Cold Hearts (10 page)

He and Lissa had been inseparable through all four years of high school and had made plans to go to college together. They must have known he would stand by her.

Why hadn’t they called him as she’d asked?

Were they punishing her or him, or both of them?

It wasn’t until the wind and rain began that he remembered he’d promised Lissa to help her set up security for her house. In the middle of the revelation about his father’s murder and learning about her miscarriage, he’d forgotten all about it.

He walked out on the front porch, looking up and down the street through the downpour, and thought about calling to make sure she was okay, but when he glanced at his watch and saw the time, he knew it was far too late to call. And there was no way he would ever get to sleep knowing that if anything happened to her tonight, he would not only have let her down again but put her life in danger.

He walked back into the house, got his all-weather coat and his car keys, got in the car and started back toward her house. He wasn’t sure what he would do once he got there, so he would play it by ear.

* * *

The thunder and lightning mingled with the noise Reece made as he broke the glass in the kitchen door. He was dripping wet as he thrust his arm through the opening in the broken glass and felt around until he found the dead bolt.

The glass crunched beneath his shoes as he let himself in and moved across the kitchen floor, leaving muddy prints as he went. Confident that the storm would continue to shield him from discovery, he didn’t even bother trying to mute his footsteps.

Lissa was sound asleep when she heard the sound of breaking glass. She sat up in bed, listening to the wind and the rain on the roof, and thinking a branch had fallen and broken a window. She jumped out of bed and quickly put on her house shoes in case there was glass on the floor. She was on her way out of her room when she heard footsteps, and then the distinct crunch of glass beneath them.

Her heartbeat skipped and then began to pound as panic followed. It had to be her stalker! The fact that he was inside the house sent her into flight mode.

She turned the lock on her bedroom door just as he entered the living room. She could hear his footsteps clearly on the wood, and when they became muffled, she knew he’d just crossed the Oriental rug.

Oh, my God, oh, my God.

Her hands were shaking as she grabbed her cell phone and headed for the window. Within seconds she was kicking out the screen and crawling out into the downpour, calling 911 as she went.

* * *

Reece knew which side of the house Lissa’s bedroom was on, and when he started down the hall, he was so excited he was shaking. He turned the doorknob to her room and was surprised to find it locked. Anticipation turned to anger as he kicked the door open and ran into the room. Moments later a flash of lightning revealed the empty bed. The open window and blowing curtains were a shock.

He let out a roar of rage and ran toward the window just in time to see her running through her front yard toward the street. Through the downpour he saw something bright in her hand and realized it was her cell phone. She had already called the cops.

“Son of a holy bitch!” he shouted, and began grabbing stuff and throwing it against the walls, taking pleasure in the sound of breaking glass and destroying what was hers.

* * *

Mack turned the corner toward Lissa’s house just as a flash of lightning lit up the sky. The rain was really coming down, dimming the faint glow of the streetlights, so when he caught a glimpse of someone running through her yard, his first thought was of the stalker and he quickly accelerated. But it wasn’t until the runner passed in front of his headlights that he realized it was Lissa. He stopped the car, then jumped out in the rain, yelling her name.

Lissa was still in flight mode when she saw the headlights, and when she heard the squeal of brakes and someone shouting her name, she stumbled and fell. Her cell phone went flying, and her hands were already burning from abrasions when she recognized Mack’s voice, and then she was in his arms. The relief of knowing she was safe was overwhelming.

“Lissa! What’s wrong?” he asked.

“He’s in my house! I think he came in the backdoor. I heard breaking glass and then footsteps. I went out my bedroom window, and I’ve already called the police.”

Mack pushed her toward his car. “Get inside and lock the doors!” he shouted, and took off running.

“Mack, don’t! Wait for the police!” she screamed, but he wouldn’t stop.

She turned around to look for her phone then grabbed it and bolted toward his SUV. She leaped into the seat and quickly locked herself inside. The engine was still running, so the interior was warm, but she was dripping water everywhere and still shaking as the horror of what was happening sank in.

This was far more than phone calls and knocking at the window. He’d come into her house—come after her—to do God knew what. And now Mack was in there with him.

Lord, please keep him safe.

The faint sound of sirens was encouraging, but would they arrive in time?

