Chapter Four - Inside Out

"I'll get the door." Jaxson sighed and rose from the couch.

Kate watched him disappear from the room. This time, she valiantly tried not to stare—tried and failed. He was wearing a dress. The thought was enough to wring a smothered giggle from her, and briefly she wondered if she was becoming hysterical. She didn't know what to make of her neighbor. Jaxson.

The name seemed to fit the man. The dress did not. He was tall and looked on the strong side of average, build-wise. She hadn't seen a hint of his real hair beneath the frizzy blond wig, but his brows were dark brown and well shaped without crossing into feminine territory.

The rest of him, though… Kate swallowed and peered at the doorway he'd recently exited. She heard voices in the other room and took a deep breath, wiping damp, clammy hands on her pink hospital scrubs. Jaxson stalked into the room then, glowering at her before his expression softened infinitesimally. Two men followed close behind him. They were garbed in dark blue uniforms, with chunky black radios clipped to their belts. Both wore shoulder holsters.

Kate nodded at the police, feeling a rush of relief at their larger-than-life presence in the sitting room. Everything would be all right now. Tension uncoiled within her, and she rose to her feet to greet the officers. The younger of the two returned her smile and stood just inside the doorway while the older cop took a seat next to Kate on the couch.

"Your neighbor here," the man's gaze flicked to Jaxson, an unreadable expression on his face, "tells us you've had some trouble tonight."

He doesn't know what to make of Jaxson's appearance, either. "A man broke into my house."

"You saw the intruder?" This from the cop at the head of the room.

"Well … no." Kate wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, her eyes seeking out a silent Jaxson for a split second before she returned her attention to the officer's question. "I guess I just assumed it was a man."

"We've got a couple of our guys over at your place right now. If anyone's still in the house, we'll find 'em." He patted the couch cushion between them before flipping out a small, rectangular notepad and pulling a pen from somewhere inside his vest. Brusquely, he clicked the back of the pen and began to ask questions, pen scratching across paper with each response she gave.

Slowly, Kate began to relax even further. She told the men about her new job at the hospital, about her sister's recent graduation from high school, then explained how, a month ago, she and Lilly had inherited the house from an aunt, ending with how they'd moved in only today.

Against her will, Kate's gaze frequently sought out her neighbor. Each time, she found his own gaze already resting on her. But while Kate was becoming increasingly at ease, Jaxson looked anything but. His eyes were glacial pools, and she couldn't help but wonder at his sudden change of mood from the few moments they'd spent sitting together on the sofa while they'd waited for the police to show up.

True, even then he hadn't exactly been Mr. Congeniality, but had at least apologized for his terse, rude statement when he'd first opened the door to find her standing on his porch, gasping and in the full grip of panic.

Kate still didn't know what to make of that, despite his apology. She'd had her own share of bad days, but she couldn't imagine opening her door at eleven o'clock at night, finding a distraught woman begging for help on the porch, then slamming the door on said woman, after telling her to call a cop. Her attention shifted to Jaxson's floral-print dress and dark beige pantyhose. The Florence Henderson look was at direct odds with his gruff demeanor and downright surly expression. Clearly there was a great deal she didn't understand about her neighbor. Well, at least he'd stopped scowling. Intuition prompted her to add "for now" to the assessment.

Once the police had her statement, it was time to walk through her house, accompanied by the officers, of course. The last thing she wanted to do now was go home, but they needed to shadow her from room to room in order to determine if any of her and Lilly's personal property had been taken. The cop who'd sat beside her put a hand to the side of his radio when it chirped loudly in the otherwise silent room.

"Go ahead, Gabe."

"All clear over here, Benson."

"Ten-four. We're bringing the homeowner now."

"They didn't find him?" Kate's lips turned down at the corners.

The officer shook his head. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yes." She wasn't, but she didn't see the point in admitting so to the three men in the room or in delaying the inevitable. That was her house next door, hers and Lilly's, and she'd have to go back sooner or later. Might as well be now, she reasoned, climbing to her feet and following behind the two officers. Jaxson took up the rear but paused at the front door.

"Aren't you..." She broke off abruptly, biting back what she'd been about to ask. Of course he wasn't coming. He was her neighbor, not her friend. Her problems had nothing to do with him, and he'd been the first to make that abundantly clear.

