Glenn leaned up a bit out of the chair and brushed his lips against her soft cheek. “Don’t be scared, Tessa.”

Her eyes closed and she whispered, “Well I am.” The desperation in her words suggested she meant more than merely renovating the ghosts out of her house.

“Well don’t be,” he insisted. “I am determined.” He meant more than her spooky house too.

“You can’t snap your fingers and make it all better like magic pixiedust.”

Glenn closed his eyes after she said it. No, she was definitely not talking about her house. No matter how many times he ran it through his head over the years, trying to figure out how a game, a prank, a bet, all blew so wildly out of control; he had done her wrong whether it was his intention or not. He hadn’t known what all was happening in that house and he had made it much worse for her. To her mind, renovating would make it worse for her again. “I promise you—”

“Don’t,” she barked. “I for sure don’t want to hear it. I for sure don’t believe in promises anymore!”

Well well, direct heart-shot past her encryption, he thought. That bright flash of raw pain in her wounded green gaze was harsher than her tone had been. A wise man would probably retreat to regroup. Glenn pushed ahead. “Are you suggesting my promises have no substance, no sticking power? No value to my word, my honor, my code of conduct?”

She stared directly in his eyes but she did not utter a word.

“That’s very insulting, Tessa.”

“True nonetheless.”

Tick, tick, tick. His temper activated like a gamer planting a bomb while it ticks backwards until exploding. He lifted one finger, but then shook his head once. To the same steady tick of the time-bomb, he counted to ten. “I’ll say a word and you say the first word you associate with it.” . . . He counted down from ten. “ Promise.”

“Polluted water.”

“That was more than one word.”

“How about drips right through my fingers, nothing to hold there no matter what, just keeps running through my fingers. A total and utterly complete squander of time to have tried to put it in my cupped hands, to try to hold it or to believe it could be held, a sad and useless wasted effort.”

“God forgive me for keeping your diary and God rest his soul but I hate him.”

Her graceful hand shot up in front of her face in a universally understood gesture to stop.

Ugh. He didn’t need a cryptologist now. She blew out one long breath. She inhaled a deep breath through her nose. She then puffed out her cheeks with exasperation. Wow, had he made her so mad she could find no words? Tessa? He laughed.

“Uh-oh.” Laughing was another possible unwise decision because now she looked mad enough to knock him on his butt. “Does that mean you don’t want to kiss and make up yet?” he taunted her. He laughed again. She was cocked and loaded.

He walked to his office door. “Hey, Cole! Come here. Tessa is ready to talk to you now.” Glenn held up his hand and wagged a finger. “All’s fair, bud.”

When Cole sauntered into the room, Tessa widened her stance. “Thanks. She looks ready to kick my ass. What did you tell her?”

“Renovations are required to her house.”

“And she’s this mad over that?”

“In a round about way, yes.”

Cole sniffed the air. “You two need to toke something wacky?”

If he’d hoped to defuse the situation, Cole had another thing coming. Little did he know he was paying for decade old sins.

She pointed at him. “And you. His buddy, of course.” She growled. “Honor among thieves,” she spat.

Cole widened his stance. “You calling me a thief, lady?”

“No. That would be insulting to crackers around the world.”

“Just let the man do his job, fix the porch, whatever. Your husband didn’t take care of anything. He didn’t take care of you. He sat back and fed you to the hired guns.”

Her lip curled up. “I hope,” she said very quietly, “you both meet Shadow. If one of those flipping ghosts follows me out of the house this time, I hope it’s him.”

Glenn held up his hand when Cole glanced his way. “Are you telling me,” Glenn asked as quietly as she, “you have made a pet of one of them?”

“He’s no pet. More like the devil you know type thing.”

Cole walked closer to Glenn. “Do you have holy water or something for this?”

Glenn had to sit down, right there. Luckily there was an armchair beside his desk. “Full disclosure, Tessa. Now! Are you talking about that same big shadowman that attacked the man who climbed in through your front window?”

“Yes. He’s very strong. Especially if there is fear and fury. He’s very scary then.”

Glenn rubbed one hand down his face. “Is there any attack you weren’t under by the time we finally got around to blessing that house?” He pointed his finger at her. “You! Oh you just had to go against the bet and settle in for the siege to wage war against everyone!”

“Easy,” Cole suggested to him.

“So which of you won?” she asked hatefully.

“No one won,” Glenn uttered. “No one.” He looked at the woman who was wound around his mind, his heart. “Big bust for everyone. Most of all you.”

