Obsession (15 page)

“I’m going to ask you one more time.” His grip on her throat loosened again, presumably so that she could speak.

Now,
her internal voice screamed even as her desperate, reaching fingers finally made contact with what they had been seeking: the newly empty vase. Curling her fingers around the cool, wet rim, she swung it up and over her shoulder in a frenzied arc, slamming it as hard as she could into his head.

“Oww!” Howling, he let go, staggering back as the gun dropped from his hand to go skittering away across the floor and the vase slipped from her fingers, hit the ground, and shattered with a
boom.

Yes.
That was all the opportunity she needed. Fueled by abject fear, she ran for her life. Leaping over the profusion of roses and water and broken glass like a champion hurdler, she bolted down the hall for the kitchen, screaming her lungs out all the way. It wasn’t the route she would have chosen, but she had no choice because he stood between her and the front door, and even in his slightly stunned state she recognized that she had no chance of getting by him.

“You fucking bitch!” Murder was in his roar. A single petrified glance over her shoulder told her that he was already coming after her, barreling down the hall in pursuit like a linebacker after an opposing player with the ball. There was no sign of the gun. Clearly he hadn’t taken the time to go after it. He was too eager to get his hands on her again.

Terror gave wings to her feet. Shrieking like a peacock with its tail on fire, she rounded the corner into the kitchen and raced across the cool, hard floor so fast her feet barely touched the tiles. Brick wall, microwave, kitchen island; she saw it all in a single wild-eyed glance. Heart pumping, panting with fear, she looked frantically for a way out. Heading for the back door wasn’t an option, either, she realized as her gaze touched on the laundry-room door. Last night’s debacle with the dead bolt was hideously fresh in her mind. Was it still locked? Was the glass still missing from the top of the door? She could maybe jump through it again—unless it had been fixed. It might have been fixed. She would be trapped....

He was only a few strides behind her now, his feet thundering over the tiles, his arms pumping like pistons as he narrowed the distance between them.

Her screams echoed off the walls as she made the only choice she could: circle through the dining room and the living room and back out into the hall, then try to make it out the front door before he caught her. Maybe she could even scoop up his gun, turn it on him . . .

Escape was the best she was going to do, if she could even manage that. Cold sweat poured from her body as she careened toward the dining-room door, then realized to her utter horror that his long strides had almost closed the gap. He was right behind her. He was going to catch her. . . .

It was just a matter of seconds, she knew. Her shoulders hunched in terrified expectation. He grabbed for her just as she reached the threshold, his big, sausage-like fingers hideously white, like the fingers of a corpse. She shrieked again as that nightmarish hand brushed her shoulder and then, as she lunged away, grabbed the tail of the huge shirt that flapped behind her like a sail.

“No!” she screamed, trying to pull free, but he had a good hold and the synthetic material was strong. He yanked and she fell backward, landing hard on her butt on the kitchen floor. He overshot her, nearly tripping over her as her fall seemed to take him by surprise. Screaming desperately, heart pounding like a jackhammer, she at last succeeded in yanking her shirt free of his hold. Turning onto all fours, she tried to scramble away, to come upright again, to run . . .

The hard tile felt cold and slick beneath her hands. Her nails dug into the grout, her feet sliding uselessly on the slippery surface.

“Where do you think you’re going?” There was a gloating edge to his voice as he regained his balance first, rushing her, grabbing at her, knocking her to the floor when she would have eluded him. She hit hard, sprawling facedown, then, realizing her danger, immediately tried to roll away, kicking, and screaming like a steam whistle. To her horror, he succeeded in catching her right ankle. His hand was warm and terrifyingly strong but, she saw with a chill of repulsion, was also unnaturally white and felt plastic, inhuman. It was a second or so before she realized that he was wearing thin white surgical gloves.

“Leave me alone! What do you want?” On her back, she fought off her attacker with every ounce of strength she possessed as he tried to get a better grip on her. She could see his eyes, glinting at her through the slits in the mask. They were dark eyes, almost black in the dim light, and hard with menace. Despair lent a hysterical edge to her voice. “What do you
want
?”

“Shut the fuck up.” He gave her ankle a vicious twist. She cried out with pain as she was forced to turn on her side. . . .

“Open the door!” The muffled shout was accompanied by a frantic pounding on the back door. Dan—she recognized his voice. It was the most welcome sound she had ever heard. “Katharine! Open the door!”

“Help! Help me! Help!” she shrieked, taking advantage of her attacker’s momentary distraction to jerk her ankle free.

Cursing, he came after her as she scooted against the base of the built-in island, pushing the bar stools out of her way, flattening her back against the swirling wrought iron, grabbing on to the cold metal twists for dear life. Knocking the bar stools aside with a crash, he ducked beneath the marble overhang, grabbing at her while she kicked and screamed her lungs out. His intent, she thought, was to scoop her up bodily and carry her away before help could reach her. If he succeeded in taking her out of the town house with him, she was toast, she knew. Terror and hope combined to give her what felt like superhuman strength as she clung to the wrought-iron island with both hands and kicked him away one more time.

“Dan! Help!
Help!”

There was a tremendous crash from the direction of the back door, then another. “Katharine! Damn it to
hell
!”

“Fuck.”
Her attacker aimed a vicious kick at her, which fortunately, because she saw it coming, she was able to dodge. He then turned and ran out of the kitchen. Even as she rolled out from under the island and staggered to her feet, she could hear his footsteps pounding down the hall.

Was he going for the gun? The thought galvanized her. She had to
move. . . .