* * *

Reece’s fit of rage ended abruptly when he heard the faint sound of sirens and realized how much time he’d wasted tearing up Melissa’s room. He turned, running blindly through the house toward the back door, so intent on escape that he didn’t hear any footsteps but his own until he went from the living room into the kitchen, and then it was too late.

* * *

Mack circled the house on the run, confident the stalker had gained entry through the back door. He saw the broken pane and leaped up the steps, pausing inside the kitchen in the darkness and listening to see if the stalker was still inside. When he heard running footsteps coming up the hall, he tensed, muscles tightening. The bastard was still here and in the act of escape.

He braced himself for impact.

* * *

Reece rounded the corner into the kitchen, caught a glimpse of movement and panicked. He’d indulged his disappointment a little too long and had only moments to pull his knife as the man came toward him.

Mack caught a flash of metal and threw up his arm just in time to deflect the thrust intended for his belly. It missed, but cut through the fabric of his jacket and caught his arm instead. The burn was instantaneous but it didn’t stop him. Mack took the intruder down in a flying tackle. They hit the floor hard, blood splattering from Mack’s wound as he rolled to escape the second knife slash; then he grabbed his attacker’s wrist and began slamming it against the floor in an attempt to make him drop the knife. Their life-and-death battle was eerily silent except for an occasional grunt of pain.

Mack landed two hard blows to the side of his opponent’s face, and the other man began pounding his fist against the wound on Mack’s arm in retaliation. The pain was intense, and in an effort to free his wounded arm, Mack inadvertently loosened his grasp.

Reece grinned in the dark when he felt the change in the other man’s grip. It was just enough to let him get his knife hand free.

In one last frantic move to escape, he jammed the knife deep into the back of his enemy’s shoulder. The man went down with a groan, and just like that, Reece was free!

He scrambled to his feet, pulling out the knife without care for the blood that gushed in its wake, then bolted out the back door, running into the rain as the sirens’ screaming grew closer.

Nine

L
issa was wet and scared and couldn’t stop shaking. Once she’d heard the police sirens she’d had the good sense to pull Mack’s car out of the middle of the street where he’d stopped, and now she was parked beside the curb. She was staring out the window, watching the dim glow of her neighbor’s outdoor security light, when she saw a faint figure of a man come from her backyard, cross the space between her house and the empty one next door and disappear into the night.

She scooted forward on the seat, waiting and waiting for Mack to run into view as he gave chase, but saw nothing. Her heart dropped. Something was horribly wrong.

The police were close. She could clearly hear the sirens now, but she couldn’t wait. Without thinking about her own safety, she did exactly what he’d told her not to do. She grabbed the keys from the ignition and got out of the SUV on the run, clearing the distance from Mack’s car to her house in record time.

The back door was open, and she turned on the light as she ran in, then froze. Mack was belly down on the floor in a pool of blood, and he wasn’t moving. It was a moment of déjà vu, seeing him as motionless as she’d found his father. A lifetime of loving him and hating him shot through her so fast she couldn’t think, and then a gust of wind broke the silence, banging the door shut behind her. She screamed Mack’s name as she tossed the keys onto the countertop and dropped to her knees beside him, praying as she felt for a pulse in his neck that he wasn’t dead.

There was so much blood she couldn’t find one, but she wasn’t about to quit on him and bolted toward the cabinets for clean towels. She grabbed a handful, ran back to Mack’s side and began applying pressure to his wounds in a desperate effort to stop the bleeding.

When he suddenly groaned she began to cry. He wasn’t dead! God had given them a second chance.

* * *

Mack was regaining consciousness just as the police cars pulled up at her house, but by then Lissa was almost as bloody as he was.

When Trey and Earl came running into the kitchen with their weapons drawn, they were shocked by the sight of so much blood.

“Call an ambulance!” Lissa cried. “Mack has been stabbed.”

Earl made the call as Trey rushed to her side.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, this is all his,” she said.

“Did you see him?”

“No, I heard him coming through the house and went out my bedroom window. I was running across the street when Mack drove up. He put me in his car and ran into the house. I caught a glimpse of the intruder leaving my house. When Mack didn’t come out, I got scared. I came in and found him like this.”

Mack groaned and tried to roll over.

Trey dropped to his knees to help Lissa restrain him. “Mack!” he ordered. “Don’t move. An ambulance is on the way.”

“Had a knife...would have killed her,” Mack whispered.

