The Hunter Inside (11 page)

Her grip upon the hand of
her husband tightened considerably, and Joe Myers was surprised to feel a twang
of pain traveling through his little finger and up to his wrist.
This is it
,
he thought.
Brace yourself
.

‘Oh…’ Sandy’s sobs reached a pinnacle
and for a second it felt to her as though her heart had stopped beating. Her
head started to feel light, and she wondered if her heart had missed a beat to
signify a part of herself had died with her parents that evening ten years
before.

‘It was horrible Joe. What he did to
them, it was horrible.’ Sandy half reached for, half swooned into Joe’s arms
and he held her, both of them silent for a moment except for the muffled sounds
of grief that each of them emitted.

He continued to hold her and she
continued to hold him, neither sure of the future but both sure of the present;
both sure of the limitless and solid love bond between them; both sure that no
matter what happened to them, they would still hold that limitless bond, even
if it was in another world.

‘After they were killed I
found the letters. There were thirty letters.’ She drew away from his close
embrace and spoke more quickly, taking Joe by surprise as his brain tried to
process all of the information she imparted to him.

‘Each letter contained a
different message threatening their lives. They kept every one of them, in neat
order. I couldn’t believe it Joe. I went through them. The last one said ‘
I
am watching you’
. Within a week they were dead.’

Sandy wiped a hand across
her face and Joe felt her tears on his cheek.

‘Then, six weeks after they
were killed, I received one. I was terrified. I knew the threat was real, but
there was nothing I could do. The police couldn’t find any suspects, and the
letters kept on coming. I felt like I was being tortured, and for the first
time I fully understood what my parents went through. For the first time, I
understood the strength and bravery they had been forced to summon, and it was
all for me. But the letters just stopped. Just as they’d started, they stopped.
I thought that was it. I thought I had survived. I heard nothing else, all
through our marriage.’

‘So he just got bored and
left you alone?’

‘Today I got numbers
twenty-nine and thirty.’ Her voice was shaky as she made this final revelation
to her husband, and she watched the color drain from his face with the
realization of the link. Now he knew the full story.

‘Jesus Sandy, what are we
going to do? Have you called the police?’

‘I don’t want to call the
police, Joe. They couldn’t do anything then, and they won’t be able to do
anything now.’ She was resigned to this as a fact, but Joe was determined that
they would not be helpless. He had to get them through this. For the sake of
all of their lives.

‘Did you give them to the
police? The letters, I mean.’

‘No, I was too afraid Joe.
I’m gonna have to go away for a while.’

‘Okay… we’ll get out of
here. We’ll go and get the boys and then we’ll shoot through. Go somewhere
quiet where we can try to work all this out.’ His tone was hurried and
adrenalin surged in his body. He was ready to run with his wife. He was ready
to run to the other side of the planet if that was what they had to do.

‘You go and get the boys.
I’ll stay and get some things together for us to take with us.’

‘What do you mean?’ He was
horrified at this suggestion. He wanted them all to stay together and live
under the proverbial ‘safety in numbers’.

‘You might not be safe here
alone, Sandy. You have to come with me.’

‘It’s okay, Joe. I’ve been
safe here all afternoon. I’ll lock the door behind you. It won’t take you long
to get the boys and get back here, and we can’t just whisk them away without
any of their things or an explanation, can we?’

What she said made sense to
Joe, but still he was amazed that she would want to spend any more time alone.
Her motives were questionable, and he feared she would be gone when he
returned.

‘Are you sure about this
babe?’ he asked her, with reluctance that was plainly visible to her pained
eyes.

‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She hugged
him and continued, ‘When you get back honk the horn and I’ll come out.’ She
knew that she would not be hearing the horn - he wouldn’t be sounding it when
he saw that the Suzuki was gone.

She had trouble keeping
things from her husband. Sometimes it seemed like they could read each other’s
minds. But she had to get away as soon as she could. She
must
make sure
that she didn’t put the lives of her family at risk. The one sure way of
achieving this was to put distance between her family and herself. If she did,
then her stalker’s attention would be taken away from her family, and they
would have a better chance of coming through this whole thing unscathed. It was
what Sandy Myers had to do. Sandy Carson might have frozen, but Sandy Myers was
going to protect her family, even though it meant leaving them behind.

‘I’ll take the Suzuki,
okay? It’ll be quicker than my Toyota.’ He knew that this was his final chance
of making her change her mind. The Toyota would be no good if she were hoping
to undertake a long journey. Maybe she would wait, knowing that the Suzuki was
a much better bet for a fast exit. The Toyota was on its last legs.

Sandy visibly winced at
this suggestion, realizing his motives and unhappy at being in a battle of wits
with her husband. She felt totally alone.

‘Okay, you get going,’ she
said, motioning towards the door and following him as he walked to it, ready to
lock it behind him in an effort to fool him into thinking she was going to
follow her asserted plan.

Joe planted a kiss on her
lips and said, ‘Be here’. Then he turned and went out of the door, struggling
to contain his emotions as he heard Sandy lock it behind him.

Sandy slumped to the floor
with her back against the door and cursed her luck. She wasn’t certain she
wouldn’t be better off
walking
away from the house. The old car wouldn’t
get her very far before it either broke down or blew up. But she would give it
a shot.

She had to get away.

She wondered if she would
ever see her husband again, and her boys. Her wonderful boys. She would give
anything for the problems of ten hours ago.

She decided to wait ten
minutes before making her way away from the house. She would be running for her
life, and she didn’t want to be stopped if her husband decided to wait and try
to intercept her. She wanted him to be well on his way to collect the boys, so
that she could go in the opposite direction.

