Wired (9 page)

I went to my phone and dialed the police station again, absently watching the tremors in my hand as the call tried to go through. All circuits were busy. They were always busy.

I tossed the phone on the counter and stood in my foyer for a while without thinking up anything helpful to my situation, pushing Mason out of my mind as best I could, though he was right across the street. About two seconds later, Mason called my phone from his car. While I went upstairs and strained to get a glimpse of him from the storage room window, he asked me again if there was anything else I wanted to tell him, then made me repeat a couple of times that I was okay. Other than that, it was a short call in
which he begged me again to let him come in. I refused and he begged, and I refused and he begged, and then we hung up.

I called the agency and left a voice mail alerting them to my situation, then told them that I'd let them know when I was back up and running. Then I pretty much sat around in my office staring at my disconnected wires. At last I went into my room, lay on the bed, and stared at the ceiling, trying to tell myself I was meditating. When I tired of that, I watched some television. I tried to think of someone to call but really couldn't think of anyone I wanted to talk to. Well, actually, I really couldn't think of anybody
to
talk to, which was even worse.

You've been working too much, Rox. You need a life. You don't want to get to the end of your life and be sitting in the dark like this
.

I lay on the bed with the door locked and the lights off, waiting for my computer equipment to spontaneously reappear. My mind was spinning with all that had happened.

Around midnight I ran down the hall to the storage room, wove myself through the maze of boxes, and plastered my face against the window. The angle gave me nothing more than the back slice of Mason's car for a view, but that was enough. I went back to my office and twirled in my task chair. Then I went and lay down on my bed again. Then I checked out the view from the window. To the office chair. To the bed. To the window.

Sleep did not come easily; my mind wouldn't stop grinding. It must have taken me a couple of hours to finally try to fall asleep, and even then I woke up fitful and uncomfortable in my own skin. So it took me a moment to figure out if the thumping sound I'd just heard was in my flat or just in my dreams.

A second thump later, I knew somebody was definitely in my flat—in real life—and for all I knew, they could have been inside my place for some time.

I inched toward the far end of the bed, still under the covers, then quietly slid to the floor, the silk of my pink negligee rustling against the sheets. My bedroom was pitch black, of course, what with the heavy shades on the windows. I couldn't turn the light on, as I didn't want the intruder to know I was up and alert. Keeping my eyes on the slice of light under the door, I crawled to the space between the far side of the bed and the wall.

The floor vibrated as someone climbed the stairs. He hit the landing and the floorboards out in the hall
shifted and squealed. The gun. The gun was in the closet. I stood up, my movements made clumsier by adrenaline, and lurched against the wall. My shoulder bumped the framed picture there, sending it crashing down onto the nightstand. I stood in bare feet, breathing loud enough to wake the neighbors, and now there was no question the intruder knew where I was and that I was awake.

I had no idea how far the glass had scattered, so I leaped as far as I could—back on the bed—then scrambled over the end and walked toward the closet. Flapping my hand out into the darkness I found the closet door, pulled it open and shrank inside.

In the closet now. That was the first step. I closed the door and felt around on the floor until my hand hit the shoebox. I pushed the cover aside. Was this why Leonardo had given me a gun? Did he know a moment like this would come? Did he know this exact moment would come?

I was sitting on the floor of my closet when the door to my bedroom opened. It wasn't cut right, and the wood slid against the pile carpet with a hissing sound. The lights did not go on.

My right hand reached inside the shoebox. I wrapped my fingers around the gun. With my free hand, I combed through the tissue paper for bullets, but then I realized I knew nothing about loading a pistol. For that matter, the gun could already be loaded. No matter. The intruder wouldn't know either.

I sensed him near the closet door now. With both hands wrapped around the gun handle, I watched the wooden boards beneath me depress slightly. Someone
was right there on the other side. Someone who wanted something.

Maybe I should strike first. Maybe I should kick the door out. I'm trapped in here. I should go for it. They won't expect it. Besides, I don't want to die in a negligee on the floor of my closet without a fight. You've got this in you. You know you do
.

I oh-so-slowly stood up in the closet, staying hunched over in an effort to avoid the hangers. The only reference that popped into my head for a situation like this was an
A-Team
rerun. Not ideal, but good enough. Aping the character in the show, I bent my right knee up toward my waist and kicked the door open, screaming, “I've got a gun!”

The intruder stumbled backward but managed not to fall. He had a gun trained on me, but mine was on him. I could see, just barely, the stalemate, as it were. Scared out of my mind and struggling with the unfamiliarity of wielding a real—and possibly loaded—weapon, I looked nervously at my adversary.

Except . . . I squinted in the dark at his shape and it looked familiar. “I'm going to blow your fucking head off if you don't get out of my bedroom,” I said.

“Holy shit.”

It was Mason, all right. But he didn't put the gun down. “Put it down, Merrick.”

“You put yours down.”

“I don't think so.”

Mason reached out and flipped on the closet light. I cringed at the sudden brightness.

“Is that what you normally wear to bed?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes. It wasn't, actually. For reasons I did not care to analyze, I'd put the pink thing on for the first time tonight.

“Hey, I remember this bed! Louise left her bed?”

“You and Louise,” I muttered, not falling for his obvious ploy to distract me from my purpose. “It's
my
bed. All my furniture. You were sleeping in my bed.”

His mouth melted into a slow smile.

I fought my body's reaction. “Oh, please. That's not what I meant.”

“I bet you wondered why was I going out with Louise,” he said.

“Let me guess. She was the first girl with large breasts to fall into your bed, and that's how she became your girlfriend.”

“I admit that she had very large breasts, but that wasn't it. And she really wasn't my girlfriend.”

“Quite possibly that makes it worse.”

“You're sure uptight, aren't you?”