Lissa looked up at Trey in disbelief. “Why is this happening?”

“I don’t know,” he said, helpless to explain.

Mack was about to pass out again, but when he heard Lissa’s voice, he reached for her.

Lissa grabbed his hand, wanting him to know she was still there, but he was unconscious again.

Trey stood up and began issuing orders. “Earl, I need you to call the precinct and tell the dispatcher to get all deputies to this location and start a house-by-house search. He could be hiding out. He might be injured. We won’t find a blood trail thanks to this rain, but we might find
him
.”

Earl ran out, relaying the chief’s orders to Dispatch as he pulled his flashlight and took off toward the house next door.

“Can I go with him in the ambulance?” Lissa asked.

“No, but you can be with him in the ER,” Trey said.

It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she would take it.

She grabbed another clean towel to use as a compress because the first two were blood soaked.

“He’s losing so much blood,” she said. Then she heard a siren whoop twice outside her house before it stopped.

“The ambulance is here,” Trey said.

“Thank God,” Lissa said. Then she bent down and whispered in Mack’s ear, “Help is here. Hang on. I need you to be okay.”

Seconds later a pair of EMTs came up the steps ahead of a team of firefighters. Trey began filling them in on what had happened as Lissa moved away to allow them full access.

She stood for a few seconds watching them work before one of them saw the blood on her.

“Ma’am, are you hurt?” he asked.

“No, it’s all his,” she said, and ran to the kitchen sink and began scrubbing the blood off her hands and arms as the EMTs quickly inserted an IV into Mack’s arm.

When Lissa heard them talking about the possibility of a blood transfusion, she quickly interrupted.

“His blood type is O negative.”

The EMT looked up. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely certain. Mine is O positive. His is O negative. Unless he’s changed his habit, there will be a card in his wallet attesting to that fact.”

Trey dug through Mack’s hip pocket, pulled out his wallet and then found the card.

“She’s right,” he said, and laid the wallet on Mack’s belly as they slid him onto a gurney and strapped him down. “Insurance cards and other info are in the wallet, too,” he told the other EMT. “Don’t lose it.”

They covered Mack with a waterproof blanket and then moved him out through the rain to the ambulance.

“I’ll stay here while you go change,” Trey said to Lissa, indicating her bloodstained clothing. Then he took out his phone to call the county sheriff for help. He needed this scene processed and didn’t want to call any of his deputies off the search to do it.

Lissa didn’t hesitate. She could only imagine what she looked like, but it didn’t matter. She just needed Mack to be okay. She needed to tell him something—something she’d just realized when she’d thought for one awful moment that he was dead.

She bolted down the hall toward her room, turning on lights as she went, but the moment she reached her door, she stopped and screamed.

Trey was just about to make the call when he heard her and ran through the house, fearing the perp had doubled back and waited for her. The relief of finding her in one piece was dimmed by what he saw.

“He destroyed it,” Lissa whispered.

Trey put a hand on her shoulder. “Close the window. It’s raining in.”

She walked across the room and pulled the window down, then locked it, although the effort was moot. The devil had already come and gone.

“Can you find enough clothes to get dressed?” Trey asked.

Lissa was shaking as she looked at the chaos. The starfish night-light, the last link to her childhood, was on the floor in pieces. The closet door was open, and clothes were strewn all over, and everything that had been in the dresser was now on the floor.

“I think so.”

“Well, find enough to last you for several days, because you’re not coming back here until this man is behind bars. What he did to this room is a sign of what he would have done to you when he was through. This isn’t just some Peeping Tom. This man is dangerous, and I would bet my retirement you aren’t the first to catch his eye.”

* * *

The pain in Reece’s jaw was making his whole head throb, and his eye was swelling. He was rattled by how quickly his simple plan had gone awry. By the time he got home he knew he had two options—either get out of town before daylight, or stay hidden here until all his bruising had faded. He didn’t know whether he’d killed the guy and didn’t much care. What pissed him off most was that Melissa Sherman had outsmarted him and gotten away.

He glanced at the clock. It was already tomorrow. Since their mother was due here later in the afternoon and the only vehicle belonged to Louis, if he took it and left town he wouldn’t put it past Louis to claim it was stolen, which would make the mess he was in that much worse.

