Travis felt as if time had run out. He couldn’t stop the panicked feeling of doom. It was like nothing he’d felt before. And even though he was close to Kiera’s condo, he wasn’t close enough.
Every minute made the possibility that Kiera was injured or worse, all the more real. He needed to floor the accelerator and yet he couldn’t. Running over a pedestrian or causing an accident wasn’t the answer. Two tragedies would not fix anything.
Kiera.
Was she safe? What had happened since the last time he’d spoken to her? He tried to keep his mind off the possibilities. But his mind wouldn’t stop reeling through the what-ifs and might-have-beens. He was afraid that he’d be too late. He couldn’t take his mind off that possibility.
He parked at the end of the avenue that met with her street. He couldn’t take the SUV any farther, not without making his presence known to whoever was lurking around her unit. From here he could see down her street. There was no activity, no cars, no people. Despite everything, despite a heartbeat that was revved for action, on the street everything appeared normal. He closed the driver’s door with a controlled shut meant to be soundless. For he didn’t know where the intruder might be or if they were gone. He went in on foot, across the lawn along the outside of the condos. Each building was three stories with two units on every floor. Her unit was on the main floor. As he moved along, he scoured the area for movement, for anything out of the ordinary.
Nothing.
Her building was in the middle of the block and the intruder could be anywhere, if he was here at all. Not even a dog’s bark broke the silence. There was no one in sight as he came closer to her unit. There was nothing to indicate trouble.
Kiera might already be injured or worse. He needed her safe. He wouldn’t have it any other way and yet his mind was already going to much more dire possibilities. The intruder had broken into her place. He should have called her, warned her. Kiera injured—dead, the unwanted possibility ran through his mind.
Not possible. Anger fueled his denial. He refocused his thoughts, focusing on the situation only, factoring emotion out of it. This was business first—emotion had no place, never had—and even now, he told himself futilely, it never would.
He had his gun in both hands. There were few people home now. He’d done the research days earlier. The block included not only the condos but single-family homes across the street. Most of the residents on the block were daytime workers of various kinds. The mix of people included six middle school children and two high schoolers. They were gone for the day. The others, four seniors, one unemployed and one night worker, were in the minority and what they might think should they look out a shuttered window was not a consideration. As long as they stayed indoors, there was no problem. He cleared his mind as he moved across front lawns, keeping under cover as much as possible until he was at her condo. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The blinds were down as he’d told Kiera to keep them. The condos on either side were silent; the driveways were empty. But none of that was unusual, it was a working-class neighborhood and it was the middle of the day. Outside, there was no sign of Kiera. Was she out jogging as she’d said she would be?
He moved along the perimeter. He needed to make sure the area was safe, the threat gone before he checked on her. There was a bank of shrubs on the west side of the building. It was an end unit, so whoever had been casing her place could well have moved around or even be inside. His grip tightened on the gun handle and anger was white-hot in his gut at the thought that someone might be threatening her. But there was no sign of forced entry from the front. That left the back. He turned to go in that direction and that’s when he sensed something was off. That’s when the small hairs rose on the back of his neck and he felt that he wasn’t alone.
* * *
SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT.
The feeling had been strong enough for Kiera to give up the idea of jogging more than five minutes ago. She’d done one circuit of the block and stopped midway through a second. A feeling of déjà vu and a chill swept through her at the same time. Everything felt still, too still, and a knot had formed in her gut as she felt as if she’d been transported to a place she’d been before—a dark, frightening place. The quiet, the feeling of being alone and the only person outside had overwhelmed her and she’d ended her jog. There was something not right and her instincts screamed for her to return home. If there was one thing she’d learned after the nightmare she’d survived was to follow her instinct. So instead of continuing her jog, she’d gone inside where she’d double-checked the door locks, front and back. Then, she put her sneakers away. In her socked feet, she went to the bedroom, opened the nightstand and took her aunt’s gun from under her t-shirt. She hesitated before putting it away. The weapon felt foreign and cold in her hand; even the memories it invoked of her aunt were gone. A chill ran through her, for nothing seemed as it should be. Something was shifting, something dark and gray and… Something was very wrong. Her intuition was in overdrive. She opened the drawer and took the gun back out.
With her other hand, she reached for her phone. The prepaid Travis had gotten for her was so small in comparison to her smartphone that she’d forgotten twice where she’d put it. Now it was gone, again.
She frowned. She traced her steps back. Her mind had been on Devon’s phone and how he’d forgotten it. She hadn’t been thinking about where she’d placed her phone and now she couldn’t remember where she’d set it. With her mind on the missing phone, she placed the gun on the end table.
“Irresponsible,” she muttered.
She glanced around and got down on her hands and knees. Finally, she found it under the couch cushions where, if anyone had called, she’d never have heard it. She guessed that it had slipped out of her pocket after she’d called and alerted the woman in charge of her surveillance of her intent to go jogging. She’d been sitting on the couch when she’d made the call and she’d thought that she’d slipped the phone into her pocket. Obviously, it had slipped out.
She looked out the window. Nothing had changed and yet her gut was tight and strumming like a wrong note playing again and again. She looked at her watch. Devon had left to grab lunch and assured her he’d be back in thirty minutes or less. If there was trouble, as she sensed now, she’d phone Travis. He was her go-to man anyway, the one she depended on. The truth was there’d been something building between them from the very beginning.
