CHAPTER 23

The room was dark and, in the first few seconds after I awoke, there was a little panic as I tried to remember exactly where I was. It slowly all began to come back to me--sitting in the recliner in the living room and trying to look through Tina’s laptop for information--unsuccessfully because I couldn’t determine any way to decrypt her passwords. Pouring another drink--or was it two? Reclining the chair in order to ponder the situation I found myself in. I couldn’t remember exactly what time I turned off the light or drifted off to sleep. Now I had no idea how long I’d slept or what hour it was.

Then I heard something. It was coming from Tina’s room. It couldn’t be the cats. Cats didn’t make noises like that. Turning my head slowly I could see, through the open bedroom door, the beam of a flashlight darting around the room. It couldn’t be Terri. She wouldn’t be sneaking around Tina’s place in the middle of the night. Whoever it was, they were looking for something. I heard the sound of dresser drawers opening and closing. I heard quiet cursing. It was a man. Apparently, he was having no better luck than I had.

I couldn’t move. Not due to fear, although I can’t deny that my heart was racing a bit, but because there was no way to quietly or easily get out of the recliner. If I let the chair down, the footrest would make that “whompf” noise that footrests always make when they return to nest against the bottom of the chair. Whoever it was in the other room would be sure to hear it. I didn’t know if he had a weapon, but the way my luck seemed to be running lately, I didn’t want to take that risk.

I couldn’t turn and roll off the recliner. On one side was the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen and on the other was a floor lamp with a built-in table that held my empty glass and the two-thirds full bottle of Powers.

I picked up the bottle by the neck and patted its body against the palm of my free hand. I hated the thought of using something so dear as weapon, but desperate times called for desperate measures. It wouldn’t stand much chance against a gun, but if I used the element of surprise, and, when the intruder entered the living room, I could accurately throw it and plunk him just right in the head, then maybe I could spring from the chair, overpower, disarm, and wrestle him to the floor before he knew what hit him.

Or maybe, since it wasn’t easy to throw a bottle while in a reclined position, I’d just graze or miss the intruder completely. He would put a bullet or two in my chest before I could get out of the chair and someone would find me sometime the next day dead as a doornail and being picked over by hungry cats. I needed another plan.

There couldn’t be much time to come up with one, only so many places in Tina’s room for the intruder to search. Soon he would be in the living room, and while I was lucky he didn’t see me when he broke into the apartment, chances are a six-foot-three-inch body in a chair would be hard to overlook a second time. I needed to think. I turned the bottle upright, silently screwed off the cap, and took a deep swig. My eyes had adjusted a bit to the darkness and as I took my swallow from the bottle I saw my only chance.

It was about thirty feet from the chair to the door that opened into the hallway and the path was unimpeded. I could probably cover the distance in a few good strides, and if the door was unlocked--and what kind of intruder locks a door behind them?--be through it, and in the hallway, knocking on a neighbor’s door in just a few seconds. Hell, add in the fear factor and I could probably move even faster and might run right through the damn door, open or not. It could work, and besides, I really didn’t have any other options.

I screwed the cap back on the bottle and once more grabbed it by the neck. It might still prove useful. I slowly and ever so quietly began to gently rock my body forward and back as I reached down to grab the lever for the footrest. Timing was everything. I could use the motion of the recliner returning upright to gain a bit of propulsion toward the door. I counted to myself as I rocked. One. Two. Three.

It was an amazing display of physics at work. My left foot hit the floor just as the footrest “whompfed,” and I was hurtling forward, pushing off the armrests, propelled by the back of the chair forward, and it seemed I covered half the distance to the door before my right foot landed after a long stride. I turned my head and saw the light from the flashlight spin and project through the open bedroom door. He had heard me, but there was no way the intruder could get to me before I got to the door.

What I didn’t see was that one of the cats, for a reason only other cats would probably understand, chose that moment to come out from wherever it had been hiding to walk across my path to the door. The animal managed to find the perfect tripping point--its head behind my alighted right foot, its ass-end in front of my forward moving left foot--so when my feet drew parallel they became entangled with the cat’s body. There was a blood-curdling screech--I think it was the cat, though it might have come from me--as I tumbled forward, arms swimming through the air, landing hard and yet somehow managing to turn my body just enough so that it was my left shoulder that took the brunt of the fall. The side of my head then slapped against the carpet and an explosion of purple, a super-brilliant deep violet flash bulb going off, fireballed behind my eyes. A momentary feeling of nausea came and went as the bright light seemed to implode, sucking smaller into itself, until it disappeared.

I felt the furry finger of a cat’s tail wipe across my face and then all went dark.