36

Vi felt ridiculous as a wide-awake Jess ushered her into the house. "I take it Steve called ahead."

"He didn't say what was going on. Just that there was trouble." Jess led her into the kitchen where she pulled a couple of cans of soda out of the fridge. "You know Steve, he's a man of few words at the best of times."

Vi took a drink of the cold soda. "I think somebody broke into my house while I was out on a call." She looked down and realized she was still wearing her jeans and t-shirt, although both were filthy with a combination of mud and blood. "I didn't even get a chance to change."

"I have some clothes you could wear. And a hot shower, which would be my priority if roles were reversed." Jess smiled. "I might even have a few sets of scrubs hiding in my closet that I may or may not have accidentally stolen from the hospital. For pajamas."

"I am definitely going to take you up on that."

"If I thought someone had gotten in here…" Jess visibly shuddered. "You seem to be holding it together pretty well. I'd be a mess."

"I'm in shock." Vi finished off her soda. "And then I'll probably be pissed off." She sighed heavily. "I have to get in touch with Liz and tell her not to drop Josie off in the morning, and I once again left my cell phone in the car."

"You can use mine." Jess crossed the kitchen to the counter where her phone was on its charger. She sent Liz a text telling her that Vi would pick Josie up the next morning instead of having her dropped at the house. She and Vi then went toward the rear of the house, where she poked through her closet until she found a set of scrubs that would fit Vi.

Vi took the hottest shower she could stand and scrubbed herself until she felt as if she should be glowing red. By the time she had toweled off, dressed in the scrubs, and combed the worst of the tangles out of her hair she was nearly asleep on her feet. She heard Jess's voice as soon as she opened the bathroom door. She was apparently talking in on the phone. Vi started to head in the direction of the kitchen but got distracted by soft noises from the baby's room. She detoured, noting that Robin was awake, sucking at a fist, and probably working up the energy to start yelling for her middle of the night feeding. Vi picked her up and cradled her close, and took her toward the kitchen.

"I don't…hold on." Jess spotted her with the baby and grinned. "Feeding time. She's out of the shower, you can ask her yourself." She said into the phone before swapped the phone for the baby. Vi didn't think it was much of a fair trade.

"Yeah?"

"Hey, Viv." It was Steve.

"I take it that whoever it was disappeared?"

"Yeah. Back door was wide open…"

"I did that when I left." Vi supplied.

"Front door was open too. Now I can't say for sure that nothin' was stolen…"

The way he hesitated made Vi frown. "But…" She dragged it out when he did not immediately continue.

"But…it's weird. I'm not here enough to know where every little thing goes, but it looks like shit was moved around in every room."

"Moved around?" Vi remembered bumping the kitchen chair but had put that down to Josie being forgetful.

"One of your kitchen chairs is in the middle of the living room. Another one's in the upstairs hall. Your couch is damn near turned around backward, and all the doors upstairs to the bedrooms and bathrooms were locked."

"Wait a minute…so some random person broke into my house and rearranged furniture? Why?"

"Hell if I know, Viv. But seems to me since whoever it was took the time to go down in your basement and shut off your breakers, he might have been hopin' to trip you up by changin' shit you know like the back of your hand."

Vi felt her temper swell again. The thought of some random person in her house, touching her things…and if Josie hadn't been so skittish she'd have been home by herself. "Does that mean it's safe for me to go back?"

"You could but I'd prefer if you stayed where you are. At least until later."

"I can tell you that putting in an alarm system has just jumped to the top of my priority list." Vi said with a weary sigh.

"Good call. Try to get some sleep. I'll lock up here, and we'll keep an eye on the place. Got any clue who you have left on the ranch? I know you said some of the guys were gone for the auctions…"

"I have no idea. Ray keeps the roster sheets, so it's probably hanging in the bunkhouse. Rick is still there, he's in charge when Ray is out."

"I'll be havin' a talk with them about keepin' an eye out then. You go on and rest up."

Vi hung up and went looking for Jess. She was in Robin's room, rocking the baby and feeding her from a bottle. "Did he catch the bad guy?" Jess asked softly.

"No. Unfortunately."