“I won then,” she declared. “I’m killer at security now.”

Cole held out one hand, palm up. “Show me, Tessa. Show me how you would attack. Show me how you would assassinate someone with an ICD.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Ever since I met you and you cast some spell on me to be your guardian angel.”

She snorted. Then she snickered. She shook her head once.

Glenn agreed Cole did look more like a rebel than an angel. “You’ve amused her. Good job.”

Cole’s big hand still waited outstretched, palm up, patiently awaiting her. “Outlaws and angels, you hooked them all. You are quite the digital handful, finding trouble like it’s an invisible beacon signaling you. Take my hand, Tessa, and I’ll show you how to be completely invisible.”

She placed her hand in his and walked into the adjoining room full of computers.

Glenn growled. Had he actually called Cole into the room? She may be tucked away in a back corner with him for now, sharpening her security, but Glenn was not going to sit back and let that woman leave on the back of Cole’s bike. Hmm, what kind of incentive could he offer her?

“Hey, Reston,” Cole called. “Do you have any implantable medical devices?” Cole laughed.

Glenn grumbled. “You are all crap and giggles.”

“Come watch her kung-fu. She’s killer.”

Tessa shushed Cole.

He must have it bad, Glenn decided as he sat next to her and remoted into his computer in the other room not twenty feet away. He looked at the landscaping design, looked at different options to renovate her veranda. He looked at Tessa.

When he saw Knoppix up and running on the computer, booted from her USB, Glenn watched while his heartbeat kicked up a gear. “What are you doing, Tessa?”

She didn’t bother to glance at him, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “Checking in is all.”

Cole cocked his elbow on the table and leaned closer to Glenn. “She’s reverse-engineering, counterattacking, stopping the DoS attack on a heart.”

“Someone is hacking someone else’s heart? I thought you said that would be her way in?”

“I was wrong,” Cole admitted like it hurt him to say it.

“Shh,” she requested. “Give me a minute to make sure it worked, to make sure the senator’s heart has stopped pinging, to make sure his pacemaker battery is not still leaking out power to take him down.”

After fifteen minutes, she unplugged her USB from Haven’s computer. “Okay.”

Glenn settled one hand over hers. “Should I be expecting the FBI to bust through my door?”

“Haven is protected. I won’t let you get hurt.” She pointed at the front security scanners. “Who did you call to turn down that frequency earlier today?”

When he told her, she flipped the position of their hands and held his. “Griefers, Glenn. Find a new provider. They tweak the radio frequency high to match up a specific implantable medical device, kinda like each computer has a MAC address. An evil and untraceable assassin could start dropping people like flies with buffer overflows to an insulin pump, or with a joule shock to induce V-FIB when the heart is working perfectly fine.”

“You are a dangerous woman.”

She scoffed and then patted one hand over her heart. “That’s some scary stuff to be sure. It’s almost enough to make me change my mind, to go toward a career with the scientists studying invisibility. Protecting the secret of invisibility?” She laughed. “That’s exciting stuff, not terrifying stuff.”

Glenn gulped when she turned the full force of her smile on him, full lips curving upward and carving dimples on each side of her face. “Almost afraid of the answer, but what is that bright mind thinking now?”

“Nothing bright. Figured while my adrenaline is double-pumping, I might as well go back out to my spooky house. Although I have a room at the hotel, I want to go out there and face my ghosts.” Green eyes flicked directly to his gaze. “Not those ghosts, but I want to hold up my head and confront the bad memories before I leave.”

“You want to stay way out in the sticks in the haunted house?”

She shivered. “Want to isn’t really the word I should use. It’s more like I need to face it head on, alone.”

“We’ve been once today. I know one of those spooks twirled a finger around in your mind then. It’s the way that one works. I don’t know if you have been away from it long enough, if it’s still spinning the wheels in your head. How about tomorrow when I start landscaping? During the daylight?”

She looked relieved with his plan and his agreement to taxi her back out to the backdoor of Podunk. She asked, “Please take me to my hotel room?”

After he had driven her to the hotel, Glenn parked the truck. “What you said earlier explains a lot. The reason why you strayed so far from who you were so long ago, infuriating people, simply doing the wrong thing? You said ‘Shadow’ feeds off fear and fury. The demon out there at that house was stirring a finger in your head, working you into a frenzy, diving right into your mind, pushing you further into desperation when you were afraid to walk away from Sam and proceed like you had planned at the university.”

