A fire!
Suzanne’s heart leaped in her throat as she ran to the door, ran through the living room and kitchen without bothering to switch on the lights. Each room had big picture windows and she watched the shiver and play of the light against the hedge as she went from room to room.
The little circle of light kept flickering on and off and she stopped, hand on the door that would take her into her office. Her mind was just catching up with her body.
What was she thinking? Was she crazy?
No fire would make that kind of light. A fire’s light would be steadier, and bigger. There was only one thing that would make a light like that. A flashlight.
And a flashlight meant…someone was in her office.
Thank God she was barefoot. She hadn’t made any noise. Whoever it was in her office couldn’t have heard her.
The door to the office was ajar and she carefully pulled her fair hair back from her face and peeped around the corner.
There was nothing to see at first, just the blackness of a large dark room. Then there was a bumping sound, like a human limb meeting a piece of furniture, and a soft curse. If she hadn’t actually had her head practically in the room, she wouldn’t have heard it.
Someone had broken into her house.
A man. The low pitch of the curse had been unmistakable. Then a dark form crossed the window, perfectly silhouetted against the brighter night sky and Suzanne’s heart stopped. Then started again, pumping hard. She had to clench her teeth to keep from gasping.
The intruder was tall, lanky, with longish hair brushing his shoulders, holding a pencil flashlight in one hand. The flashlight was the source of the light she’d seen spilling out the window.
In his other hand, he was holding a big black gun.
Oh God, oh God! She thought, taking an involuntary step backwards. Another curse, low and vicious came from the room. He had tripped over another piece of furniture.
Her office was complicated, almost over-decorated, which she’d done deliberately as an advertising tool, showcasing what she could do. It was almost impossible to navigate if you couldn’t see. The man was finding the furniture pretty much by touch. Or by banging his shins.
He had a gun. A burglar with a gun. Hadn’t she read somewhere that burglars don’t carry guns? That they know that the penalty for breaking and entering is much less than that for armed robbery. That they have a different psychological profile from other criminals and are basically non-violent.
All a burglar wants, the article said, is to get in, get as much of your expensive stuff as possible, and get safely back out.
Except this man wasn’t doing that. The flashlight picked out her brand-new Bang and Olufsen, worth a lot of money—worth more, actually, than she could afford—then moved steadily on. It skimmed over her collection of antique silver frames collected by three generations of Barrons, which an appraiser date once said was worth more than her new car. It lighted briefly on the original Winston Homer great-granny Bodine had bought from the great man himself. Suzanne had used it as collateral for the mortgage.
The flashlight didn’t even linger over these items, but just kept roaming over the walls. Looking for something.
Looking for what? It was a poor part of town. There weren’t many buildings containing what the burglar had just skipped over as unworthy of stealing. What else could he possibly be looking for?
And just like that, Suzanne knew.
The burglar wasn’t there to steal her stereo system or her frames or her paintings.
He was there for her.
He was armed and on the hunt. Hunting her. For some unknown reason this man with the gun wanted to kill her. That was why he’d broken into her house and why he was ignoring all the valuable objects he could steal without any trouble at all. He didn’t want them. He wanted her and he was going to get her because there was no way out of the building except past him.
Her home was four big rooms, one after the other, and only the last one, her office, had a door leading out into the corridor. The rest were internal doors, and all the intruder had to do was go through them, one after another, until he found her.
The windows were alarmed and bulletproof. Opening a window would set off the alarm system, which could only be disengaged at the front door. There was no hope of breaking a window and crawling through. The man who’d sold her the windows had given her a demonstration of what bulletproof meant. He’d taken her to the company’s underground test room and fired a gun at a test windowpane, which had starred but hadn’t broken.
No way could she get through.
The closest police station was downtown. It would take them at least a quarter of an hour to get here and by then, the intruder would have gone through all the rooms, would have found her and…
John!! Only John was close enough—and tough enough and dangerous enough—to help her. If he was home.
Please be back, John, she prayed, running swiftly, silently, back through the kitchen, the living room and into the bedroom. She quietly closed each door, locked it, and then ran to the next.
The locked doors wouldn’t hold back a man capable of getting through her security for long, but maybe it would buy her a few minutes if he was trying to be quiet and not attract attention. All she needed was enough time to call John for help. If he was here, he was only across the hallway.
And if he wasn’t?
I’ll be home late, he’d said. What was late? Had he come back in while she’d been trying to sleep? Was he sleeping just a few feet away? Or was he still out of town, completely unable to answer her call in time?
Please don’t let him still be out of town!
She was sobbing as she locked the last door, the door to her bedroom. She was now as trapped as a mouse in a cage. If the intruder reached her bedroom, there was nowhere else to go, nowhere else to hide.
Fumbling, crying, she reached for her purse and with fingers that felt as thick as sausages rummaged for her cell phone. Her hands were shaking, useless. With a curse, she upended her purse, rummaged madly then—with a sob of relief—found her cell phone. She grabbed it and switched it on.
Her throat was raw from the panicked breaths she was gulping in. She held the phone in one hand as she frantically went through the seeming thousands of bits and pieces of paper in her purse with the other.
Damn! She was usually tidy, but she’d been so busy lately she hadn’t had time to clean her purse out. It looked like every number she’d ever known was written down on a small piece of paper. There it was! No, that was the number of her tax advisor. Old high school friend she’d bumped into at Nordstrom’s, antique dealer, and new hairdresser—all of them had scribbled their numbers on scraps of paper.
Think, Suzanne! She commanded herself. She closed her eyes, jaw clenched, and tried to think past her pounding heart and shaking nerves back to when John had written his cell phone number down.
If the intruder had found her kitchen door and picked the lock, he’d already walked through it. It was basically an open space. No obstacles at all. He could already be in her living room, or worse. Maybe he was already at the bedroom door.
She whimpered. Think!!
Cold, it had been cold outside. John had stood towering over her, angry with her because she’d called a taxi, writing his number down—she remembered his handwriting—bold, black, and distinctive—and she’d stuck it in…
Her planner!
Frantic, she scrambled for it, flipped through the pages and…there it was!
Shaking, she punched out the number, hoping she was getting it right. Hoping her shaking hands wouldn’t betray her. What if she’d punched the number in wrong? Ah. The line connected and started ringing. Make it be the right number, she prayed.
One…
Did she hear a small thud in the next room? Oh, God.
Two…
Come on, come on!
Three…