Someone Is Watching (16 page)

“Love you,” he coos as I disconnect.

I call the police. They tell me they still haven’t been able to locate David Trotter, that they’ll keep me posted. I decide not to tell them about last night’s phone calls. I don’t want to get my brother in trouble. Or Travis, who is probably the one who made the calls, with Heath just covering for him, hiding behind drug-induced amnesia. If the calls continue, I’ll report them. In the meantime, I should get ready for my appointment. It’s still hours away, but I might as well get a head start. God knows I don’t have anything else to do.

I head for my bathroom, purposefully avoiding the binoculars still lying on the floor beside the bedroom window. I’m through with being a voyeur, I tell myself as I step into the shower, laying my scissors down on the gray-and-white marble shelf built into the shower’s marble wall. I stand beneath the torrent of blistering hot water, feeling my hair flatten against my scalp like seaweed. When I have finished scrubbing myself so raw I can actually see patches of bloody skin around my elbows and knees, I thoroughly wash and condition my hair, although the conditioner has ceased to have any effect, undone by too much shampoo. Permanent knots
have replaced the waves in my long hair. Its once-shiny brown has lost its luster.

I do a cursory job of drying it, then pull it into a large scrunchie at the nape of my neck. I apply concealer to my eyes, then smear some tinted moisturizer on my face. This is followed by some cream blush and a few strokes of mascara.

I look like a clown, I decide, staring slack-jawed at my reflection for several seconds before wiping everything off and starting over again. The second time is even worse. I rub the mascara off with a tissue, find myself face to face with a wild-eyed raccoon.

Ultimately, I step back into the shower, start the whole process over again. This time I decide not to bother with makeup. Elizabeth Gordon will just have to take me as I am, dry scaly skin and corpselike complexion.

The phone rings, and I jump. “Hello?” I say, picking it up before the end of its first ring.

“What’s the address?” Claire asks, and I laugh.

“2501 Southwest 18th Terrace.”

“Suite number?”

“411.”

“Good girl. You almost ready?”

“Almost.”

“Do you want me to arrange a cab for you?”

“No, that’s all right. I was thinking I might drive.” This statement catches both of us by surprise. When was I thinking any such thing?

“I thought whoever attacked you stole your car keys.”

“The valets keep a second set.”

“What about your license?”

“I have a photocopy,” I lie.

“I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.”

“I am,” I say, growing increasingly adamant.

“Well, okay then. I guess.”

“Okay, then,” I repeat.

“Call me when you get home.”

I promise I will, then hang up the phone. I walk gingerly into
the closet, careful not to put much weight on my sore ankle and wondering if, in fact, it’s a good idea for me to drive. But I’ve always loved driving. And sitting behind the wheel of the car that once belonged to my mother has always soothed me.

I select a pair of loose-fitting black pants and a white shirt to wear on this, my first outing in three weeks. I’m almost giddy. Driving will do more for me than any therapist.

At eleven fifteen, I call down to the concierge and ask Finn to have someone bring up my car.

“Sure thing, Miss Carpenter.”

“And could you send someone up to escort me down in the elevator?” I ask, feeling a lump in my throat, a constriction in my chest. “Normally, I wouldn’t ask. But after yesterday …”

“I’ll be right up and escort you down myself,” Finn says without hesitation.

Two minutes later, he’s at my door.

“I’m probably being silly,” I tell him, growing dizzy and fighting to stay upright as he walks beside me down the hall.

“Never hurts to be cautious.”

The elevator arrives and we step inside. I close my eyes as Finn presses the button for the lobby, and we ride all the way down without interruption. “Here comes your car now.” Finn points toward the silver Porsche pulling around the corner into view.

Wes jumps out of the still-running sports car as Finn holds open the lobby door.

I walk slowly toward the car I inherited from my mother, its exterior shiny and clean, its silver metal reflecting the blinding midday Florida sun. The last time I saw my car it was night on a quiet residential street in North Miami. The last time I touched the door handle was the night I was raped. “I can do this,” I mutter as I crawl in behind the wheel.

Wes closes the door after me and leans in through the open window. “Drive carefully,” he says, the strong, medicinal scent of his mouthwash bringing tears to my eyes.