"Damn it. Well…you'll be happy to hear that Robin is on a more regular schedule, so you can probably get a good solid 4 hours of sleep before you hear her screaming for breakfast. Unless you crash on the couch instead. At least it's further away than the guest room."

"At this point I'm so tired I probably wouldn't hear a tornado come through the room." Vi said with a weak smile. "I'm going to pass out. If the baby doesn't wake me up, will you? I have to make some calls and work on some things in the morning…"

"Sure. Goodnight, Vi."

Vi headed into the spare room and crawled into bed, collapsing wearily. It was going to be a very long day. She could already sense it.

She didn't hear Robin crying, and it took Jess a few tries to rouse her from sleep several hours later. Steve had gotten home at some point in the night, and Jess was letting him sleep in for a bit. He left a phone number for Vi to call though, to a security company that he recommended.

She was back at home by 9. Everything on the outside of the house appeared normal, as it should be. But once she let herself inside she had to fight back her anger again. Steve had not been joking. Things had been moved, not just kitchen chairs or the couch. Family pictures were removed from the walls, knickknacks were missing from their normal spots, even the television was in the wrong spot. And that was just the living room.

"You'll have to make a list if you notice anything is missing." Mike, the deputy, spoke from the doorway. Vi had nearly forgotten he was there. Steve had called him in early to watch the house and to walk through with her when she got home, more to put Vi at ease than because they thought whoever had been there was still there.

"A lot of stuff is missing. But probably not gone. Just moved around." Vi said, grabbing the kitchen chair and sliding it toward the side of the living room, out of the way. Then she stood there with her hands on her hips and surveyed the room once more. "I can sort of get putting stuff out of whack and shutting the lights off. The confusion thing. But I don't get the rest. Why take down pictures?" She went to the couch and grabbed an end, yanking it so it slid a few inches from the wall. Mike joined her and helped turn it so it was back in its usually position.

"Could be a few things." He said, straightening the cushions on the couch. "Could have done it just because he was bored and it's a psychological thing. You know…not only is all your stuff moved around but some stuff is missing completely."

"And what else?" Vi had moved to the desk, which was in its usually spot but shifted slightly out from the wall. She peered behind it before pushing it back.

"Maybe he took stuff for souvenirs." Mike grabbed the kitchen chair and took it into the next room before continuing. "But that would be kind of a load to carry. Maybe he saw something that set him off."

"Like what?" Vi looked around once more. Besides the missing pictures and random odds and ends, the living room was fixed. She felt marginally better.

"Maybe he had a bad childhood, saw one of your pictures of your family, and it pissed him off. Or maybe the moon was just in the right place in the sky at the right time. I agree with you. The moving furniture around, yeah, that's planning and thinking. The rest of it…it's just weird." Mike hesitated. "Like locking all the doors upstairs. Whoever it was wanted to make sure he could corner you. Maybe he didn't pay attention to the multiple exits, or maybe he thought you would do what most people would do…feel their way to the breaker box to check to make sure they were all working."

Vi chewed her lip thoughtfully and nodded. She had been planning to do that very thing the night before, except she had gone for her flashlight because the breakers were in the basement, and the basement had no windows to let in even a little ambient light from outside. "Has that happened before?"

Mike half-smiled. "Not in practice. But I do believe they teach it in criminal-101."

Vi smiled dutifully. It faded when she considered the guns. There were the safes downstairs, but she didn't worry much about those. But besides the gun from the top of the fridge, there were the other two she had tucked away to be easily accessible. One of them was in the desk drawer. She checked and it was still exactly as she'd left it.

"Damn lucky he didn't snag that." Mike said, peering at the gun. "Or maybe he just doesn't like guns."

"It's weird. Everything is out of place, stuff out in the open got moved around, but it doesn't look like he bothered going through drawers or anything." Vi checked to make sure the gun was still loaded and the safety was on before tucking it back into the desk drawer. "I put another one upstairs."

"We got your doors open so they should all be unlocked." Mike said, peering up the steps.