His best bet was to just stay here and stay out of sight. No one in Mystic knew him. He’d made sure of that. And since he didn’t work for anyone but himself, it wasn’t like he would be missed at any job.

Bobo came trotting into the kitchen and yipped once.

Reece groaned.

“I suppose you want to go out, but you’re not getting any farther than the backyard. It’s raining cats and dogs out there.” And then he laughed. “Cats and dogs, Bobo. You’re a dog. Get it?”

But all the dog had heard was the word
out
, and he was already headed for the door at a trot.

Reece let him out, then turned on the back porch light as he closed the door and headed for the utility room and the bathroom beyond to tend to his injuries.

Nothing was bleeding, which was good. But the swelling was severe. He hadn’t had time to get a good look at the man and wouldn’t know him again if he saw him, which was daunting. It was always best to know what your enemies looked like. He wondered if the man had gotten a clean look at him and then sighed. It was all up in the air until he found out if the guy was still alive.

He cleaned himself up and then went back to the kitchen to make an ice pack. Bobo was at the back door whining to come in. He opened it enough to let him in and then watched him trot across the floor, leaving water and muddy footprints behind. He thought about their mother’s imminent arrival and yelled, “Heel, Bobo!”

Bobo stopped, trotted back across the floor to where Reece was standing and stopped in position.

“Now I have twice as much to clean up,” Reece muttered.

He grabbed a towel from the back bathroom and began drying Bobo’s feet and fur, then grunted as he bent down to clean up the drips and footprints.

Too many nights of eating and going back to bed were catching up with him. He’d begun buying and selling for himself out of boredom, just for something to do, and everyone, including his mother and Louis, had been surprised at his gift for picking good companies in which to invest. Making money on the computer was so easy that he didn’t see the need for breaking a sweat, but he didn’t like the idea of being a fat slob, either. Women didn’t like a big ass or a sagging belly on a man, and Reece liked women too much to fuck that up.

When he was finished, he tossed the towel in the washing machine, grabbed the ice pack and headed for his bedroom, hoping the swelling would be down by morning.

* * *

Mack was already in surgery before Lissa reached the hospital. She sat alone in the waiting room, trying to come to terms with the fact that another member of the Jackson family had been hurt trying to help her. It was beginning to feel like a curse.

One hour passed into the second, and then the third, as she sat with a cup of coffee going cold in her hands and tears drying on her face.

Then Trey Jakes walked in.

She stood immediately, praying for good news.

“Did you catch him?” she asked.

Trey shook his head. “Sorry, the rain destroyed any trail he might have left. The county crime-scene crew is at your house dusting for prints. Unless he was wearing gloves, we should get something, since he handled pretty much everything in your room. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

She sat back down with a thump, too dejected to comment.

Trey sat down beside her, struggling with how he was going to get across the seriousness of what he needed to tell her, but when she inadvertently gave him an opening, he jumped on it.

“I shudder to think what he’ll try next,” she muttered.

“That’s something we need to talk about,” he said.

Lissa looked up. “What do you mean?”

“I think you need to take a leave of absence from your job until we have this man in custody.”

The idea appalled her. She’d worked so hard to develop a rapport with her students. She started to panic, thinking of all the reasons that couldn’t happen.

“No! I have a contract to fulfill. I can’t just walk out.”

“I didn’t say quit. I mean step away until he’s caught.”

“But why?” she asked.

“Because you thwarted him, Lissa. At this point I couldn’t predict how far he would go to get you and make you pay. What if he tried to take you out of your classroom? Are you willing to risk a child’s life that it won’t happen?”

The skin crawled on the back of her neck as she thought of what he’d done to her bedroom.

She began to cry, overwhelmed by the hopelessness of her situation.

“I didn’t think. Of course I need to keep them safe. I’ll call my principal and hope he understands.”

“If he doubts the decision, have him call me,” Trey said. “I’ll make sure he understands the danger it could create if you stayed.”

“I will,” she said, swiping away the tears as she pulled out her phone.

“Is there anything you need? Anything we can do for you?” Trey asked.

She slumped. “Just catch him.”

“I’ll do my best. Call if you need us,” he added, as he left the room.

She sat quietly, gathering her thoughts and trying to get her emotions under control before she called her principal. As she was sitting there, she heard footsteps coming down the hall and looked toward the doorway. When the surgeon walked in, she froze.