Whispers at Midnight (40 page)

“Got you.”

A terrified glance up, and then he pounced on her like a cat on a baby bird, bending over her, grabbing her by the hair and wrenching her head back even as she scrambled up onto her hands and knees, her nails scrabbling over the slippery tile as she fought to get away.

Fearfully she looked up at the black executioner’s hood and found that she was able to see, through rough-edged holes that looked like they had been cut out with scissors, his eyes. They were a curiously light blue, bloodshot, almost lashless, their pupils small black pinpricks, inhuman in their lack of emotion, their coldness. They told her that he would butcher her without remorse.

This can’t be happening,
was the thought that pounded through her mind in sync with the terrified racing of her pulse. He didn’t even strike her as human, just a horror-film monster garbed in black, Jason/Freddy/Michael Myers in surgical gloves—those white hands were surgical gloves, she knew now—and with a knife. She was so frightened that she couldn’t seem to breathe, couldn’t seem to move, her arms and legs seemed weighted with lead and the whole nightmarish sequence seemed to be happening in hideous slow motion.

“Now I remember you,”
he said, in that horrible raspy whisper through the mouth-slit in his mask. His head was bent over hers, and he seemed to be staring down at her. Eyes wide, whimpering with fear, Carly could look at nothing but the glinting knife as he slowly lifted it. It was poised, she realized in another of those instants of icy clarity, to cut her throat.

She could hear the rushing water and her own rapid, shallow breathing and his deeper, harsher-sounding breaths. She could feel the grip of his hand in her hair and the cold slipperiness of the tile beneath her fingers and the terrified pounding of her own heart. The one thought in her mind was,
I’m going to die.

If the cut on her hand was any indication, it wouldn’t hurt. She wouldn’t feel a thing. The blade would cut deep and she would be in shock and the warm blood would gush out but she wouldn’t feel it, wouldn’t know anything except a horrible awareness of her own puny mortality and then nothing at all….

She didn’t want to die.

“No!” she screamed, so loud she shocked herself back to reality, so loud the word drowned out the drumming of her pulse in her ears and the rushing water and her breathing and his and everything else in the universe except the primal need to survive.

Screaming, she lunged to the left as the blade swooped like a silver, death-dealing hawk toward the vulnerable curve of her throat, feeling the sting of hair being ripped from her scalp as the knife missed its target and slid across the top of her shoulder. She felt a sharp pain as her flesh was pierced and then the icy burn of a cut.

He cursed and twined his hand in her hair and hauled her head back for a second go and she screamed again, despairingly this time. Her heart was beating so fast she could feel it pounding in her chest. She broke out in a cold sweat as she faced the certainty of her own imminent death.

His hold was unbreakable now. She would not be able to dodge eternity a second time. Panting with terror, she thought it again: she didn’t want to die.
Please God please God please God…

Her fingers scrabbling desperately over the floor encountered something hard, something sharp, and she realized that it was a long, jagged shard of glass.

The knife was already arcing toward her throat again when she jammed the piece of glass back behind her into his knee.

He shrieked and dropped the knife with a clatter and let go of her hair. Just like that, she was free.

Screaming, Carly shot through the door like a runner off the mark, heart racing, cold sweat pouring over her like someone had turned on a faucet, her shoes sliding on the hardwood floor as she gained the hall and bolted for the stairs. A terrified glance over her shoulder told her that he was coming after her, lurching wildly as blood poured from the wound she had inflicted in his leg, cursing and sobbing but coming, and then she was flying down the stairs, her feet barely touching the treads.

He’d taken time to pick up the knife. It glinted in his hand.

“You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead.”
That hoarse, raspy whisper sent a finger of pure terror racing down her spine.

Galvanized by fear, Carly leaped down the last remaining stairs. She landed in the hall on the balls of both feet and tore toward the door.

But he was close, really close, too close. Even as she felt the cold metal of the knob beneath her hand she knew that she wasn’t going to make it, that if she stopped long enough to unlock the deadbolt and pull the door open he would catch her before she could get through it. Her blood ran cold as she realized that she wasn’t going to be able to get out the door, wasn’t going to be able to pick up the phone and call for help or even hit the panic button on the alarm because all those things took too much time, precious seconds she didn’t have, precious seconds that would allow him to catch her. Even diving for the light switch would take time—and it might backfire. She would be able to see him, but then, he would also be able to see her.

“You’re dead.”
He was in the hall now, breathing hard, lumbering after her, a limping, lopsided gait, but fast. Even injured, he was so terrifyingly fast.

Carly screamed and fled into the shadowy darkness of the front parlor, slip-sliding on her wet soles, thankful that she knew the house well enough so that the lack of light gave her the tiniest of advantages. She knew how the rooms connected and the angle of the halls and…

So did he.

The burglar. The burglar. He was her burglar. She was as sure of that as she was that Christmas was in December.

He’d come back. For her? At the thought her blood turned to ice.

It hit her then what she had to do. It was her only hope, an outside chance, maybe it would work and maybe it wouldn’t but…

She dived for the table by the sofa, snatched the crystal peppermint dish from it and hurled it with all her might through the window. The sound of shattering glass was almost instantly followed by the shrill wail of the alarm system’s siren.

“Bitch.”

It worked. It worked. The security system worked.
The perimeter has been breached. Send the marines.

But he was still coming. He was in the parlor now, she could see him as a dark hellish shape rushing toward her. The wailing alarm notwithstanding, he was not going to let her go.

If he caught her he would kill her….

Shrieking loudly enough to be heard all the way to Atlanta, her fight or flight response in full bore, adrenaline-fueled flight mode, Carly darted for the rear parlor. Her feet barely touched the ground as she flew through it and burst out into the back hall and pounded toward the kitchen, into the kitchen—and stopped dead.

