In His Sights

I N H I S S I G H T S (An Eve Hope FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 2) K a t e B o l d CONTENTS PROLOGUECHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYCHAPTER TWENTY ONECHAPTER TWENTY TWOCHAPTER TWENTY THREECHAPTER TWENTY FOURCHAPTER TWENTY FIVECHAPTER TWENTY SIXCHAPTER TWENTY SEVENCHAPTER TWENTY EIGHTCHAPTER TWENTY NINECHAPTER THIRTYCHAPTER THIRTY ONECHAPTER THIRTY TWOCHAPTER THIRTY THREEEPILOGUE PROLOGUE Mary sat alone at her small dining table, looking out at the desolate suburban backyard, and wondered for the hundredth time if she'd made the wrong decision. She hated being alone. And yet, here she was, staring at the sole candle on her birthday cake, the only attendee of the saddest party of the year.Mary Shetland, no longer Mary Winters, sighed, making the candle flicker and dance. Had the divorce been her fault? She had run it through her mind a million times, recounting past conversations, examining the minutia of every argument. She couldn't understand how things had gone so wrong.And yet, things had gone wrong all the same.She had been so happy the day she and her husband Nathan were married. They fell in love quickly and married quickly. In those early months after their wedding, they had talked about the future with excitement and love.They'd been hopeful, young, and optimistic. They decided to wait a little while to have children, wanting to build a good foundation first. And they were good together. It seemed like everything was going perfectly.Shortly after their third anniversary, things started going downhill. The change seemed to happen overnight, but the difference was impossible to ignore. They fought constantly and slept in separate beds more nights than not. The arguments hadn’t been over anything serious—domestic squabbles that were goaded into screaming matches. Mary had no idea the fights would end their marriage. Only in hindsight could she see that the divorce had been a long time coming.As the thrill of the honeymoon faded, the frequency and intensity of their fights increased. It had only taken a few years for the cracks to show, and the chasm grew silently and steadily between them. By the time Mary realized she was married to the wrong man, she’d become too attached to let him go. She’d clung and clawed until, with gut-wrenching finality, he’d presented her with divorce papers and fled to Oregon, taking everything he owned with him. Mary took a bite of cake, chewed, and swallowed, pretending she didn't notice the sluggish tear rolling down her own cheek. Her lip quivered with woe and self-pity as she dug the fork into vanilla frosting. Then she heard the noise.Mary sat up straight, panic racing through her. No one else was supposed to be in the house."Hello?" she called out, her voice shaking.There it was again: a definite creak, as if somebody was moving slowly along tired floorboards. There was somebody inside the house.Mary stood up quickly and reached for her phone. The screen lit up, but to her horror, the loading bar of a system update crawled across her screen. She hadn’t installed a landline and probably never would. When would she ever possibly need a landline? She cursed modern technology and got to her feet. She eyeballed the doors. All were closed, as far as she could see. Had she locked them and turned all the bolts? Before the divorce, this was when she would have handed matters over to her husband and his trusty baseball bat. Now that she was alone, she realized that Nathan had been her default security plan. Except the alarm system, she didn’t have a security plan in place. Her panicky mind struggled to remember what the workman had told her about the manual panic button on her home security system. She couldn't even remember where the interface had been installed. Damn this new house and damn the divorce. "Hello?" she called out louder, hurrying into the hallway where her expensive security system's interface was inlaid. She squinted at the buttons, which glowed like an alien control panel in a sci-fi movie. She pressed the button that was supposed to call for a security patrol to be dispatched to her doorstep. She couldn't remember the special coded combination that dialed 9-1-1. The panic button on the console, the installer told her, sent a call to the security company, not the police. This was to avoid accidental 9-1-1 dials. The system would auto-dial 9-1-1 in case of a break-in. She was probably just imagining things. But then she heard the sound again, exactly like careful footsteps.Mary's blood ran cold in her veins, her skin tingling on pins and needles. She searched desperately for a weapon, but all her cutlery was still boxed up. She owned no guns, and Nathan had kept his bat. She reached into one of the open, moving boxes and picked up a hefty brass bookend, gripping it like a club. It would have to do. "Hello?" she called out again, her voice shaking. She made her way to the living room and then pulled aside the curtains to look out the window. The street was empty.She walked through the rest of the house, looking in the bedrooms, the closets, and under the bed."Is anyone there?" she called again. The sound had not only been in her head. She was sure she'd heard something. The bookend hung in her right hand; her knuckles still white with the intensity of her grip. The silence enveloped the whole house, sealing her in. She suddenly felt as though the air had been sucked out, leaving her in a vacuum without light or sound. It was time to get out.Mary grabbed her coat, which was hanging over the back of the chair. Her keys in the pocket jingled, which made her panic. Leaving the bookend on the dining room table, she dashed for the front door. There was a standing mirror hanging under the coat hooks, a present