I'll Be Watching You. Tracy Montoya

by your studio before you got there and saw him pacing in front of the door. Ran him in on a petty theft charge a few years back.” Reaching back into the laptop briefcase at his feet, he pulled out a file and opened it up, taking a sheet of paper out. “He got off on a plea bargain—turned out he’d been rolling with a crowd connected to a drug lord the vice squad had been watching for a while. We got him to squeal in exchange for a fine and no jail time.”

      Her eyes were a light brown, the color of polished chunks of amber or really good scotch, and they widened to the point where the irises were rimmed with white. “Stan has a police record?”

      “Not a long one. Just that and—” he flipped through the papers in the file “—a restraining order from an ex-girlfriend in Gilroy. Seems old Stanley Robert Peterson had a hard time saying goodbye. Has he expressed any romantic interest in you?”

      “Yes. Just today, he…asked me out. He didn’t get upset or violent when I turned him down. He just looked a little sad.” She shook her head, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “He seems harmless.”

      “His ex-girlfriend doesn’t think so. The Gilroy detective I talked to says he threw a chair at her during an argument they had.”

      “Stan? Seriously?” She pulled her legs up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around them. “Well, maybe he was upset because his mom was dying.”

      “Who told you that?” Daniel asked.

      “Stan did.” She did not like where this was going.

      Daniel leaned forward, his face sober. “His mom lives in Salinas. She works in housekeeping at at local hotel.”

      Unbelievable. He’d lied to her.

      “So you saw him and went back out to watch him?”

      “Pretty much.”

      She remained silent, which he was starting to realize meant she was waiting for more information. “I followed his taxi,” he continued. “He had the cab circle around and then got out about a block away from you. He ducked into a recessed doorway and watched you, until I picked you up. At that point, he got into a blue Taurus and followed us until I lost him.”

      “But why?”

      “You’re a beautiful woman,” he said matter-of-factly. “Looks like he’s formed an attachment.”

      She abruptly broke eye contact at the compliment, becoming preoccupied with twisting a slim sapphire-and-gold ring on her right hand.

      He hadn’t been flirting, but judging from her reaction to what had just come shooting out of his mouth, she would have shut him down big-time if he had been. “Liz said you’d gotten a note?”

      She nodded, looking relieved that he’d changed the subject, and left the room. He heard a crinkling sound, and then she returned carrying a small paper bag, which she silently handed to him. He extracted the folded piece of paper inside, then looked in at the knife that had accompanied it.

      Serrated edge, about twelve inches long, made for hunting. There were several just like it still in Evidence downtown.

      He really didn’t like where this was going.

      “You get one of these knives before?”

      “No,” she answered. “I’ve gotten knives, but they tend to be the cheap butcher kind.”

      Interesting. He rolled the bag shut and set it carefully on the table. Then he unfolded the note.

      Liz had told him what that piece of paper contained, but nothing prepared him for the emotional sucker punch to the gut it delivered in reality.

      James Brentwood, waxy looking and still. Just as he’d been in his last moments on earth, before the M.E. had shown up to collect “the body.” Before a team of Monterey PD had carried him to his grave and put one of their own in the ground. His mentor. His friend. Adriana’s almost husband.

      It could have been Daniel. Maybe it should have been.

      He stole a glance at Adriana, who hugged a pillow to her chest and was overly absorbed in picking at the fabric, her long legs tucked underneath her as she folded into herself once more. He didn’t have anyone who would have grieved for him the way she still did for James.

      Damn Elijah Carter to hell.

      She looked up suddenly and met his gaze head-on. “You’re quiet.” There was something almost accusatory in the way she said it.

      “This must have been terrifying for you.” He folded the note again and put it back into the paper bag.

      “It was but…” Her dark eyebrows drew together, and a slim line appeared in between them. “He worked with you, Detective. You saw him, talked with him every day—probably more than I did, he was such a workaholic.” She released her stranglehold on the pillow, her hands making empty gestures in the air. “And I just…You just… sit here, looking at that awful picture, and…”

      “Adriana,” he said softly. “Would it really do you any good if I started cursing or throwing things?”

      She froze and just stared at him.

      “Because I could. No problem.” A corner of his mouth quirked upward in a wry smile that he knew held no trace of mirth. “I’m not exactly getting paid to sit in your living room and emote, though.”

      A lone tear slipped down her cheek, and before he realized what he was doing, he’d reached out and brushed it away with one finger.

      “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

      His hand lingered against her skin, and suddenly it was as if they were the only two people in the world, and all he could look at was her.

      “Don’t be,” he replied. “I’m sorry he didn’t come home to you that night.”

      She jerked back, and the moment between them was gone. Who knew if it had really existed, or if it was just his overworked imagination and the fact that he’d been too damn tired to go on a date since the city government had slashed the police department budget last spring.