idea of becoming a prisoner in my own home. “Just a few days?”

“I don’t imagine it’s gonna take much more time than that to figure out who this is and what her intentions are,” Rafe said. “You said Vasim was gonna work on the video?”

“Officer Rehman? Yes. He thought he might be able to make out at least part of the license plate. And if we have that, we can probably track her down.”

“Unless she’s using someone else’s plate.”

Yes. But— “Surely that isn’t something that occurs to normal people? If she’s truly just someone with a crush on you who’s following you around because she thinks you’re hot, she wouldn’t really think about trying to hide her identity, would she?”

“Depends,” Rafe said, slowing the car down as we approached the driveway for the mansion, “on what her end goal is. If she just wants to look at me, she’ll probl’ly get tired of it sooner or later.”

I hadn’t. And I couldn’t really imagine anyone else getting tired of looking at him, either. But it was a nice idea. “She knows you’re married. And that we have a baby. That doesn’t seem to have cooled her interest any.”

“It’s too soon to say that,” Rafe said and pulled the car to a stop at the bottom of the steps. “You OK with me parking here for the night?”

“It’s your car,” I said, “you can do what you want. Just be careful getting out.”

He cut the engine and glanced at me. “She ain’t gonna shoot me. She prob’ly don’t even own a gun.”

Probably not. It was the ‘probably’ part that worried me. This was the sticks, and all sorts of people have guns here.

“You wait for me to get there before getting out, though.” He opened his door and slid down before I could answer. I held my breath—it wasn’t that long ago that he’d done this very thing one night: stopped in front of the steps and been taken down by a rifle shot from across the fields—but tonight, nothing happened. He slammed the door and jogged around the car and pulled my door open. “C’mon.”

He handed me out, and then reached in for Carrie and the seat. A few seconds later, we were on our way up the stairs to the front door. He stayed between me and danger every step of the way. I let him unlock the door while I turned around and surveyed what I could of the area in front of the mansion over his shoulder.

Nothing stirred, and if anyone was looking at us—you know that prickly feeling you get sometimes?—I couldn’t tell.

“Go on,” Rafe told me, and gave me a nudge across the threshold. I scrambled inside, and turned to shut the door behind him after he had moved Carrie to safety inside the foyer. Down the darkened hallway, the scrabbling coming toward us was Pearl’s nail clicking on the hardwood floors.

“This is crazy,” I said. “Hello, Pearl. Yes, I know you have to go outside, sweetheart. Just let me—”

“I’ll do it,” Rafe said and turned back to the door.

“Go out the back,” I told him. “Less chance anyone’s going to take a potshot at you.”

“This woman don’t want me dead,” Rafe said, but he snapped his fingers at Pearl and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen. She followed, prancing excitedly and getting in his way. His voice faded as he moved away. “Take the baby upstairs. I’ll be there in a minute.”

A bit longer than