My father bought my mother the silver sports car as a present on her fiftieth birthday. It was love at first sight, and she swore she’d drive it forever. Forever turned out to be less than three years. After she got too sick to drive, it sat in the garage. “My baby feels neglected,” she’d say periodically from her bed, her head swiveling on her pillow in the direction of the four-car garage. “When are you going to get your father to teach you to drive shift?”

“It’s
your
baby,” I’d reply with a stubborn shake of my head. “It wants its Mommy.”
I
want my Mommy, I’d add silently.
Please, Mommy. Don’t die. Don’t die.

So much for silent prayers.

The car is now eight years old and in the years since my father patiently taught me how to drive a stick shift, I’ve more than tripled the mileage. Still, it feels brand new. Every time I climb behind the wheel, I feel my mother’s comforting arms surround me. I inhale the quiet citrus of her perfume.

Until today.

Today the car feels foreign and unfamiliar. The buttery smooth black leather feels harsh and prickly against my skin. The seat sits
too low to the ground and no longer cups my back like the palm of a hand. My legs have to stretch to reach the pedals; my hands slide from the steering wheel as if it’s been greased. My mother is nowhere to be found.

Wes has made a mistake, I decide. He’s new to the building and has mixed things up and brought me the wrong car. “This isn’t my car,” I shout out the window, but Wes is back at the front entrance talking to Finn and doesn’t hear me. I’m not sure what to do, so I do nothing, just sit there. Of course this is my car, I assure myself. It just doesn’t feel like mine because Wes has adjusted the seat to fit his own frame. It’s a simple matter to return everything to its rightful position.

I press a button to adjust the seat, which lifts the seat up instead of forward, and when I press the button again, it moves the seat back further than it was before, making everything worse. I press a button on the side of the door, causing the window beside my head to rise, cutting off my supply of outside air. The car’s air conditioner is off, and I’ve forgotten which switch will turn it on. The car is hot and growing hotter and more humid by the second. I can’t breathe. “Okay, stay calm,” I whisper, taking a bunch of deep breaths, trying not to give in to my growing panic as I start pushing one button after another.

The seat suddenly vaults forward, then back again, then forward, before locking into place with a jolt so intense it jostles my right hand, throwing the car into first gear. My left foot automatically lifts off the clutch as my right presses down on the accelerator. “The car practically drives itself,” I hear my mother proclaim proudly as the silver Porsche literally bounces out of the driveway.

In my rearview mirror, I see Wes turn around, his mouth opening in alarm as he watches my car lurching toward the street. I’ve forgotten where I’m going. I fish in my handbag for the address I scribbled on a piece of paper, but I can’t find it. What’s more, the sun is blinding, and I realize I’ve forgotten my sunglasses.

Reflexively, I lift one hand from the wheel to shield my eyes from the sun’s glare and feel the car veer sharply to the left. Such a powerful engine. “Too powerful for a girl,” Travis once scoffed,
although I think he was just peeved because I wouldn’t let him drive. But maybe he was right after all.

Can a girl ever have too much power?
I wonder, trying to keep another more worrisome thought at bay. The thought asserts itself anyway: when did I stop being a woman and regress into a girl? I shake my head, already knowing the answer. Another wave of disgust washes over me. I am drowning in disgust. I press down harder on the accelerator and shift the car into second gear. A mistake. It’s too early to shift gears. I’m not going fast enough. I’m barely out of the driveway, for God’s sake.

A half-finished building suddenly looms large in front of me. I tighten my grip on the wheel, spin it to the left to avoid a collision with a car approaching from the right, not seeing until it is too late that several construction workers are crossing the road directly in my path. I see their faces contort with fear, hear the frenzied cries of onlookers, hear my own scream rise above theirs as I struggle to control the wheel. Tires squeal as the car mounts the sidewalk, continuing its sickening path toward the orange wire fence surrounding the construction site.

“What the hell?” someone shouts as the front of the Porsche crashes into the chain-link fence, causing the wire to crumple and collapse. It falls across the hood of my car like netting from a hat.

