As they walked, then, arm in arm, toward La Belle Vie, Tess silently decided she would ask Wyatt to stay. It had been a long time since she had slept next to a man, let alone done anything else, and a sizzle of nervousness flashed up her spine. She hoped her bathroom was clean and that her bedroom wasn’t strewn with yesterday’s clothes and underwear. But even if her bedroom was a mess, she knew she didn’t want this day, and evening, to end.
Tess realized it was time to get on with it, already. She had left the false hopes of reconciling with Matt well behind her. Now it was time to admit there was more to her life than being a single mom to a now-adult son, and begin to live again with, perhaps, this incredible man who was right in front of her. As the snow fell around them, it seemed like a blessing of that realization, an impossibly romantic blessing.
She and Wyatt shared a smile, and she wondered if he was thinking the same thing.
Two blocks away, they rounded the corner to Tess’s house, and the magic that had been swirling in the air between them took a dark turn, as magic often can. Whatever enchantment had been floating around them vanished. The snow globe fell onto the sidewalk with a thud and cracked.
All the lights in La Belle Vie were off, except one. The studio. The light was blazing there, and it shone through the whole wall of windows. It stopped Tess and Wyatt in their tracks. Even the dogs stood still.
“Wyatt,” Tess said. “I don’t remember leaving the light—”
Just then, Tess’s phone rang. She grabbed it out of her purse and slid her hand out of her mitten to answer it.
“Hi, Tess, it’s Jim,” he said. “This may be an odd question, and I hate to seem like the nosy neighbor, but are you in the house? I thought you were out today.”
Tess locked eyes with Wyatt. “Yes—I mean no,” she said. “Yes, I was out today, and no, I’m not in the house. In fact, if you look out your side window, you’ll see Wyatt and me with his dogs.”
A moment’s pause, then. “Okay, yes, there you are,” Jim said. Tess spotted him in his window, waving. She waved back. “Again, an odd question, but do you have any houseguests?”
Tess locked eyes with Wyatt. “No. Why do you ask?”
Jim took an audible breath in. “Tess, I don’t want to alarm you, but there is someone inside your house.”
His words were calm. Measured. Careful. So as not to cause panic. “In the back room. I can see him—or her—clear as day. A dark figure, silhouetted. I knew you had gone out earlier and wanted to check with you before calling the police, just in case you had a houseguest.”
Tess looked up at the studio, and there it was. She saw what Jim was seeing. A person, a figure, standing in one of the windows.
She pointed to the window. “Do you see what I see?” Tess whispered to Wyatt.
Wyatt nodded, slowly and deliberately. “We’re calling Nick.” He slid his phone out of his jacket pocket to contact the town’s chief of police.
“We see them,” Tess said to Jim. “I’m going to call Nick Stone right now. Stay tuned. And please keep watching.”
Tess rang off and was ready to make that call when she noticed Wyatt’s phone was already at his ear. “Hey, Nick. Wyatt Templeton. We need a squad at La Belle Vie. Tess and I are outside walking my dogs and we can see somebody walking around on the second floor of the house.” Wyatt put the call on speaker so Tess could hear the chief’s response.
“La Belle Vie,” Nick repeated. “I’ll be there in a minute. And I’ll call for backup on the way. You two stay outside until I get there.”
As they both watched the figure moving around near the second-floor windows, Tess tucked her mittened hand into Wyatt’s. They stepped closer to the house, until they were standing on the sidewalk just past the driveway.
A moment later, Nick Stone pulled up.
As he jumped out of the car, Tess pointed to the windows. “Look,” she said. The figure was moving back and forth along the wall of windows, as if pacing.
A loud, long scream pierced the night air.
“What the hell . . .” Nick growled, his eyes trained on the window. “What in God’s name is that?”
The three of them hurried toward the kitchen door as Tess fumbled with her keys. The scream continued, a screech of the damned. Tess’s shaking hands dropped the keys in the snow. Wyatt scooped them up and unlocked the door.
“You two stay out here,” Nick said, drawing his gun.
But the dogs had other plans. They followed Nick inside the house, pulling Wyatt as they went. He tried to hold them back, but they broke free from his grasp on their leashes and bounded into the house. Tess watched as they raced around Nick to the back stairs as though they knew the layout already, and pounded up the stairs. Nick followed closely behind.