What bothered her most
about running for her life alone was the fact that there were no guns in the
house for her to take with her. They didn’t keep guns, despite their rights as
Americans to defend their property. They worried that the children would get
their hands on them, and neither Sandy nor Joe could understand parents that
went on TV and attempted to advocate parents keeping guns, when in the last six
months children had been killed in five states as a result of getting hold of
their parents’ instruments of ‘protection’.

So it was the safety of her
children that would make Sandy run for her life alone, and it was also the
safety of her children that meant she would not be taking any weapons with her
on her trip to Melissa Dahlia’s.

*

Sandy and Melissa had been friends
since high school. They had been close for years, until they both moved away
from their childhood homes. Melissa had moved to the coast, realizing her dream
of living close to the sea, but sacrificing her chance of a career to do so.

On the rare occasions that
the two women got to speak, it was clear to Sandy that Melissa had never
regretted taking this decision. She had certainly never told Sandy of a time
she regretted not being a broker any more. It depressed Sandy that she never
got to see Melissa. That was the only drawback for them both. It was something
they always discussed when they did speak - Melissa constantly asking Sandy
when she was going to come and visit. But with Sandy’s life at such a hectic
pace, she had never visited her friend’s house near Jones Beach.

Now was the time. It wasn’t
too far away, maybe a hundred kilometers, and Sandy felt this to be a
comfortable distance, at least for the time being, while she waited to see what
would happen next.

She had just one thing left
to do before she made her exit. Picking up a pen that sat on the coffee table,
she glanced around before spotting a credit card bill. She took it up and wrote
a hasty message on the back of the white envelope, explaining her reasons for
leaving alone. She also penned a note to the boys, telling them to be good for
their father.

It would take Joe somewhere
in the region of forty minutes to get to Martha’s house, get the boys sorted
out, and get back. Sandy wanted to be well away by the time he returned. She
didn’t want there to be any possibility of Joe following her. The note did not
give details of where she would be; she didn’t want them to know. She was
determined that Joe, Sean and David would not get caught up in this. If
anything happened to any one of them she was not sure her life could continue.
She was not sure that she would be able to handle the guilt and loss that she
had experienced before again without it killing her also. It was words to this
effect that Sandy Myers quickly scribbled to her family before adding her name,
three kisses and a PS that simply read, ‘I’ll see you when this is over.’

*

Joe had driven about two miles. His
gut feeling was that she would not be there when he returned, but he could not
turn back. He had to get the boys and make sure they were okay. He couldn’t
just abandon them. The boys came before anything else, and he had to try and
keep the family together as best he could. This thought spurred him on and gave
him hope. They all had to make it through this - Sandy especially - because
these two small and innocent creatures needed them, needed them to fight. And
even if she did run tonight while Joe was collecting the boys, he knew it would
not be because she was abandoning her family; it would be to protect them. He
also knew that her desire to stay alive for the sake of her family was
something that would double her strength and her willingness to fight, whatever
the odds.

*

Sandy stepped out into the evening
breeze. The hair on her arms stood up immediately as she locked the door behind
her and surveyed the scene. The car stood not fifteen feet from where she was,
and the feeling that she had earlier experienced returned momentarily, pinning
her to the spot. She stood still, struggling with the vastness of the world in
which she lived. Not for the first time in her life, Sandy felt threatened by
everything around her. It was a feeling that she remembered, but not one that
anybody could enjoy. To be afraid of a sudden burst of bird song or the distant
engine of a car was something that made a person’s nerves fray very quickly.
The only thing that would make her feel a little more secure would be the
humming of the car’s engine. It would be just that - a humming - but the fact
that she would be on the move meant that nobody could surprise her. Once she
was on her journey she should be able to reach Melissa’s without being stopped,
and in one piece, as long as she could keep the car on the road. Her
hypersensitivity to the things around her might make that difficult – she was
liable to swerve the car if startled at all.

She managed to shake off
her momentary paralysis and went hurriedly to the small car that reflected
beams of fading sunlight. Once she was inside, she locked the door and paused
for a moment’s reflection. The introduction of a barrier, albeit flimsy, calmed
her slightly. It was a shield between her and the threat of the outside world -
and the things that were in it.

She couldn’t believe this
was happening all over again - it was like being caught up in an elaborate
movie plot. She didn’t want to run away and leave her family, but what other
choice did she have? While the abandonment of her family might cause them great
emotional pain, she knew that if she stayed she may in fact bring them physical
pain and suffering.

She looked at the house for
a final time. It stood, constant and unchanging; something she had striven for
and a symbol of the success they had achieved through all of their struggles
for security. She would miss her home.
This time twenty-four hours ago I was
happy
, she thought.
Okay, I was run down and at the end of my rope, but
I was happy
.

Twenty-four hours ago her family had
been the most important thing to her. Now the most important thing for Sandy
Myers was fighting for survival against a predator she thought she had left
behind her ten years ago.

She had a lonely and
difficult journey to make on this cool June evening. It would be a tortured,
uncertain passage that got harder the further away she got from her husband and
her children.

She started the engine and
drove into the evening, her fear meaning that she did not even wind down the
window of the car. As she negotiated the first kilometer of her journey, her
thoughts turned to how Joe would feel when he returned home. She hoped he would
realize it to be the best option for all of them. Why risk four lives when only
one need be risked? That was how she hoped he would see it; as being for the
best. She tried to push feelings of guilt from her mind, and concentrate upon
her journey. She would stop for no one and nothing, and would go straight to
Melissa’s. What she couldn’t work out was what she would tell Melissa when she
arrived. Sandy didn’t think her friend could handle her turning up out of the
blue with a killer on her trail. She would have to make something up. Play it
cool to begin with. If things got hot then she could leave. Melissa was a
friend, but she would not expect Melissa to put her life in jeopardy in order
to look after her. It just wasn’t fair.