Whispers at Midnight (5 page)

Freezing in her tracks, her flashlight still trained on the baffling butt, Carly considered her options.

“Christ almighty, is that a
burglar?”
Sandra whispered, stopping dead beside her. Five foot ten in her bare feet, admitting to 250 pounds (which was sort of like five-foot, two-inch Carly admitting to 100, a nice lie that was quite a few pounds south of the truth), black and proud, Sandra possessed a truly formidable physical presence that should have provided some comfort under the circumstances. Unfortunately, Carly was all too well aware that beneath her employee/business partner/good friend’s intimidating exterior lurked the soul of a Martha Stewart. And not a kick-ass Martha Stewart either. A soft and cuddly Martha Stewart. A Martha Stewart whose fight or flight instinct was irretrievably set on flight.

“We don’t have burglars in Benton,” Carly whispered back, nearly dropping the flashlight as she fumbled desperately to turn it off before the beam could give their presence away. Scant seconds after she succeeded, the man’s shoulders emerged from the blackness underneath the porch, followed in due and predictable course by his head.

“Then who is he?” Sandra sounded unconvinced. The cardboard moving box full of pots and pans that she’d been carrying now rested at her feet. Carly had been so focused on the man that she hadn’t even realized Sandra had set her precious cooking utensils down in the wet grass. Her own less docile cargo squirmed indignantly in her arms. Hugo hated to be carried; he considered it beneath his dignity. Carly tightened her hold on the huge Himalayan cat and prayed he wouldn’t let out an untimely yowl.

“A plumber? The Orkin man? How the heck should I know?”

The night was humid and airless in the aftermath of the fierce summer storm that had just passed. A wet earthy smell that Carly always associated with rainy nights in Georgia hung in the air. Still-dripping leaves and eaves combined with the piccolo piping of a host of unseen tree frogs to cover their whispered conversation. From behind shifting clouds a pale sickle moon appeared, providing just
enough light to enable Carly to see the tall form of the intruder come lithely to his feet.

In one hand, its ominous shape unmistakable despite the darkness, he held an evil-looking black pistol.

“That’s it. I’m calling nine-one-one.” Sandra rooted in the bright plastic tote bag that served as her purse and came up with her cell phone, which she flipped open.

“We don’t have nine-one-one service in Benton.”

“Shee-it.” Sandra stopped punching numbers, closed the phone and rolled her eyes at Carly. “You got anything in Benton besides spooky old houses and scary men with guns?”

“We have a McDonald’s.
And
a Pizza Hut.” Both were recent arrivals of which her small hometown’s chamber of commerce was justly proud.

“Oh, that’s great. How about I just go ahead and call one of them?” Sandra shook her head in disgust. “I don’t want to eat, fool. I want to be saved from the man with the gun. What about a fire department? They save cats from trees.”

“In Benton if we need help we call the state police. Or the sheriff.”

“Number?” Sandra flipped open her phone again.

“No clue.”

They were backing away as they spoke. Carly moved carefully, mindful of lurking tree roots, her sneakers sliding a little on the slippery ground, her eyes never leaving the maybe-burglar. Clearly unaware of their presence, he stood with his back to them, seeming to focus on the huge dark shape that was the barn, which was just visible behind the house. The yard was as neglected as the rest of the property, the grass and bushes overgrown, the leaves unraked from the previous fall, which made the footing even trickier, especially since they were moving downhill. Situated at the western edge of town atop a wooded knoll some distance from its nearest neighbor, the Beadle Mansion, as the house was known thanks to its original owner, did not even possess its own driveway. Their vehicle, a bright orange U-Haul, which they had driven straight through from Chicago, was parked beside the narrow blacktop road that curled around the base of the hill. Reaching it without alerting the man to their
presence should be doable. Getting inside and driving away without being spotted was a whole nother basket of bread rolls.

Sandra’s cell phone snapped shut with a tiny sound that spoke of pure disgust. The man started walking away from them toward the corner of the house as if he might be headed for the barn. Carly stuck the flashlight into the front pocket of her jeans and tightened her grip on Hugo, who growled in protest. Poor cat, he hadn’t liked the trip, he hadn’t liked the rain, and he never liked being held against his will. He was going to like what was coming next less than all of it put together. In preparation, the fingers of her left hand locked around his front legs like kitty handcuffs, and her right forearm, on which his squirmy twenty-pound bulk rested, clamped him like a hotly contested football against her side.