“Are you crazy?” another voice cries as instinct takes over and I manage to wrest the key from the ignition, stopping the car once and for all.

I push open the door and stagger out.

“Miss Carpenter,” Wes is shouting from somewhere behind me. “Are you all right?”

“What happened?” Finn demands, both men racing across the street toward me.

And then, a succession of overlapping voices: “Are you hurt?” “For God’s sake, you almost killed us.” “What’s the matter with you?” “Are you sick?” “What were you thinking?”

“I have to go,” I tell the blur of bodies moving around me.

“I think you should sit down.”

“I have to go.”

“Do you want me to call your sister?” Finn asks.

How many times has he asked me that lately? I find it ironic that a week ago, Claire barely existed. My half-sister in theory perhaps, but in reality little more than a name scribbled on the back of an old photograph. She was half of nothing. Now she is the half that makes me whole. I couldn’t have survived this past week without her. So why didn’t I listen to her when she warned me not to drive? Why didn’t I call a cab?

My eyes shoot from side to side. I notice steam rising from the engine of my car and a large scratch etched across its hood like a deep scar. I see a woman ushering a small child away from the scene, as if staring too long in my direction might permanently damage her son’s vision, like gazing at a solar eclipse. I watch a few people starting to wander off even as several others jockey to improve their positions.

I see David Trotter.

He is standing by himself on the other side of the street, perusing the scene with cold, dispassionate eyes. He shifts from one foot to the other as his mouth curls into an insolent smile.

“No!” I gasp, turning away.

“What is it?” Finn asks.

I dismiss his concern with a shake of my head. When I work up enough courage to look back in David Trotter’s direction, he is gone.

Was he ever really there?

A construction worker touches my arm. He is about thirty and of medium height and weight. “Are you okay?” he asks. His breath carries traces of the spearmint gum he is chewing.

I cry out, as if I’ve been burned by the lit end of a stray cigarette and take a step back as a gloved hand reaches for my shoulder. I break from the crowd and take off down the street.

“Hey, you can’t just leave the scene of an accident.”

“Miss Carpenter …”

As if by prior arrangement, a cab suddenly pulls to a stop in front of me. I open the door and hop in, not fully convinced the taxi isn’t a mirage. It is only when the stale aroma of perspiration
emanating from the cracked green vinyl of the cab’s interior assaults my nostrils and I hear the driver’s heavy Cuban accent that I begin to accept this is actually happening. “Where you go?” the man asks.

I struggle to remember the address. Then I hear Claire’s calm voice in my ear, reminding me. “2501 Southwest 18th Terrace,” I tell the driver. “Can you get there as fast as you can?”

The driver smiles at me in his rearview mirror. I note with relief that he is about sixty, with salt-and-pepper hair and a paunch so pronounced that it actually crowds the steering wheel. He is not the man who raped me. For the time being, I can relax. “Hang on,” he says.

—

Suite 411 is on the fourth floor of a six-story, bubblegum-pink building, directly across the hall from the elevator. I am both sweating from the outside heat and shivering from the inside air-conditioning, an unsettling combination. I knock on the heavy wood door and wait, but there is no answer. I check my watch and see that I am twelve minutes late. Elizabeth Gordon has probably given up on me, I think with a mixture of disappointment and relief, about to turn away when the door opens and a pretty woman with frizzy brown hair and a mouthful of tuna sandwich stands before me. She is about forty years old, almost six feet tall, and dressed casually in gray slacks and a powder blue cotton shirt. A thin gold pendant dangles from her swanlike neck, matching the small gold loops in her ears and wide gold band on the third finger of her left hand. She wears minimal makeup, and she is smiling as she discreetly pries several stray flakes of tuna from her teeth with her tongue and wipes her right hand on the side of her pants before extending it toward me. I shake it, deciding she must be Dr. Gordon’s receptionist. “You must be Bailey,” she says, ushering me inside the small waiting room lined with high-backed plastic chairs. “I almost didn’t hear you. Sorry about the tuna. I was trying to wolf it down before you got here.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m the one who’s late. Did Dr. Gordon leave?”

“I’m Elizabeth Gordon, and I’m not a doctor.”