“What the hell are you thinking, girl?” she chastised herself. She was acting like a woman in love, or more aptly in lust, rather than a woman in crisis.
The street was silent. The last vehicle she had seen seemed like forever ago. It had belonged to a neighbor at the end of the block. She turned and put the gun on the end table. There was no threat. It had been her imagination. She was overreacting again. But she couldn’t help it. She’d been through things that most people never face in a lifetime. She needed time. She knew that. She went to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee. She added a dash of sugar to the dark brew and carried the drink back to the living area. Seconds ticked slowly by and felt like minutes. She set the coffee down by the gun.
She picked up a book. Despite the fact that it was the latest cozy mystery by her favorite author, it held no interest. Somehow reading about crime of any sort wasn’t comforting. But she needed something to do. She’d cleaned the house thoroughly two days ago and there wasn’t a dust ball anywhere. She thought of Prairie Seniors’ Care Home and realized how much she missed the work and the people.
She was itching to go back, to be useful again. She smiled as Lucy wove herself between her legs with a deep, satisfied purr. Then the cat leaped up beside her and curled up for a nap. She thought of the cat’s easy nature and how she’d settled quickly into her new home. Now, six months later, they were a team—both considered each other family, or so Kiera would like to think.
She looked at her watch. Two minutes had gone by and it had seemed like forever. She was feeling particularly anxious and she wasn’t sure why. She’d opened the blinds at an angle that she could see out, but no one could see in. It was against Travis’s warning. But she needed to see what was going on—so far nothing.
Something moved at the edge of her condo. She didn’t have a full view from her window and her heart raced before relief rushed through her.
Travis.
She’d recognize him anywhere.
He was near the cotoneaster shrub a few feet from her main entrance.
She frowned.
His back was to her and she sensed that something was wrong. Just the way he held himself, the way he hadn’t come to her door as soon as he’d arrived. That wasn’t normal. Usually he came immediately to check on her. Something was up.
She thought of stepping out, asking him what was going on, why he was here. But then something else caught her attention. There was a movement in the opposite direction. She caught it from the corner of her eye. She crouched down so the window ledge was now at eye level and she was at the corner of the window frame—out of sight. She watched but the movement didn’t repeat and there was nothing and no one in sight.
Her heart seemed to knock in her rib cage and her hands shook as something intuitive told her that Travis wasn’t the only one on her front lawn. Someone else who he hadn’t seen was there, hidden by shrubbery. Maybe it was the neighbor’s cat, but instinct told her it wasn’t. Her heart thumped at the thought that Travis might be in danger.
Something shifted and nothing was the same. Now she could see who was at the other end of her unit. She could see the top of a faded black hoodie. Whoever they were, they were almost the length of her unit from Travis and they were definitely shadowing him and moving closer. It was also clear the way they kept furtively to the bushes, that they didn’t want to be seen. Obviously, they were up to no good. They were hunched over. And she couldn’t see their face.
The faded black garment was too big and sagged over their frame. Male or female, it was impossible to tell. She backed up from the corner of the window where she’d been peeking out. She bit back the tremor that ran through her. She had to warn Travis and yet she knew that as soon as she opened that front door she’d make his stalker aware of her presence. That might put Travis in as much danger as he was now, maybe more. As she contemplated her choices, the stalker disappeared from sight. Her heart was locked in her throat.
She had to do something. Knocking on the window would alert them both. With Travis at a disadvantage, unaware of whoever was stalking him, that wasn’t the answer. It was up to her to protect him. She didn’t think for a minute of the irony of that thought. Instead, she raced to the table and grabbed the gun. She fumbled with the safety as she hurried to the door. She’d never felt so nervous. Life and death weighed on her shoulders. She could almost hear the pounding of her heart. Her fingers wouldn’t cooperate as they slipped on the lock, finally unlocking it with one hand while holding the gun with the other.
She opened the door and it was then that she saw that she was already too late. Travis’s stalker was to his left, screened by shrubbery. The person had a metal bar raised high over their head and was standing directly behind him but out of his line of vision. Only a few feet separated them.
Everything was happening so fast, too fast. None of it was real and it was occurring in blips of time that were less than seconds and felt so much longer. The metal bar was coming down about to hit Travis’s head. The stalker turned, looking at her as Kiera froze. She knew she didn’t have a clear shot, not one that didn’t run the risk of shooting Travis. In the strange tableau that seemed to be moving slowly through a fog, the hoodie slipped and partially revealed braided gray-streaked black hair and the face of a middle-aged woman.
No! Her scream was silent. Her throat seemed closed, her broken voice frozen in fear. There was only one option. She had to take the woman out. But she had no time to line up the shot. She had to make do with a quick shot, a warning shot and hope it was enough. She held the gun with shaking hands and fired. At the same time, metal flashed; a crowbar or something like it was swinging at Travis’s head.
Travis crumpled to the ground. She fired again but the woman bolted across the lawn and disappeared from sight. It had all happened in seconds and yet it had seemed like forever.
Kiera’s heart was in her throat and tears were in her eyes as she rushed to Travis’s side.
She was too late.
“Travis, no!”
Her cry did nothing. He was dead and her heart broke.