"Do you want me to come with you?" he asked with a sigh.

Kate forced her mouth to close. "Uh, no, that's okay," she finally said, her hands reaching up to twist and re-tuck a lock of hair that had fallen over her right shoulder. "I mean, not unless you want to. If you've got something else to do…" She knew the hopeful expression on her face was clear for him to see. Beyond the front porch, the night was dark, ominous, and suddenly she didn't care if she sounded desperate or not.

Jaxson stared down at her for several long beats before he nodded. "Let's go."

* * *

The house was empty and looked marginally less creepy than it had a half an hour ago when she'd first returned home from work. Absently, she noted the streetlight was back on; it illuminated their block in a hazy neon glow. Storm clouds continued to roll in from the west, and the night still had a slightly unreal, creepy quality.

Kate forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, trudging up the walkway off of the porch. Jaxson walked silently beside her, lending his comforting, if strange, presence to her wavering sense of calm assurance. Everything was okay. Logically, she knew that. Jaxson was beside her, and four cops waited up ahead on the enormous wraparound porch.

They'd already told her nobody lurked within the confines of her house. But maybe that was the problem. They hadn't caught the man—the person—who had invaded her space, and that was seriously unsettling. Kate tamped down visions of knife-wielding strangers returning in the middle of the night to ravage and maim her. Dramatic? Maybe, but she felt that her concern was a valid one. Who was to say the intruder wouldn't come back? The more she thought about it, the more sense her theory made. Whoever had violated her space tonight had essentially just gotten away with it. What was to stop him from coming back?

She shivered and inched closer to Jaxson. If someone had told her that by this evening she would be tromping up her creaky porch steps with a police escort on one side and a transvestite on the other, she would have laughed it off as pure fiction. Her arm bumped against the soft fabric of Jaxson's gown, and she was reminded that sometimes truth was definitely stranger than fiction.

He made her feel safe. Heat infused her skin and she ducked her head, holding out her hand to take her set of keys from the officer who'd picked them out of the grass beside the front porch. She didn't even remember dropping them. Considering the panic she'd been in, and her mad dash to Jaxson's front porch, it wasn't a surprise that her keys had been the last thing on her mind.

Kate had been running for her life—and he'd slammed the door in her face, she reminded herself. Her next door neighbor was a transvestite who apparently suffered from mood swings. He shouldn't make her feel safe. Wanting him here with her right now probably spoke volumes about her mental state…

But she didn't want to be alone. Not tonight. And he had helped her, after all, so he couldn't be all bad. A little odd, maybe. She cringed when he adjusted his wig and stepped over the threshold of her home. Was transvestite the proper term for what he was? She wondered, looping the cold steel key ring over one finger and following him through the door.

"Have you been feeling well, lately, Miss Delaney?" a tall, dark-haired cop asked the moment she walked into the foyer.

"Um." Her tongue snaked out, nervously licking her bottom lip. What did this man care how she'd been feeling? She met his intent stare and nodded briefly. "Yes, I feel fine, except for the fact that someone just broke into my house. Why?" she asked, the word coming out stilted, unsure.

"You haven't been experiencing any unusual stress?"

Stress? What was he getting at?

Jaxson had paused at the entrance to her living room, and Kate watched him turn and frown at the officer. The cop noticed Jaxson staring at him and returned the disapproving look with interest, skimming disdainfully over the ladies clothing and the bleached, teased wig.

"I haven't been under stress," Kate answered, stepping forward and blocking his view of Jaxson. "Why do you ask?"

"Then are you playing some kind of joke tonight? Do you have a history of mental illness, Miss Delaney?"

"Wha—mental illness?" she croaked.

"What's the word, Carl?" one of the officers who had been with her next door asked, coming into the room. It was the young one. The one who'd remained by the arched doorway to the sitting room while Kate was being questioned.

"I've got a few questions for Miss Delaney," Carl told the other man. "We didn't find anyone in the house. There were no signs of forced entry."

"But my front door—" Kate began, shoulders tensing.

"Oh, there was damage to your front door, all right." Carl's lip curled. "The lock had been picked. From the inside."