"Great." Vi headed in that direction. All of the doors were open, and one of her kitchen chairs was sitting there in the middle of the hallway. She looked at it for a moment before going into her room and to the bedside table. It did not appear that anything in the room had been touched but Vi still knew she'd be stripping it down to the bare mattress and probably washing every item of clothing that was in the drawers and closet, even the comforters that hadn't been used in a couple of months. The room…the entire house…would not feel clean until she had taken apart every room.

The gun was exactly where and how she had left it. In fact, everything upstairs was how it had always been. Except for the chair in the hall, and the locked doors, nothing was out of place. But she finally found all of her missing items from downstairs.

Vi was in Josie's room, poking around, with Mike leaning in the doorway. She happened the look out the window and down at the stone patio below. And she sucked in a deep breath that brought Mike out of his thoughts.

"What is it?" He moved fast, across the room, his hand on the butt of the gun on his hip.

Vi didn't answer him. She turned and hurried down the stairs, almost scared at the pure rage she felt at that very moment.

Seeing the few breakables she'd kept around…a couple of vases, a few small sculptures…broken to pieces on the patio had been bad enough. She crunched through the glass to the pool. And there was everything else. The phone. The flashlights. All of the pictures that had disappeared from the downstairs of the house…all of it ruined in the water.

Vi did not give a damn about the electronics, or the few art pieces there were purely decoration. There were family pictures there as well, pictures of Josie as a baby, of Vi and Link on their wedding day. Even through the glint and shimmer of water she could see the pictures were torn, the frames they were in busted, the glass cracked.

All at once Vi couldn't breathe. It was like a hot ball of lead was sitting on her chest, and she could not draw in a breath. While she could not condone it, she could understand stealing something, even stealing things that would have no value to anyone but the family. But this destruction of personal items...it went beyond anything she could comprehend.

Mike touched her shoulder and Vi realized she had been about to climb into the pool to try to save something, anything. Some of those pictures were irreplaceable, taken before digital cameras or computer storage, and their negatives were destroyed in the fire.

"Ms. Peace…" He said, looking at all of the torn and broken items in the pool. "If you jump in there, you're about as liable to cut yourself open as save any of that stuff. Plus…"

"Plus?" Vi provoked when he didn't immediately continue.

"Fingerprints." He finally said, meeting her eyes. And it was his concern and sorrow that she could see that caused that heavy weight on her chest to let go. She did not know why he was sad for her, or even how he knew how much those pictures meant, but it was in his eyes. "The guy might have left fingerprints on some of it." He hesitated. "I saw some show on TV about guys who restore pictures that were in floods and stuff. Maybe we can find one who can check this out. I don't know if the chlorine will make a difference but it's better than intending to save somethin' and comin' out with nothing."

Vi took one shaky breath. Then another. She blinked back tears. "Ok. Yeah." She said it more for her benefit than his as she stepped away from the pool. Her cell phone rang, making her jump. She fumbled it out of her pocket and when she answered, she had her voice mostly in control once more.

It was the security company. Steve had apparently gotten up, and had called them to light a proverbial fire under their asses. They would at Vi's house in an hour to do an assessment and go over their ideas with her. She numbly answered that it would be fine. She had no plans to go anywhere for the foreseeable future.

"Sheriff said he'll be here around noon." Mike said after Vi had hung up. She was trying to decide if she should call Liz and get Josie home, or if she should ask her to keep Josie another night. Vi wasn't entirely sure she would be able to stay in the house, she wasn't even going to try to guess her daughter's reaction.

In the end, Josie decided for her. She was outraged, and that was putting it mildly. She wanted to be home, with Vi, and Vi could not tell her no. Josie also wanted to survey the damage herself, and to reassure herself that her room was still as it should be. Liz dropped her off at the same time the security company van showed up, and Josie disappeared into her room. Vi peeked in at her once, and saw Josie doing what she herself had started…she was stripping things down and cleaning. The two guys who were with the security company stayed out of their way. They consulted each other on occasion, must mostly they wandered around, jotting down notes and looking over the house and immediate property.