I'm holding a gun. My life has changed and I don't remember it all. Yeah, I'm a little uptight
. “Don't call me that. I hate that.”

“So, it's happened before?” He cocked his head and smiled.

“Why don't we change the subject?”

“What would you like to talk about?”

“How long you plan to stand there like an idiot while I point this gun at you.”

“You don't want me to leave now, do you? This was just getting interesting.”

“What are you talking about? This is not ‘interesting.' You are not interesting to me. You're annoying. You're like a gnat. You broke into my—”

“I think you're a little jealous of Louise? Mmm? Admit it.”

“You're out of your mind. Certifiably.”

“You're not used to flirting.”

“You're
flirting
with me? We're flirting? I guess I thought it would be better.”

“So, you've thought about it,” he crowed.

“Oh, shut up. How did you get in the house?”

“Funny coincidence. I woke up and saw that the front door was open, and I got worried. So I came inside and then I heard something smash, and then I was really worried.” He eyed the gun in my hand and smiled. It was a friendly smile. In truth, it was a worried, caring smile. But it was also a liar's smile, since I'd double-checked all the locks before bed.

“Oh. The door was open? How silly of me. I must have left it unlatched.” My arms were starting to get tired, and I actually did want to put the gun down. Not to mention I wasn't wearing anything underneath the nightie, and I wasn't sure how high the hem was riding in this position.

He looked at me curiously, then recovered. “How about on the count of three we both lower our guns?”

“You're kidding. Just put down your gun and then I'll put down mine.”

“You don't trust me?”

“Obviously not.”

The sunny charm went out of his look, but he lowered his arms and uncocked his gun. Just like that. I was so surprised that I just stood there with my gun still pointed at him. “I need you to trust me,” he said. He put his gun down on the bed and lifted his arms to show me his empty hands.

I couldn't figure it out. He stood there frowning at me and looking like a hurt little boy.

He said, “You don't honestly believe that I broke into your house and came up here to kill you, do you? Is that what you're thinking?” The corner of his mouth quirked up; his voice held a note of disbelief.

I thought about it as my tired arms sagged. Did I believe that he broke into my house? Yes, I did. There was no way someone else had broken in. Not with him sitting out front.

But I couldn't believe that he'd come up here to kill me. Which meant I had no idea why he would bother breaking in at all, especially with my computer equipment gone. Of course, I'd probably have given him a similar reception if he had actually rung the doorbell.

“I'd like to look around,” Mason said. “Like I should have done earlier.” He sounded only a little smug.

“Nice attempt to cover your ass. It was you, and you know it. Back away from the bed and keep your hands out with your palms showing, just like you had them.”

He cocked his head and humored me, but I could see a vein in his neck throb as he clenched his jaw. When he moved back far enough to please me—which was practically out the bedroom door—I grabbed his gun off the bed. “Stick 'em up,” I said.

Mason laughed until I started toward him, double-fisting guns, the adrenaline pouring through me so fast my movements were getting jerky.

“Just don't . . . Whoa, hey, watch those triggers!”

“
You'd
better watch them. Now back out that
door and we're going to go downstairs and walk you out of my house.”

“Roxanne, hold on one second. I really need my gun.”

“Look, I'm tired. Just turn around and start walking.” I jiggled the guns in his direction and his eyes widened for a second before he shrugged in an exhausted, resigned sort of way and did as I asked.

I walked him down to the front door and said, “You can come again tomorrow and I'll give you your gun back. Then we can talk.”

“You don't understand what's happening here. I need—”

“Right now? You need it right now? It's—what—three in the morning? Are our lives in danger right now?”

“Possibly.”

“I see. Well, I'm well armed and probably not going to be able to sleep again tonight, so I think I'll be okay. See you tomorrow.” I pressed the guns against his chest and pushed him backward over the threshold with the muzzles, then shut the door in his face, locked it very carefully, and immediately went upstairs to the storage room to see if I could see anything.

I flinched back, irritated to find that Mason had anticipated my move. He had walked to the one angle where I could actually see him, caught me looking, and waved. I moved away from the window and went back into my bedroom, moving a chair to cover the broken glass in case I forgot when I woke up in the morning.

I must have been more tired than I thought, because
I actually fell asleep pretty fast. Unfortunately it wasn't a long sleep, due to the sound of the doorbell ringing at five o'clock.

I woke up fast, alert, and pulled on a pair of sweats underneath the skirt of my lingerie. I picked up Mason's gun and went downstairs. The doorbell kept obnoxiously ringing, and I figured it had to be him. It was, in fact, Mason, with a surprising amount of stubble. I saw that as I opened the door and pointed his gun at his chest.

“Good morning,” I said with a complete lack of enthusiasm. “It's five a.m.”

“Five thirty. I'm hungry and I have to take a piss.” He looked grumpy and uncomfortable, and without hesitation he reached out, moved the muzzle of his gun out of his direction, and pushed past me into the house.

I looked at the gun. My ability to scare Mason with it seemed to have disappeared with the dawn. That, or he had to go pretty badly. I shrugged and left his gun on the small table next to the door.

Mason joined me in the kitchen a few minutes later, opened the cupboard, and pulled out a box of cereal. He'd obviously slept less than I had. He looked like hell—which kind of suited him, of course.

I left him in the kitchen and went back upstairs. In the open doorway to my office, I just stood in shock. My stuff was back. All of it, from the looks of things. And it wasn't just scattered everywhere; it was as if someone had taken a picture prior to stealing everything and used that to put everything back in the proper place. Impossible.

I clasped my shaking hands together to still them and stepped out of my office and went to the top of the stairs. “Mason!” I called.

He appeared almost instantly at the bottom of the stairs, holding his cereal spoon in his fist like a dagger. “Jesus, Roxy. The sound of your voice . . . I thought something had happened to you.”