The tarnished steel key ring bit into the palm of Kate's hand. The lock had been picked from inside the house? How? How was that even possible?

"That can't be. It doesn't make any sense," she argued, taking a defensive stance.

"That's what we're trying to find out." Carl fixed her with another one of those disconcerting, measuring stares. "Filing a false report is a crime."

"I didn't make it up." The words left her lips in a rush. "Someone really did break into my house tonight. He was waiting for me when I came home. I heard his footsteps on the porch and then I ran. The front door was open. He'd definitely been in the house."

"Is anything missing?" Carl countered, though why he'd asked, she couldn't say. He'd seen her walk in just now. He had to know she hadn't yet had time to walk through the house.

"I don't know."

"Let's look now," Jaxson interrupted, crossing the room and taking her hand in his much larger one. His rings pressed into her fingers, the chill of the silver and gold dragging her out of her dazed state.

"Jaxson, I don't get it," she whispered fifteen minutes later.

They'd gone through both floors of the house, painstakingly checking each room, especially the bedrooms and the kitchen. Granted, she and Lilly didn't own anything that could be considered extravagant, but there were a few pieces of jewelry each had brought with them from Atlanta, and Aunt Viola had left them a set of sterling silver cutlery. None of which had been touched.

Beyond that, they owned the typical household items—a couple of televisions, a VCR, a DVD player, iPods, and a handful of movies. Nothing that couldn't be tossed into the back seat of a car.

The art on the walls was antique and the furniture was of good quality, but those were not things that any average, run-of-the-mill petty thief worth his salt would bother making off with. Regardless, everything was in its place, arranged just as Kate had left it when she'd locked the door behind her that afternoon.

* * *

"Well, at least nothing was stolen, right?" Jaxson shrugged, heading down the stairs to join the officers who waited impatiently in the front entryway. "So … what's with the mirrored room?"

"Don't ask. And yeah," Kate spoke slowly and descended after him, "that's great, don't get me wrong. But you heard those men." She lowered her voice and, ahead of her, Jaxson slowed his pace and glanced back over his shoulder. "They think I made the whole thing up. That I … I don't even know, picked my own lock? And made this up, for what I have no clue. Who would do something like that?"

"A crazy person?" He shrugged again and picked up the pace.

"I'm not crazy."

"I never said you were."

"I didn't make this up. Someone was really here."

"I know."

"And—wait—what?"

"I said I know." Jaxson sighed. "I believe you."

And the funny thing was, he did. Sure, he didn't know Kate Delaney, didn't know a single damn thing about her, but he knew people. And she'd been completely terrified earlier. He'd seen it in her wide eyes—violet eyes, he could see now under the brighter lighting, not gray or blue like he'd originally thought.

No way had she made the whole thing up. "It's not me you have to convince." He sent her a meaningful look, then inclined his head toward the officers clustered next to the front door.

"I think they've already made up their minds." Kate's mouth tightened. "Nothing is missing," she called to the officers.

"If you have any more problems, give us a call," the older cop, Benson, advised her, not unkindly.

Kate gave the man a grateful smile, and Jax felt his gut tighten. Hell. The woman was dangerous. She made him feel edgy and at ease all at once. And when she smiled, it made him want to do things for her. He felt ashamed now for snapping at her and slamming the door in her face earlier.

He watched Carl issue thinly veiled threats to Kate, reminding her of the penalty of non-emergency calls to 911, and he felt the unfamiliar urge to put himself between her and the old bastard. He didn't. That would have been very, very stupid, given his current legal troubles. Somewhere in the house, a clock struck twelve, and Jaxson's eyes watered as he smothered a yawn. He needed to go home and get some sleep.

The cops left, shutting the door behind themselves. Then it was just him and Kate, alone in the house. And the ghosts, he amended, exhaling and letting his eyes do a wide, slow sweep of her foyer and, beyond that, her living room. He hadn't seen anything during their inspection of the first and second floors, but he'd felt them—and heard them. The ghosts weren't what put him on edge, though. The space around him felt thick and tense, different somehow, and that was saying something, considering he'd pretty much seen it all. He'd been five years old the first time he'd seen one, and he'd been hearing them long before that. Murmurs and snatches of conversation that were usually hard to make out and faded quickly. Mostly, the dead wanted to be left alone. Some didn't, but Jaxson had become an expert at not letting on to the fact that he could see and hear things that normal people couldn't—a lesson he'd learned the hard way. The dead here clearly weren't eager to be seen, but they were vocal nonetheless. A low, steady hum of sound, whispered words that blended together. Oh yeah, the place was definitely haunted. Not that it was his problem. A glance at the wall clock confirmed it was past time he left, but still he hesitated.