It was Mike who finally found someone that might be able to salvage some of the pictures in the pool. The woman he spoke with had not wanted to offer false home, but she seemed confident that if the damage wasn't too bad and they photos hadn't been in the water too long, she might be able to at least reconstruct and copy them. It was good enough for Vi. The woman's name was Angie Weathers, and she promised to be there by three that afternoon. She also warned Vi not to let the police touch anything in the pool.

"I know they want to get their evidence and whatever else, but if they pull those photos out without preserving them, they'll ruin them. Tell them I'll take care of it. I've worked with other police. They can call and check on my references."

That was good enough for Vi. She passed the message along. Eventually Steve showed up, looking slightly more rested than the night before. He still was a long way from his normal self though. Vi offered him a soda. Her coffee maker was one of the items that had been throw into the pool.

"Gonna take more than caffeine to get me goin' today I think, Viv." Steve took a seat. "Anything missing?"

"Not that I've noticed. Even the ruined stuff is accounted for I guess." Vi sat across from him at the table. "Are you feeling all right? You really don't look well."

"I feel like hell. But it'll pass." He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "All this crazy shit is wearin' on me. Everything that's happenin' around here. The baby. Thought I could handle just about anything, but I guess this is provin' me wrong."

Vi smiled and patted the back of his hand. "It gets better. Eventually. Robin will have to go to school at some point."

Steve groaned at that. "I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Mike told me you contacted someone about getting the stuff out of the pool?" He made it a question.

Vi filled him in, even reminding him not to touch anything out there so it wouldn't be ruined. "Other than that, and scrubbing the house from top to bottom and back up, I am kind of at a loss as to what's next."

"What's next is we get your security system worked out. Until then we can get a deputy to…" But Steve didn't get far in that line of thinking.

"No. There is no way I would want or expect one of your deputies to watch us all the time."

"Viv…"

"Absolutely not. You guys have enough to deal with already. Babysitting seems a bit beyond the call of duty." Vi shook her head. "I will get the alarm, and whatever else these guys recommend, and I will sleep with a gun under my pillow if I have to but I don't want to feel like some kind of prisoner in my own house."

"I didn't expect you'd wanna hear it." Steve said with a smirk. "Didn't stop me from offerin'."

They were interrupted by one of the security men entering the kitchen. He carried a notebook with him, full of notes and drawings. Steve offered his recommendations and Vi settled on a system that would not only monitor the all of the entries and exits, but also her office, with motion sensing lights outside. She was more iffy about the lights than she was about anything else.

"I work late sometimes, and if I'm constantly setting them off…plus…what if the power gets cut again? The guy threw the breakers right?"

"It runs off its own power source." Steve assured her. The security people agreed. Other than that there was really nothing more they could recommend short of a few armed bodyguards. Fortunately they were locals, and they promised they would at least have the downstairs windows and doors connected before nightfall. The lights and office might have to be put off until the next day when they could get more equipment from their office.

Josie wandered into the kitchen, looking a combination of sullen and angry that Vi would have found funny under other circumstances. She sat next to Vi and rested her head against her shoulder. "Why would anybody want to come in the house and ruin a bunch of pictures."

Vi smiled inwardly. The way Josie spit out each word was pure Link. On the rare occasion when something could rile his temper, he had spoken in that same clipped way. "I don't know hon. I wish I knew." Vi glanced up and saw that Steve was in deep conversation with the security guy. She lowered her voice. "Later on we're going to go out and get some shooting practice in."

She felt Josie nod against her arm. "Where's Bridger?"

Vi raised an eyebrow. "I don't know. I haven't seen him today. Hiding from all the busy, or maybe he went to the bunkhouse after we left." They had let him out, and normally Bridger would doze on the porch until they got back. But he hadn't been there the night before.

Josie made a noncommittal noise in her throat. "Do you want me to clean the bathroom up there?"

Vi was surprised at that. "You're offering to clean? Should I check your temperature?"

"Ha. I just…it feels weird. That somebody was here messing with our stuff."

"I know. And sure. You can tackle the bathroom, and I'll get the laundry going, then we'll take care of the living room and kitchen together. How about that?"

"Sounds ok to me." Josie got up and grabbed a soda for herself before ducking out of the kitchen.