Ready now, Carly glanced at Sandra. “I don’t know about you, but I vote we get while the getting’s good.”

“I hear you.”

Before they could execute the required about-face, a totally unexpected sound shattered the peace of the night. Loud as a siren, it seemed to go off right in their faces; both women jumped about three feet in the air. Under the circumstances, the shrilling tones were a little less welcome than a cloud of angry yellowjackets. Aghast, Carly realized even as her feet touched down again that the noise seemed to be coming from Sandra. Or, to be more precise, from Sandra’s phone.

“Shut it up! Turn it off!” Carly instinctively grabbed for the electronic traitor even as Sandra, staring down at the shrieking thing in her hand with as much horror as if it had suddenly morphed into a writhing snake, flipped it open and started punching buttons in a frantic effort to comply. Carly’s grab dislodged the phone. It somersaulted through the air to land smack at her own feet. From its new location it emitted another of its hideous blasts. Then another. And another. Frozen to the spot, she was too rattled to do anything except stare at it with dropped jaw and saucer eyes.

“Who’s there?” The challenge, issued in a raised voice, held a menacing note, and it snapped Carly’s appalled gaze up again. The man was no longer walking away. Though the darkness obscured much about his appearance, it was clear that he had turned around. In fact,
though she and Sandra were now at least a quarter of the way back down the slope and partially concealed by soggy foliage, he seemed to be looking in their direction—damn that stupid phone anyway!—and the hand holding the gun was definitely in motion. It was rising. More to the point, the gun was rising with it—and it was turning their way.

Carly’s stomach dropped like a broken elevator.

“Shit,” Sandra said, summing up the situation perfectly. As one, the two of them pivoted and bolted for the U-Haul.

“Hold it right there!”

The command slowed neither Carly nor Sandra by so much as a whisker. Heart pumping a mile a minute, hanging on to a now-struggling Hugo for all she was worth, Carly ran for her life. Sandra, arms and legs moving like pistons, her black leggings and oversized black tee shirt making her little more than a rapidly vanishing blur as she tore down the hill, shot past her, opening a commanding lead.

Who knew? Carly lost focus long enough to marvel that normally indolent Sandra had it in her to move that fast. Then she thrust the thought aside, and put heart and soul into saving herself and her ungrateful cat. In other words, she tightened her death grip on writhing, clawing Hugo, put her head down, and
ran.

Was he coming after them? Even as she ducked low-hanging branches and slithered on slimy moss, the prospect sent icy prickles down Carly’s spine. Worse, was he staying put, but taking careful aim as a prelude to shooting one of them in the back? Which, given the way her life had been going lately, would be her, of course. Thanks to Sandra’s unexpected burst of speed, she was closer to the prospective shooter, and in her jeans and yellow tee shirt undoubtedly a far more visible target. Carly cringed as she tried not to imagine what it would feel like to have her spine drilled by a bullet.

“You there! Stop!”

Not in this life. Gasping for breath, Carly ran faster. Her heart pounded as if it were determined to beat its way out of her chest. Blood thundered in her ears. The shout had sounded closer—hadn’t it? Where was he? Were those his footsteps she heard thudding behind
her now that the damned telltale phone had finally stopped ringing? Or was it her own pulse pounding?

Unable to resist a lightning glance back that showed her exactly nothing except a whole lot of night, she stumbled over a root. She’d felt the flashlight being jarred looser and looser with every step; now it fell, hitting the ground beside her feet. It rolled, she stepped on it, and suddenly she was about as stable as a hog on ice. Hugo, taking despicable advantage of the situation, chose that moment to push off against her side with a powerful thrust of his hind legs. Thrown even more off balance, she snatched after him and came up empty. Plumy white tail waving triumphantly, he shot away from her.

“Hu—oomph!”

Windmilling, calling after Hugo, she never even heard it coming: something hit her from behind with the force of a speeding truck. Slamming nose first into the soggy ground at the foot of a stand of dripping live oaks, she realized that she had been tackled.