She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew. He had somehow circled back around on her. He was still now, silent, waiting for her there in the dark kitchen.

Waiting for her to walk into his trap.

Her breathing stopped. Her heart skipped a beat.

A furious pounding sounded over the screeching alarm. Someone was beating on the front door, rattling the knob, pounding with a flat hand on the glass.

The marines had arrived at last.

Carly turned and ran like a bat out of hell. By the time she reached the front door, she was gasping for breath. Her blood was drumming so hard in her ears that she could barely hear anything over it, not the wailing alarm, not the pounding on the door, not anything. Certainly no sounds of pursuit. Where was he? He could leap out of the darkness at any second, bringing that razor-honed knife plunging down into her back. Seconds from being saved, she would be dead.

Screaming, glancing fearfully over her shoulder, Carly fumbled at the door. Her hands were slippery with sweat; she could barely turn the lock, turn the knob—

“Carly!” It was Matt. As soon as she unlocked the door he burst through it, big and tough and yelling her name and armed with a drawn gun, and she threw herself against him and clung and felt her legs turn to limp spaghetti and her head spin as she collapsed in his arms.

“What is it? What happened? Damn it to hell—” He let loose with a string of curses as he thrust his gun into his holster and
wrapped his arms around her before she could totally lose it and slide bonelessly to the floor.

He felt so solid, so strong, so warm, so safe. Now that Matt was here, it was over. She wasn’t going to die. She was safe.

“Sandra … Matt, oh, Matt, he’s here in the house … in the kitchen … the burglar … Sandra’s in the bathroom … she’s hurt … Oh, Matt. Oh, Matt.” Carly’s legs gave out.

“Check the house.” Matt gave the harsh-voiced order over his shoulder even as he scooped her up in his arms, and Carly realized that at least two men were with him. They rushed by, one of them turning on the hall light. By its bright and nearly blinding light Carly recognized them, Antonio and Mike, moving fast, with drawn guns.

“Sandra—in the bathroom by my bedroom. He hurt her …”

This time Matt seemed to absorb what she was saying.

“Antonio,” Matt bellowed after his men. “Sandra’s in the back upstairs bathroom. Hurt, Carly says. Mike, check out the kitchen.”

Antonio doubled back, bounded up the stairs.

Exhausted, Carly let her head fall back against Matt’s shoulder. She felt alarmingly light-headed. Her stomach was churning, and she was shaking and freezing cold and the room was tilting and she was starting to feel almost weightless, like her body didn’t exist. She had never fainted in her life. She had a feeling that this just might be getting ready to be the first time.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Matt was carrying her toward the front parlor when he stopped dead. Carly managed to focus long enough to discover that he was looking down at her in horror. So weak she could hardly lift her head now, she nevertheless glanced down at herself, spurred by the stark fear in his eyes. Held against his chest, his brawny brown arms curled around her shoulders and knees, she was deathly pale, shaking, slender in her wet, smeared jeans and navy tee shirt, only it wasn’t navy now, it was red….

“You’re covered in blood. You’re bleeding. The bastard cut you. Goddamnit to
hell.
Carly,
stay with me.
”

This last, uttered in an urgent tone, just reached her ears as the last
of her strength gave out. She didn’t faint but she rested, closed her eyes and went limp in his arms and rested as he tightened his grip and cursed a blue streak and rushed somewhere with her.

She knew it was only a rest and not a faint because in the distance she could hear Antonio shout, “Call an ambulance!”

29

I
F ANYONE HAD SEEN HIM,
the man would have looked like a hunchback as he half-ran, half-hopped through the night-dark woods. He was bent over, clutching his bleeding leg, sweating with exertion and pain.

He was hurt, he was hurt, damn the bitch, she’d stabbed him with broken glass. The jagged edges had done more damage to his knee than any knife, he was going to be months recovering from this and she was
dead.

What had started as an impersonal quest to ensure his own safety was now personal. She’d turned the tables and wounded him and escaped and when he caught her again she was
dead.

They were after him, the sheriff and his deputies, at least one of them was, out in the dark with a flashlight and a pistol, moving cautiously as he searched the grounds behind the house. More would come, he had little doubt. It was just minutes after he had fled the house, the damned alarm was still going off and lights had just gone on in the old lady’s house that was just up the hill from him now as he plunged through the woods on his way to his truck. More deputies would be speeding down the road soon with sirens blaring. He would be long gone by then. They weren’t going to catch him, not tonight,
not ever. He wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t careless. Tonight’s failure could be put down to plain old bad luck.

His was like a seesaw lately: sometimes up, sometimes down.

He’d gotten rid of the dog. A sprinkle of rat poison on a plate of scraps set out under a bush in the backyard. The dog had wolfed the whole thing right down. He’d been watching as they had found it, watching as they’d gathered it up and rushed down to their van and sped off toward—he presumed—their local vet.

All gone. House empty. And—he’d checked—no one had thought to either lock up or set the alarm.

There was his luck going up again. Leaving the house unsecured was a bonus he hadn’t expected, but then, life was like that: full of surprises.

In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, you never know what you’re going to get.

He’d left and taken care of some rather urgent business, then returned and made himself at home, taking a quick look through the closets and drawers and coming up with a gem in the kitchen—the code to the security system, no need to worry about that anymore—and in general familiarizing himself with the house. It was a nice house, old but big and well-furnished, and picking out a good place to hide in comfort for hours if he needed to had been easy. He had a new plan, brilliant in its simplicity, handed to him on a platter as a result of his success in getting rid of the dog. He would wait in the house until Carly was home and asleep and then just carry her out. He had nowhere he had to be tonight. He had all the time in the world. Any other loose ends he needed to finish off—like the dog if it wasn’t dead—could just as well wait for morning.