“Maybe,” she shrugged. “Or maybe it was simply too much to deal with a father and both his sons. Did you have anything to do with the teenager calling me from the telephone substation on Sundays? It wasn’t your key they were using to get in, right?”

“Right.” He paused but couldn’t keep the question from tumbling out of his mouth. “Why did you talk to him?”

“The forces in the house suggested it; the head haunt you mentioned. It’s a bad thing if you don’t retreat when it’s haunting your head.”

Glenn sat his cowboy hat atop her head and pulled it low on her forehead. He then adjusted a ball cap down low to conceal his features. “Ready to go in?”

Ten minutes later inside her hotel room, she dropped back on the bed.

“Hungry?”

She yawned, but patted the mattress beside her. “Could I ask you for another favor?”

Glenn held utterly still upon seeing her exhaustion from travel, a trip in from a city far away, a trip to a haunted house, then unhacking a heart. Her weakened defenses shone in her vulnerable green gaze. “Sure. Anything at all.”

She laughed a bit wickedly. “Another time perhaps I should cash in that favor. I was wondering if I could crash beside you. If you would wait here beside me until I fall asleep?”

“Yeah, Tessa, sounds real nice.” When she had stopped wiggling, finally finding comfort beside him, his arm under her neck pulling her in close, Glenn added, “You’re safe from the demons haunting you. I intend to make certain the darkness does not ever call to you again.”

She yawned and then snuggled her face into his neck. “What did you believe, Glenn? When I had come back to Sammy, after he made his threat to see me dead if I left again? The sonar spying started after that. I know no one heard him but me, God, and the things haunting that house.”

“No man in his right mind has his family hire out guns to attack and to terrorize his wife, strips her computer of all protection, and then sits back and watches them take her down. He was smart enough to keep his own hand out of the hack, to keep clean-looking to the cops. Besides that, you put it in your diary. I know, Tessa.” He stroked her curly red-gold tresses. “Don’t look back, darlin’, look forward.”

When she finally fell into an exhausted slumber, Glenn laid there on the bed staring at the ceiling. His mind spun with questions. If she had counterattacked tonight remotely from Haven, then couldn’t she stay here, with him, and still pursue her career? He sighed, shut his eyes, and asked God to please make it so. There had to have been a purpose to it, besides changing him into a ghost hunter, a Christian, a landscaper. There had to be some grand design in it or his mind, his heart, would have let go of her long ago.

Hours later, Tessa arched her back to stretch away the remainder of sleep. The warm fuzzy feeling of safety lasted while she inhaled deeply. Mmm, male. She blinked open her eyes and stared at Glenn. Whoa! Her heart skidded to almost a stop before pounding a primitive beat as she perused his handsomeness.

She was not accustomed to waking up next to anyone, nevertheless the feel of a strong arm wrapped around her, pulling her close to his side in slumber. His scent filled her nose and curled around her lungs. His arm tightened around her waist, but his eyelids did not flicker, his deep even breaths did not alter. Surely it wouldn’t hurt anything if he didn’t know?

Tessa pressed her lips to his neck and took his scent deeper into her lungs. She knew this man, had been chatting with him; she knew he had a high code of honor now. Everything about him appealed to her. Her tongue snuck out and tasted him. “Mmm.”

“G’morning, beautiful,” his drawl soft still with slumber smoothed over her. Silver eyes, steamy so early in the morning, hotter than the coffee she was about to acquire from the lobby, heated her body where they touched her.

“Good morning, handsome.” She tapped one finger over her forehead. “Zero brain function until I get some caffeine.”

Glenn rolled up on one elbow to face her. “Don’t run off. Maybe I have the upper hand if you can’t think yet.”

The sheet was down around her legs. Her black hacker shirt had hiked halfway up her midriff from her slumber. She smoothed one hand over her hair. Oh man, she was trashed in yesterday’s dirty clothes and being the subject of his deep sliver regard. She needed a shower and about a gallon of coffee before she might even consider approaching the deep territory he was taking her with his eyes touching her body, staring at her exposed midriff.

One large calloused hand scooted across the mattress and slid over the dangling gem guns hanging from her navel. “I like this, Tessa. Last time I saw you barefoot, belly button ring showing in a short shirt and even shorter shorts, you had a gun in your hand. That is the image burned into the back of my eyelids and proven read-write protected with no available and reliable crack.”

Her stomach muscles jumped underneath his hand. She was trapped in those light silver eyes like he was casting an enchantment over her.