There was another crash, accompanied this time by the sound of splintering wood and a sharp bang as if the back door had been kicked open and hit the wall hard. Dan had succeeded in breaking in, she realized as she lurched desperately toward the laundry room on legs that felt about as sturdy as rubber bands. The washer and dryer and the hook that ordinarily held the back-door key and the patch of tile—eerily clean—where Lisa had died flashed into view, then Dan was there in front of her, having run inside. Chest heaving, taking up far more space than she would have thought, given his lean build, he looked about as wild-eyed and frantic as she felt.

“Jesus Christ, are you all right?” Dan grabbed her by the upper arms, his grip warm and hard and urgent, momentarily halting her frantic flight.

“There’s a man. He has a gun,” she gasped, throwing a terrified glance over her shoulder while doing her best to pull him with her toward the door.

“Go outside.” He pushed her past him and ran on into the kitchen.

“Dan, no!” Katharine cried, looking after him, but it was too late, he was gone, and she was not about to go after him. She had come so close to dying twice now that she realized just how much she wanted to live. She wasn’t putting herself in harm’s way a third time, not if she could help it, not even for Dan, though he was endangering himself on her behalf.

She turned and ran.

A plywood panel had temporarily replaced the glass window in the door, she saw as she darted past it. The door itself, now splintered around the lock, stood wide open. Golden sunlight beckoned, underlined by a wafting influx of heated air. Heart pounding a mile a minute, she ran out into the wonderful, welcoming, life-affirming sunshine, flying down the steps, racing toward her garage.

It was only after she threw open the access door and discovered that her Lexus was
not there
that she remembered that the car’s absence didn’t matter anyway: The keys were in the purse, which she had dropped in the hall.

Unless she was planning to walk, she wasn’t going anywhere.

How had she and Lisa gotten home? Had they taken a taxi? No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t quite remember. . . .

The last of the adrenaline was draining away. She could feel herself crashing, feel the weakness in her muscles, the wobblies in her knees, the pounding in her head even as she stood there gaping at her empty garage. Drawing in big gulps of air, she whirled around to look fearfully back at the town house just as Dan appeared, framed by the back door. He looked reassuringly normal, and she was conscious of a little burst of gladness that he hadn’t been hurt. His gaze found her immediately, and some of the tension that had tightened his shoulders and mouth seemed to leave his body. Without acknowledging her beyond that one assessing look, he closed the damaged door behind him and came down the steps. His movements were calm and controlled. Clearly he’d found nothing he felt he needed to run away from. The intruder must have fled.

She sagged with relief.

Which was not to say that her attacker couldn’t circle around to where they were, she cautioned herself as she felt the last of her strength ebbing. Or that someone else—Ed’s people came instantly to mind—wouldn’t appear. A thought occurred to her then: A bullet could come from anywhere. The killer didn’t even have to be close. A quick burst of alarm set her pulse to racing again, and she glanced anxiously all around.

From where she stood, she could see only a double row of brick buildings and a seemingly endless line of small backyards. They were only one backyard (Dan’s) away from the cross street, but a tall honeysuckle hedge backed by a six-foot-high brick wall ran from the far side of Dan’s house to the garages and beyond, permanently providing privacy from the street. No one was coming at them from that direction. Looking the other way, perhaps six fences down, a golden retriever paced. A man in a lawn-care service uniform mowed grass. Until she spotted him, the roar of his mower had been all but drowned out by the thundering of her pulse in her ears. Still farther along, there was another tall brick wall where the residential section of the street turned commercial, which meant no one was coming at them from that direction, either. The lineup of garages cut her and Dan off from the alley, and the town houses blocked them from the view of anyone on Union Street. They were, in effect, standing inside a rectangle of brick walls, but still someone could get to them, someone could cut through the narrow swath of green grass between their town houses and the quartet of nearly identical town houses next door, someone could sneak through the small backyards, hopping fences, hiding behind bushes and trees—or someone could turn sniper and fire on them from a roof, or a window, or just about anywhere.

Her breath caught at the thought: If someone wanted her dead badly enough, they didn’t even have to get up close and personal to do it.

The idea was terrifying.

Wait,
she told herself firmly even as her poor, tuckered-out heart started to thud again. If the guy she had just escaped from had wanted her dead, he would have killed her at once. He’d had plenty of time. Instead, he had tried to force her to tell him where something was. What something? She didn’t have a clue. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that he, and whoever he was working with, thought she knew what it was and, more important, where it was, and he/they almost certainly weren’t going to kill her until either she told them where it was or they were finally convinced she didn’t know.

Great.
From them she could look forward to being tortured before she died. From everyone else—assuming there was an everyone else, that this wasn’t just a single group of bad guys, which she didn’t think she could afford to assume—a quick and bloody death remained a real possibility.

She should be running right now, running for her life, she knew, but the problem was she was just so
tired.
Luckily, if her calculations were correct, for the moment she was probably safe enough. That being the case, running was going to have to wait at least until she got her breath back.

Wheezing audibly as she leaned back against the doorjamb, which was smooth with paint and warm from the sun and comfortingly solid, she watched Dan come toward her, walking quickly through the dappled sunlight past the small maple, which was still tall enough and full enough to partially shade the concrete path and part of the yard. His stride was long and athletic. His eyes were narrowed against the sun. As he drew closer, she saw that his mouth was grim. Suddenly, she was struck by another of those niggling flashes of familiarity. She had seen him striding toward her like this before. . . .

While she might not remember when, or how, or even remember him, exactly, some part of her somewhere deep inside indisputably did. The knowledge was both comforting and disturbing. She
knew
him, no doubt about it, but the details were missing.

Just like the details of her life were missing.

Am I having a bad day or what?
The thought popped into her head out of the blue, surprising her. Then, when its truly ridiculous degree of understatement occurred to her, it almost
—almost—
made her smile despite everything.