By the man with the gun. His arms locked around her hips, his head thudded like a dropped bowling ball into the curve of her back, and the crushing weight of his torso pinned her legs to the ground.

Carly screamed. Well, squeaked was more like it, because right at that moment she couldn’t draw enough breath into her flattened lungs for an honest-to-God scream. Her flight or fight instinct, now that flight had been so rudely eliminated, switched to fight in an instant. Fueled by adrenaline, she twisted violently onto her back and in the process almost succeeded in dislodging him. Almost was the operative word, though, and it wasn’t enough. A hard-breathing, featureless shadow in the dark beneath the trees, he grabbed her again before she could wriggle away. Locking one hand in her waistband, he gave an almighty yank. Thank God the metal button held; snug to begin with—she had never thought she’d live to be grateful for having gained seven pounds from the stress of the divorce—the jeans didn’t budge. But she did. Her whole body slid several inches in the wrong direction, and suddenly his head was at the approximate level of her crotch. She was excruciatingly aware of his hand, warm and rough as it slid across the silky bare skin of her stomach. A wave of
horror hit her; it didn’t take a genius to figure out what he had in mind.

“No, no, no!” Carly went into a frenzy, beating at his head and shoulders with her fists, ramming her knees into his chest, digging her heels into the rain-softened earth. She had borne much over the last few months, but she couldn’t bear this. She had to get away, had to get away, had to get away… .

“Let me go! You let me go! Help! Sandra! Somebody!”

The volume of her gasping cries would have shamed a cornered mouse, she realized with despair. He said something, the tone of it harsh and guttural, but she was beyond making sense of mere words. Her heart pounded so hard that it could have been playing drummer for Ozzy Osbourne. Her throat was dry as cat kibble. Terror tasted like aluminum foil in her mouth. She was facing rape, death, probably both together, and she didn’t know why she was even surprised. Her life had been in the toilet for at least the last two years, and every time she thought things couldn’t get worse it took a header into an even deeper, smellier part of the pit. But this—this was crossing the line. It was too much. It was the proverbial straw that broke the poor, pathetic, long-suffering camel’s back. God or fate or whoever was running the circus up there was hereby put on notice: Carly Linton was mad as hell, and she wasn’t going to take it anymore.

Summoning her last reserves of strength and determination, she channeled her inner Mike Tyson and contorted like a pretzel as she went for his ear with her teeth. He dodged in the nick of time, and what she got for her efforts was a head-butt to the nose. Falling back, eyes watering with pain, she changed channels but continued to fight. The slippery wetness of the ground beneath them helped her, hindered him. Wriggling like a worm on a hook, kicking at him, finally using the fortuitous contact of her foot against his shoulder as impetus, she managed to get free, and swarmed backward in a frantic belly-up crawl. He surged after her, grabbing her around the knees. At this recapture she screamed like a steam whistle—thank God her lungs were functioning at full capacity again!—and yanked one leg free, kicking him as hard as she could in the head.

“Goddammit,” he roared, rearing up with a shake of his head. Before
she could react he lunged forward again and dropped on top of her, flattening her beneath him. The breath went out of her with the force of a blown tire. Sprawled and winded, she bucked feebly in an effort to throw him off. Fully atop her now, he was too heavy to budge. Her right hand was pinned between their bodies—useless. Even as she tried to yank it free, she abandoned Iron Mike in favor of Catwoman and went for his eyes with her free hand, fingers curved, nails ready. She was not going to go gentle into that good night—or whatever else this thug had in mind for her.

“Scratch me, and I’ll make you sorry you were ever born,” he snarled, locking a hand around her wrist in midair and bringing it into forceful contact with the wet ground, where he pinned it. She was all but immobile now, but still she refused to give up. With the thumb and forefinger of her trapped hand she managed to get in a vicious pinch to the meaty part of his chest. He yelped and delved between them for her other hand. Resisting, she bucked and screamed again, right in his face.

Their battle had taken them out of the oaks’ shadow into the open. The moonlight fell on his face, and as he grimaced in the wake of her air-horn-worthy blast, she got her first good look at him. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped, and just like that the fight went out of her. Lying sprawled beneath her attacker’s approximately two-hundred-pound weight, she felt oddly boneless, and realized that this was what it meant to be limp with relief.