“Barefoot, belly ring and a gun. If I hadn’t all ready, I may have fallen in love with you right then. Sometimes when you were outside, miles and miles from anyone, dirt on your knees and your hands planting flowers, I guess the music would grab hold of you from your earphones and you’d be up dancing like no one was watching.”

Blazing fluid swept from her neck up her face.

He cupped her blushing cheek. “That’s what I like about you, Tessa.”

Hazard Ahead, flashed a warning behind her eyes. She hoped God would forgive her because she hopped out of bed, snagged one of her laptops and scooted it his way. Then she strode out the door to the lobby for coffee for them both.

She had set a trap; a test . . . did that really sound better? She wondered if it sounded more ethical. She didn’t share but with a select and handpicked few. Glenn was one of the select few. There was no man she would hand over her favorite laptop where her personal privacy could be prodded.

Will he snoop? Can she trust him? She intended to find out and loitered a bit in the lobby grabbing them breakfast and coffee before she returned to her room. Whether a tree hugger, a hacker, a ghost hunter, she liked him way way too much.

“Here you go,” she handed her morning offering toward him.

“Are you feeling okay, Tessa?”

She lifted her cup of hot coffee in salute. “I’m getting there. I’m gonna shower and I’ll be ready to go out to the house whenever you are ready to start landscaping it.”

“I’ll be back for you then in a half hour.” Larger than life, he stopped right in front of her. He held coffee in one hand and a donut in the other. He lowered his face to her level. “Or you could ask me to share your shower since you trust me enough to share your computer?”

She zoomed in front of him and opened the hotel door. “Later, Glenn.”

His eyes widened and he laughed. “Really?” He looked from her to the shower and back to her. “Sorry, I get it now. You meant bye in real-time.”

She swung her arm wide at the entrance in a grand gesture of sweeping him an exit.

“Yeah. Later.” He stuffed the last bite of donut in his mouth and then pulled his gray cowboy hat low on his forehead.

Much later, Tessa watched Glenn and a crew of men unload machinery in her yard. During the midmorning uproar out in the middle of nowhere, Tessa walked outside around her house, walked down steps to the basement padlocked door. The sky bright blue and cloudless, the summer sun beat down on her. The nice warm happy feelings lasted until she turned the knob and kicked open the sealed and swollen basement door.

It creaked open like the force of her kick did not control the slow deliberate opening into the darkness. “Airing it out,” she decided and walked back up the stairs, walked back through the woods behind her house, back to the cave she had really liked about this property. If Sammy would have agreed, she would have probably moved another couple hundred miles west for more hills and caves before buying a house.

Hidden in the woods, next to a small trickling stream, she walked into the damp dank hole in the rock. She liked caves, and sometimes this one was soothing. Other times, the darkness grew chilly, eerie. Before she lost her nerve she called, “Shadow, are you here?”

She didn’t see a six-foot inky black shadowman and he was hard to miss if he was around. Could this cave be as Glenn had suggested, a portal of sorts? “Shadow?” she asked again a bit quieter. Her right arm chilled down like he might have run a freezing finger up to her shoulder. She shivered and left the cave.

Carpe diem, she decided and hiked back around to the waiting-and-open basement door. She blew out two quick hard exhales and then stepped into the darkness. There were no light bulbs in the basement, smashed out by Sammy to scare her right before she left for good long, long ago.

She slid her feet in the remembered path from under the stairs to the front of them. Off to her right where she had washed and dried clothes, Tessa knew something was watching her. The hair lifted straight off the back of her neck like something wiped a sticky web over her nape. Boom. Boom. Boom. Her heart thudded.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the dark gorilla-shaped shadow. More like a not fully grown gorilla but it had been in this house for years. If the shadowland had a hell, then this clawed monster would be a demon from it. The dark shape jumped around like a chimp, going back and forth, back and forth, coming closer. That one was mean as hell!

Tessa ran up the basement stairs two at a time into the dining room. She slammed the upstairs door shut behind her with a loud slam. After the reverberation of sound echoed through the isolated house, she walked toward a bright sunny window looking over the back patio.

The basement door handle wiggled but didn’t open like the force on the other side was not using imposable thumbs. She walked away from the door, walking to the front door when she realized that door was padlocked from the outside. She wasn’t getting out that way. Back into the basement?

Stay with us, Tessa.

Had that been said aloud or only in her head? It was time to retreat if the strongest one in the house was awake and talking to her. Back through the basement? She almost whimpered.

“Are you still here, Shadow? Go to the cave. If it’s a portal, then leave please. Find a place that makes you happy. Can you go toward the light or something?”

