Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [77]
She wanted his letters. She needed them.
She never opened them. They just sat in a locked drawer in her desk, whispering profanity. But as long as she kept getting those letters with the prison stamp on them, she knew where he was. Locked away, forever. They reminded her that he was a mentally ill man and not a demon. Not a demon with supernatural powers who could reach through the earth from the depths of hell and snatch her away.
Jeffrey never stopped nagging her about the letters. But, as usual, Lydia could not be swayed. And Jeffrey had long since given up, feeling rage rise in his chest whenever he thought about the first letter.
But as they walked in the front door and he caught sight of the letter in her hand—indeed a letter from Jed McIntyre—with the rest of the mail she collected from the box, he felt his throat constrict with anger. He slipped it from the pile when she dropped it on the kitchen table.
“Jesus, Lydia, what the fuck do you do with these?”
“At least I know where he is.”
“By not returning these, you’re allowing him to perpetuate whatever fantasies he’s having about you.”
“Jeffrey, don’t we have enough to deal with right now without rehashing this?”
He handed the letter back to her without a word and opened the refrigerator, looking for a beer. She stared at his profile cast in the light. She could see the anger in his set jaw. She stood behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Don’t be angry. Try to understand.”
He placed his arms over hers and leaned back into her. “It makes me crazy to think of him even thinking of you.”
“I know but it’s all right. He can’t hurt me,” she said, turning him around.
“Okay,” he said, and gave her a sad smile.
She left him and walked up the stairs to her bedroom. As she flipped on the light, she stopped cold in the door frame. Her lingerie drawer stood open and its contents had been cast to the floor. On the full-length mirror that stood beside the dresser was a message written in red lipstick.
o righteous god, who searches minds and hearts, bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure.
Jeffrey came up behind her. “Lydia, did you leave the back door unlocked?” he asked.
“No,” she answered, turning to him, her face flushed. A moment passed as she heard him inhale sharply and felt him stiffen as he registered the message on the mirror.
Instinctively, he reached for the .38 he’d been carrying. “Stay right where you are. Don’t touch anything,” he called as he left the room and began searching the house.
But she knew even as she heard Jeffrey slamming open doors, that the killer was gone. Somehow, somewhere, he had seen her, been close enough to her to want her. He knew enough to know when she would not be here. And he wanted her to know that he had been here. She smiled, in spite of the fear twisting in her belly. The desire to find him, to finish him, was more powerful than her desire to breathe. She leaned against the doorjamb, shaking with an adrenaline rush. I am not a victim, and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let some backwater psycho turn me into one.
“He broke into the breaker box behind the house and turned the system off. That’s how he got in. But he’s gone now.”
“I know,” she said, pulling her cell phone from her pocket and dialing Morrow from her speed dial. “It’s Lydia Strong. We’ve had another intruder at my home … Okay … we’ll be here.”
Jeffrey walked past her and stood staring at Lydia’s lingerie. The rage, the fear that churned inside him, blurred his vision. It was clear to him that if he lost her now, all his patience, all his resolve would have been for nothing. His love for her would be a stone swallowed whole, unexpressed, unrequited, sitting in his heart for the rest of his life. If anything ever happened to her, he might as well be dead, too. “Never love anything so much that if it goes away your whole world turns black.