Vi excused herself from the kitchen shortly after that as well. She wanted to get a start on the laundry before the woman came to try to rescue her pictures out of the pool. She saw Josie's hamper already sitting at the door to the basement. Vi went to Glen's room first, meaning to grab his hamper. She figured she might as well throw his things into the wash as well. She wasn't sure he would be nearly manic about washing everything so she wasn't going to bother anything else in his room.

Glen's room was almost always military neat. It wasn't that Vi had told him to keep it spit-shined, but he always made his bed in the morning and was neat to almost the point of fastidious. Vi noticed for the first time that the bed was made wrong.

Anyone else might not have noticed. Vi did. He'd been staying with them long enough that she had gotten used to the way he did things, and it didn't take a genius to see that the top blanket, the one that he normally kept folded down because he slept under just a sheet, was pulled up and tucked under the pillows.

Vi didn't even think about it…she pulled the blanket off the bed, meaning to toss it in with the rest of the laundry. She came up short of tossing it toward the hamper though when she spotted the picture on the bed that had been covered by the blanket. She frowned and tilted her head, trying to figure out who it was she was looking at. It wasn't one of her pictures. It wasn't Josie. As far as she knew Glen didn't have a picture of his friend Amanda, and Vi was fairly sure that she was a blonde anyway.

The woman in the picture was a brunette, smiling, her arm looped over the shoulders of someone who stood outside the range of the camera lens. Vi had the feeling that she knew this woman, had in fact seen her, but she could not place her.

"Steve?" Vi went to the door and called his name out. A few moments later he appeared in the doorway. She'd had time to notice that while the picture was still in a frame, and it wasn't shredded or ripped like some of her photographs had been, there was still something not right about it.

"What is it?" Steve stepped in. His eyes fell on the photograph on the bed. "Wha…" The word died before he fully spoke it. Vi watched as Steve pulled a bandana out of his back pocket. He gingerly used it to pick up the picture, avoiding touching it with his fingers.

Of course he didn't have to hold it to see what Vi had already noticed. The glass was missing from the frame. Except for one sharp triangular piece. It stuck straight up, embedded in the picture, right through the woman's chest. The glass wasn't clear. It was red.

"He cut himself." Vi said, making a face as Steve tilted the picture.

"Looks like it." He looked up and met Vi's eyes. "This is different than the other ones. It feels different."

"I agree."

"I tried to call Calaway." Steve said, seemingly at random. Vi raised an eyebrow. Mark had been about the furthest thing from her mind since the day before.

"Ok."

"He's not gonna like this." Steve sounded resigned. Vi snorted.

"This wasn't done to him. This was done to us." Vi pointed out.

"You don't know who this is, do you?" He gestured at the picture, where the sliver of glass was conspicuous by the fact that it was the only one. Someone had done that on purpose, someone had purposely busted the glass but saved a piece of it to drove through the paper.

"I have no idea. Glen only kept one picture in here." Vi felt a little ripple of unease go through her but pushed it aside. She pointed at the dresser, where a framed picture of Glen and Josie sitting on the open tailgate of Ray's truck sat. Vi had taken the picture herself, and like other personal things on the second floor it had not been touched.

"You probably didn't know her that well. This is Rayne." Steve looked at Vi intently. "Mark's wife." He pointed at something in the background of the picture. "Looks like it was taken when they were building their house."

"Why the hell would there be a picture of Mark's wife in my house?" Vi asked, confused as she looked at the picture in Steve's hand.

"I don't know. I don't even know if it's one of Mark's." Steve shook his head. "He doesn't keep many around. I don't think I've seen this one. Glen wouldn't have…"

"Why…or how…would it be his? He showed up here with nothing, not even a pair of socks on." Vi gingerly finished stripping the bed down to the mattress. Whether or not Glen was bothered by someone going through his stuff was a moot point. She was going to clean whether he wanted her to or not. "It feels like it was left as a message. But I'll be damned if I can guess what kind of message it is."

Steve could only sigh and head for the stairs. He had some bags in his car. He would bag this and get it fingerprinted, and hope that Mark would not go too ballistic when he found out about this when they finally got in touch with him.