She jumped a foot in the air and screamed when a warm hand enclosed her shoulder.

Glenn spun her around to him, not at all appearing pleased, but his drawl still managed to sound teasing. “If you need a pet this much, I’ll get you a puppy.” His arms closed around her and pulled her close, where she felt something very different than afraid.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against his chest. The steady beat-beat beat-beat of his heart against her ear and Tessa felt safe.

Under her ear, his drawl rumbled. “Are you protecting that thing from me?”

Something in his tone alerted her to look up. Shadow paced the back bedroom to the doorway of the living room where they now stood.

Tessa started to step back from Glenn but he held her firmly to his side.

We’re waiting for you, Tessa.

“Time to get out of here, Tess. Was that male voice him?

“No. He only talks to me when I sleep like the darkness is whispering to me in my dreams.”

“Damn but that is chilling.”

“Can he get out through the portal without you destroying him?”

“It’s heavy in here, thick. Do you want to give me the key so I can go back through the basement to unlock the front door? Or do you want to go back down there?” But Glenn laced their fingers together like he did not intend to leave her alone in the house. “You should move on shadowman. We’re coming tonight to hunt you out, back to the portal, and lock the dimension down in this location.”

Glenn pulled her around so her body was flush against his. “Are you happy now, Tessa? You’ve got me provoking it with no backup, so I guess you’re my buddy. Show the shadowman who haunts you here that you are with me.”

He kissed her just that fast, deepening the kiss until she moaned with the intensity of the intimacy. Glenn pulled back, breathing harshly. “Tell him, Tessa, to move on.”

“Go, Shadow. Go somewhere else. Leave this house and never return. I am not staying here ever again.”

The front floor to ceiling window rattled, growing louder, until the security bar lifted off and the window lock turned. The window had been sealed shut long ago, but still it slowly slid open.

“Provoking Shadow is not wise,” she advised.

“You did not tell him straight out that you are with me. He’s opened the flipping window for you! Like a puppy asking you to go outside, so he can follow at your heels wherever you go from here.”

Tessa pulled Glenn’s hand and ducked at the waist to step out the front window onto the veranda. She yanked Glenn’s hand again when he did not follow her outside the house. Men from his crew stared at her openly as she tried to pull their boss through the window.

Another group of men unloaded a pile of new wood onto the porch for her veranda.

“Glenn, please come out of there before the evilness stirs your mind and you do something stupid. I always did if I stayed in there too long.”

She leaned her face back into the opening. Shadow had opened a window for them. Glenn had it all wrong. Shadow would leave. He had always kept the mean jumpy monkey shadow away from her. Shadow had opened the window so she wouldn’t have to face the shadow with claws in the basement to get out.

Glenn finally did step out the window where he pulled with their connected fingers to his truck. Oh my, his jaw muscles jumped and pumped. Glenn was furious.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked with true disbelief.

Glenn waved one arm toward more men and vehicles pulling into the driveway. The men exited and began unloading equipment. “My fellow ghost hunters. Just flipping in time! Do you want it to follow you, Tessa!”

It didn’t sound like a question to her, but she still said, “Of course not. I snuck away last time while the paranormal entities were quiet, dormant and sleeping. I’m selling this place, helping fix it up. Don’t you want that?”

His full lips were still thinned into a fine white line. Not quite sure what his problem was, why he was so mad . . . it’s not like she had asked the things in this house to come live here. It’s not like she wanted to be haunted. Haunted as hell had never appeared on her wishlist!

“What then?” Irritation shifted to rub her temper the wrong way. Like from one of her online games, she could almost hear the virtual “The bomb has been planted. Tick. Tick. Tick.” Now her temper was stirred up too! If not, the arrogance in the act of his arching blond eyebrow was enough to provoke her. That stupid house did this to people, stirring up strife and unhappiness!

“Choose,” she barked. “Do you or do you not want me to help you fix this house so I sell it as not haunted and a bright start for someone new? Are you trying to tell me you want to fix it alone without my help? Are you doing this by yourself, Glenn?”

“Or,” she snorted and pointed back toward the front window. “Do you want me to go burn out Shadow, to make him very scary indeed? Do you want me to provoke the things in that house until they are all roaring and awake? I thought that was the point to renovations? I’m so flipping mad right now, I’m about ready to burn you!”

She held up her hands like balancing a scale. “Well? Are you doing this alone or am I going in there to provoke them and help you? Which do you choose, Glenn?”

He wants to fix it alone?            He wants her help?