No, he needed her permission to make her feel that way, and there was no way she was going to give it.
Fight him. Block out the fear that gave him his power to change her world.
She stood in her foyer and took a deep breath.
It didn’t feel like home to her now, but it would again. One day.
She glanced up at the painted message on her living-room wall:
NICE TRY, KENDRA. BUT YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT.
—MYATT
She turned and strode to the utility closet in the kitchen and grabbed a gallon can of primer she’d used to paint the kitchen door six months ago. It was half-full, and that would do the job. The forensic team wouldn’t be pleased with her for doing this before they’d officially released the apartment. Too bad. A paint crew would be here in a couple of days, but she couldn’t stand the thought of that spray-painted scrawl in her living room for a minute longer.
She snatched a lid opener and brush from her kitchen utility drawer, then popped the top from the primer. She stood on the couch and slathered the primer on the wall above, covering the message one letter at time. She was sure the Bureau had already identified the brand and shade of the paint and was attempting to track down every can sold in the last few weeks. It was a long shot, but there was always the hope that Myatt might be dumb enough to get caught on a Walmart security camera while using a credit card to pay for his purchase.
Fat chance.
She suddenly froze.
She stopped applying the primer. She studied the spray-painted letters for another long moment. With outdoor graffiti, stray paint particles almost always told her at what vantage point the vandals were spraying from: up, down, right, or left.
Here on her wall, the paint seemed to be hitting dead-on. Did that mean he had stood on her couch, just as she was doing now? Or did he stand on something else?
She glanced around the room.
The coffee table perhaps, but a dinette chair would be easier to move. Kendra moved over to her dinette set and inspected the chairs.
Yes.
There, on the chair closest to her living room, were a few tiny white and green particles. Familiar particles. She had seen them before, but never in her condo.
She grabbed her keys, walked outside, and climbed the stairway to the rooftop pool, which was actually little more than a wading pool surrounded by a sundeck. Flower boxes and barbecue grills lined the area. There, on the building’s south side, tiny green and white fertilizer pellets had blown out of the flower boxes and scattered onto the deck.
Kendra knelt and picked up a few of the particles. It was the same as what she’d seen on her dinette chair.
She brushed them from her hands as she stood and looked at the building next door. She was still staring at it as she pulled out her mobile phone and punched Griffin’s number. He wasn’t available, so she had the call patched through to Metcalf.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You’re calling to bust my chops about Comic-Con some more.”
“There’s plenty of time for that later. Right now, I want to talk about fertilizer.”
“Oh, if there’s anything I find fascinating, it’s a discussion about plant nutrients.”
“I found some fertilizer particles on a chair in my condo. The same stuff they use in the flower boxes on my building’s rooftop pool deck. It’s all over the deck on the south side of the building, just six or seven feet from the building next door. That’s how I think Myatt was able to avoid being seen by security cameras and the agents who were watching this place last night. He was in the building next door. He stole the key from the management office earlier in the evening or maybe even the previous day. He jumped from the rooftop to this one, then came down to my condo. He left the same way.”
“Hmm. We’ve already obtained outdoor security camera videos from that neighboring building. We’ll see if they have any interior cams.” He chuckled. “Fertilizer, huh?”
“The particles probably got caught in his shoe treads, which then came off when he stood on a chair to spray paint his message on my living-room wall. There’s a chance that Myatt might not have been quite so careful of those video cameras in that other building. Even a glimpse might help.”
“We’ll get right on this. In the meantime, the calls are still pouring in about that police sketch. We’re looking forward to having you come in and quickly eliminate a couple hundred of them for us. It will save us some serious manpower.”
“Griffin said you’ll be ready for me at two. I’ll do my best, Metcalf.” She hung up.
She checked her watch. Time to scan this deck and her apartment before she headed for her appointment with Dean. She doubted if she’d find anything else, but you could never tell. She moved toward the deck surrounding the pool.