He didn't want to leave Kate, he realized with a start. As if she would want him to stay… Jaxson shook his head and opened the door. He didn't know her. But he was pretty damn sure she wouldn't want a strange man hanging around her house after midnight. A strange man in a fucking dress. He frowned, prepared to tell her goodbye and make the short walk to his own house. To go to bed and forget all about a violet-eyed girl who had great hair and too many problems.

She grabbed his arm. "Jaxson. Wait."

Shit.

"Do you have to … to go?" she stammered as one of the police cruisers disappeared down the street and around the corner. "I mean, right away?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." She frowned. "I thought, you know, maybe you could stay for a few minutes."

Jaxson watched as she hugged her arms around her waist. "What are you getting at, Kate?"

"Nothing." She clamped her lips together. "I'm sorry. It's late and you've done enough. Thank you for coming with me, for calling the police. And thanks for letting me in earlier. It was nice meeting you. Goodnight."

He closed the door and faced her fully, wincing at the faint hint of sarcasm in her voice, at the reminder of his earlier rude behavior. He stared down into Kate Delaney's wide, gray-purple eyes and felt like swearing. He didn't need this. He didn't need her. He'd be lucky to make it out of this town with both his life and his freedom intact. The last thing he needed was to throw another complication into the mix.

"You can stay at my place tonight, if you want," he heard himself say.

* * *

Gabe Bailey adjusted his shoulder holster and clicked his seat belt into place, then stared at his partner in silence for several long, drawn out moments. The veteran officer scribbled notes onto a pocket-sized notepad before tucking both pen and paper into the shirt pocket of his dark blue uniform. The pointed ends of the gold star on his chest reflected the light from the other cruiser as it backed out of the shared drive between the houses at 502 and 504.

"Carl?" Gabe questioned after several more seconds had ticked by. It wasn't his place to question Carl Jensen's mood, or his judgment calls. Not to mention it probably wouldn't bode well for Gabe's career if he made a habit of calling his commanding officer's final word into question. Still, even though he was a rookie officer, he'd never known Carl to be unfair in his dealings with the people of Crystal Cove. Abrupt, yes, when the situation called for it, but not unfair or short-sighted. And as far as Gabe could tell, Kate Delaney hadn't warranted that kind of treatment.

"Sir?" he asked cautiously.

Carl glanced at his rookie partner for a split second, then followed the direction of the younger man's stare to the aging Victorian that flickered a harsh yellow under the faulty streetlight. Carl shifted in his seat and turned the key in the ignition, bringing the cruiser to life. He switched the wipers on as the first drops of what promised to quickly become a full-on downpour splashed against the windshield. "I thought we were done with these damn calls about this house when the old lady kicked the bucket," he muttered.

"I'm afraid I don't follow, sir," Gabe said, staring up at the old house. A flash of movement from above caught his attention, and he raised his gaze to one of the two second-story windows that faced the street. A light came on in the room, and Miss Delaney stood silhouetted in the middle of the room. As he watched, she crossed to the window and stood there, staring out. It was too dark to make out her features, but he recognized her long, blonde hair. Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the heavy cloud cover and, for an instant, the woman at the window. Gabe started, certain that Miss Delaney had been wearing a pink shirt, not a white one. He blinked as her palm went flat against the glass. Then she waved. A moment later, she moved away from the window and the room went dark.

"Oh, yeah, you're new around here," Carl was saying. "The old lady that lived at that house was always reporting break-ins and strange noises." He grunted, shifting into drive and pulling away from the curb. "Toward the end, she swore the place was haunted."

"Haunted?" Gabe echoed, twisting around in his seat for one last glimpse of the house before they rounded the corner. "That's crazy."

"Yeah, tell me about it."