Chapter Two

The house was so quiet, Reggie felt as though he was creeping into a tomb. With a few lights on his home brightened, but now it was dreadfully dark. There was only the faint smell of Jocelyn in the air when he was used to a full bodied whiff of her delicious essence. Moving from the foyer, through the living room toward his private office, that room was normally bereft of any aroma of his wife. Yet stepping inside, Reggie found her fragrance was most noticeable inside these four walls. Perhaps an hour before she’d spent some time there, certainly she was somewhere in the house.

Maneuvering through the room without a light, when he turned on his desk lamp, his eyes abruptly focused on items resting on the blotter. Pictures and a leather spanker were deliberately arrayed for his eyes to notice. A quick examination of the photographs and he picked up the intercom phone and rang for the maid.

“Trina, where’s Mrs. Harold?”

“You’re home, sir?”

“Of course I’m home,” he snapped impatiently. A lock of his blonde hair was uncharacteristically hanging over his face, casting a shadow on his austere visage. A man of precision, order, calm and practiced finesse, nothing about the unexpected sight of his wife in full color alarmed him, but he was aware that she was making a premeditated statement. “Where is she?” he asked again.

“I’m not sure, sir,” the maid quipped. There was a little giggle behind her comment and a second giggle that was not hers.

“Unless you want me to throw your boyfriend out of your bed and haul your ass over my desk to be strapped, you’ll answer better than that.”

The command given, the girl shrieked, “Ooo, sir, I really don’t know where Mrs. Harold went. The last time I saw her she was on the path to the lake. It was raining cats and dogs and I saw that she had no umbrella. Then the light went on in the boathouse. That was about an hour ago. Maybe she’s still there?”

“Thank-you Trina.” Reggie slammed down the phone.

With the paddle in hand, Reggie exited the house through the French doors in his study, taking a path around the side of the building that led to the boathouse and the lake. Though it was still pitch black, the rain had stopped and it looked as if the clouds overhead were breaking up. Seeing no light from the frame building at the shoreline, he walked around the deck to the front and tried the door. Locked, he retreated to the back door and found it ajar.

There was no way to cross stealthily from one end of the creaky old structure to the other. With floor boards squeaking beneath his feet, his presence was unmistakable to the woman with her back to him, sitting on a stool looking like a statue in gray—except for the red of her hair, of course. Even in the dark, Jocelyn’s auburn locks gleamed, having an uncanny way of picking up any stray light that might be lurking about a dim lit room.

Knowing her husband was stalking her,