Page 62 of The Woman in the Hollow
“Guess not,” I agreed. “Did you find anything belonging to the guy following her?”
“Footprints, but other than that, no.”
“Any chance the new cameras are up and working?”
“A few of them, yeah.”
He clicked around on his phone then handed it to me.
I watched the serene, if pretty destroyed, garden center for a long moment before Hazel shot out of the woods like a cannonball, her legs carrying her quickly away from danger.
For a second, I thought maybe there hadn’t been someone else, that she let her imagination get the better of her.
But then there he was, a baseball cap pulled low, the light outside lower still, making it nearly impossible to try to figure out who it was.
“Any idea?” I asked Dom, my stomach twisted into knot after knot as I watched the bastard chase, grab, drag, and terrorize Hazel.
I had to say, I was proud of Hazel’s survival instincts; the way she fought, the quickness of her mind.
When I saw her crawling out of the greenhouse, I made a mental note to use a flashlight and tweezers to make sure there weren’t any shards of glass in her wounds.
The video caught Hazel bolting for her life toward the shop, then disappearing inside.
I expected to see the man following her.
But there was nothing, not even a shadow. He just disappeared.
“Go over this with a fine-tooth comb. See if you can get a decent angle of this fucker’s face. Is anyone trekking through the woods to see if he disappeared into one of the other lots around?”
“Yeah. But we both know he’s long gone.”
I nodded at that.
“What the fuck did he want from Hazel?”
“Don’t got answers to that. Maybe he thinks she belongs to you. Or he wanted to use her for ransom or turn her into a mole. Who knows? She might have some of the answers we need, though.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, glancing back at the garden center. “I have to get her out of here and cleaned up. But I’ll get some answers out of her.”
“Know you’re thinking with your dick about her, but keep in mind that she was here when she wasn’t supposed to be.”
“I know,” I agreed. “I know where my loyalties lie,” I assured him. “But my gut is saying she’s not a plant or trying to fuck us over. She’s really freaked out. I don’t think she could fake that.”
“It would be weird for her to bust her ass like she’s been doing if she was just here to gather information.”
I nodded at that.
“Seems like we’re going to be ramping up the security for the girls.”
“Wouldn’t object to moving into your mom’s guest room for a bit.”
“You just want some home-cooked meals.”
“Won’t deny that.”
“Okay. Do it. We’ll see if we can convince Valley to crash in her old room for a while too.” We were going to be stretched thin with all the different houses and businesses we were going to need to protect now.
“Just tossing this out there,” Dom started, “but no one else has had a threat.”
