Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)

Chapter Sixty-Three: Joanie, Saturday

Brandon was here, sooner than she'd ever expected him to be; with his car stolen, she'd thought he would have been delayed at least over the weekend. It appeared the man was more obsessed with her than she'd thought, and now he was on her doorstep at what must have been the worst possible time for both of them.

She opened the door, and it appeared he was still talking to someone (maybe on a phone with bluetooth?), but when he saw her he said, "Oh, Joanie, hi."

"Hi?" she said with an uptilt as if it were a question. "What are you doing here?"

"As I told the woman on the doorbell, before I discovered it wasn't you... she said it was her house... I came to apologize for ditching you last night."

Agnes. That must have been whom he'd been talking to. So, she was still alive, at least at the time Joanie opened the door. She was trying to process everything she was hearing while feeling the cold metal barrel against the back of her head, so her brain was a little muddled, and she sounded a little slow on the uptake when she repeated, "Ditching me?"

"Yeah," he said, his smile a little too stiff. Something on her face was making him hesitate, but he was here with flowers, and he was determined. If she actually liked him, she might have found his forwardness charming, but he'd creeped over here following the tracking device she'd left inside Agnes' car parked right outside the house, so she had more cause to suspect his intentions. "See, my car was stolen, so I had to deal with that, give a police report and all that, and by the time I had the chance to get back to your table, you'd gone. I just wanted to come here and explain."

"I see," she said. The gunman behind the door pressed the gun a little harder against the back of her head, a nudge to hurry the fuck up and get rid of this guy. "How did you find me?" she asked. "I never gave you my address."

Brandon smiled crookedly. "I have my ways of finding information."

"Uh-huh." Joanie felt like she was between the frying pan and the fire. What was she to do here? Brandon was definitely giving off a rapey vibe, and in a normal situation she was sure he would be a threat, but the gun barrel pressing into her reminded her that the larger threat, in fact, was behind her. "Well, Brandon," she said, "it's late, and I didn't invite you here, and I'd like you to leave."

She made to close the door, but he put his hand out. "Hang on," he said, smarmy and aggressive. "I didn't come all this way in a borrowed car just to be turned away without at least a hope of reconnecting with you in the future."

The best thing to do to get rid of this guy quickly, for her sake as well as for his, would be to promise that she would, that she'd get his number and call him, but indignation was warring with her sense of self-preservation, and the last thing she wanted to do was give this guy any opening at all.

"No," she said. "Your coming all this way without my invitation has negated any chance of your reconnecting with me. We talked in a bar. That was it. In fact, when I went to the bathroom, I was getting ready to leave. Without you. So, really, when you had to leave to deal with your car, it was just as well."

She pressed harder on the door, but he pressed back. "Hey, now," he protested.

"I'm going to call the police if you persist in preventing me from closing this door," she said.

"Aren't you the police, though?" he asked with a sinister grin. "I bet you could take me down with a choke hold, pin me to the ground, get all up against me. I'd let you."

"How do you know I'm a police officer?" she asked.

His face fell. "I've seen you around the city."