“All right,” he said. “I’m coming over. Twenty minutes. Do not go outside. Don’t trample the tracks. Check all doors and windows, make sure everything’s locked.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, and meant it with something close to desperation.
I hung up and walked the house room by room, checking latches with a new kind of attention. Front door locked, chain in place. Windows latched. No pry marks. No broken glass. Nothing wrong—except the feeling that something had brushed close to my life while I slept and had decided I was vulnerable.
I kept drifting back to the kitchen window like it had a gravity of its own. In the growing light the boot prints looked even deeper, the stride wide, confident. Whoever it was hadn’t hurried. He’d moved like he belonged there.
Headlights finally swept across the snow. A cruiser pulled up. Relief hit me so hard I had to sit down for a second before I could stand again.
I opened the door before he could knock. Officer Pernell stepped in, tall and heavy-set, winter jacket zipped high, knit cap pulled down. He stomped snow from his boots with care and followed me toward the kitchen window.
“Show me,” he said.
We stepped onto the porch. The cold bit hard, clean, and Pernell descended the steps slowly, studying the yard like it was a page he could read.
He crouched beside a print, gloved fingers hovering just above the tread. “Work boots,” he murmured. “Size twelve… maybe thirteen. Deep tread. Came from the gate, went straight to the windows.”
I hugged myself tighter, my breath clouding. “Who does that?”
He stood and tracked the line with his eyes—the approach, the methodical circuit, the return. “Someone who knew what he was doing,” he said. Then he looked at me with a seriousness that made my stomach drop. “Do you have any conflicts with neighbors? Anyone holding a grudge?”
“No. We keep to ourselves.”
“And your husband left around seven, you said?”
“Yes,” I said, and the number sounded suddenly important, like a timestamp on a threat.
Pernell nodded slowly. “So whoever this was had reason to believe you were alone.”
The sentence landed like a weight.
He scanned the street. “Any neighbors have security cameras?”
“Maria Higgins across the street,” I said, and the words came out fast. “She put them up last year after the Petersons’ garage got hit.”
“Good,” he said. “Let’s go. Right now.”
Because a footprint in snow is unsettling, but a face on video is a different kind of fear.
Maria answered the door in a bright floral housecoat, gray hair pinned neatly back, eyes widening when she saw Pernell.
“Elaine, honey—what’s wrong?”
“Someone was in my yard last night,” I said, and the reality of saying it out loud made my voice wobble. “Can we look at your camera footage?”
