Love Inspired Suspense September 2015 #1

by Margaret Daley

  He clenched his jaw, hoping to make her house in half the time.

  *

  Not taking her eyes off the knife in the man’s hand, Lydia lunged for her bedroom door, shoved it open, whirled around and banged it shut. She threw the lock in place, then backed away.

  Off to the side Cheri perched on her bed, wailing as though she was being assaulted. Something slammed against the door. The lock held. But not for long. The wood wasn’t thick. She went to her bedside table to retrieve her father’s revolver. As her assailant attacked the flimsy barrier, his pounding fist vied with her heartbeat—ever increasing. Although the weapon was always loaded, she checked to see if the gun had bullets in every chamber. Empty! The spare ammunition was kept in a hall closet.

  Her cell was in the car. Why wasn’t there an extension of the home phone in here? She frantically looked around for any kind of weapon to use. Nothing useful against a knife. Her gaze fell on the window at the end of her bed. Maybe if she could climb out of it and escape…

  A crashing sound, as if the intruder was throwing his body against the door, rattled the pictures on the wall nearby. She rushed to the window and fought to unlock it. It wouldn’t budge. After wiping her sweaty hands on her jeans, she poured all her strength into trying one last time before she searched for something to break the glass. The bolt gave way, and she shoved the window up.

  The sound of sirens—not far away—echoed in the air. Suddenly an eerie silence came from the hallway. What was the intruder doing? Looking for something else to smash the door open? Either way she had to get out of her bedroom. The sirens probably weren’t for her.

  She poked her head out to see how far down she would have to jump to the ground. A motion out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. A man dressed in black jeans and T-shirt ran across her yard from her back door, heading for the woods nearby. It had to be her attacker, although earlier she hadn’t even noticed what he was wearing. Or could there be two people and the other one was waiting out in the hallway for her?

  *

  Jesse turned the corner onto the road that ran in front of Lydia’s home. He spied a patrol car parked in front with the lights flashing. As he shut down his emotions, preparing himself to handle anything coming his way, he pulled up behind the cruiser and glanced toward her house.

  Lydia came out onto the porch with Officer Williams, her arms crisscrossed over her chest. The look on her face twisted his heart. Something happened there, but at least she was alive.

  He climbed from his white SUV and rounded the rear to release Brutus. He strode toward Lydia, and her head swiveled toward him. She bit her lip, then returned her attention to Officer Williams.

  “What happened?” Jesse asked as he approached them.

  “Dr. McKenzie found a man in her house. I was going to have her sit in my car while I take a look inside.”

  “He’s gone. He ran out the back door toward the woods.” Lydia’s voice quavered, and she clamped her lips together.

  Jesse headed for the left side of her house. “How long ago?”

  “Four or five minutes ago,” the police officer answered.

  “Stay here and guard her. Brutus and I will follow the intruder’s trail. Don’t leave her alone.”

  Officer Williams nodded his head.

  Jesse disappeared from their view, hurrying his steps. He wanted to catch this man—put an end to the past weeks’ terror. Brutus picked up a scent at the back door, and Jesse gave him a long leash as they charged across the yard into the woods. His partner weaved through the trees as though the intruder wasn’t sure which way to go. Good. Maybe he had a chance to catch the guy even with his lead.

  In the thick brush to the left, a flash of black caught Jesse’s attention. He turned Brutus loose, and his dog made a beeline toward the heavy foliage a couple of football fields to the west. The sound of a motorcycle’s engine revving spurred Jesse on faster. When he broke out of the line of trees onto a path, his K-9 raced down the trail after a person in black hunkered over a motorcycle speeding around a curve.

  Jesse ran twenty yards behind his Rottweiler and rounded the turn onto a paved road. Brutus and the motorcycle had disappeared from view.

  *

  So cold. Lydia sank onto a chair on her front porch, her whole body shaking, and massaged her hands up and down her arms.

  Leaning against the house, Officer Williams stood next to her, panning the yard. “Can you remember anything about the guy in your house?”

  “I wish I could give you a description of the man in the hallway. I just don’t remember anything other than the knife he had.”

  “But you think it was a man?”

  Yeah, she did—even before she glimpsed the person running away from her house. She tried to recall anything to help catch the intruder. Did he have on jeans, a black T-shirt? Although she only stared at the knife, it was against a dark background. “Yes.”

  “Okay, you said the guy running from the house was medium height and build. How about his hair color?”

  She’d given the officer a brief description right when he showed up, thinking he might go after the intruder, but he’d told her Detective Caldwell had insisted he stay with her. She visualized in her mind the man escaping toward the woods. “He had on a black ball cap, and dark brown hair was sticking out of the back.”

  “Then dark brown hair, medium height. At least it’s a start.”

  One that fit a lot of men in Anchorage. Why didn’t she think to study the guy? Because she was too busy trying to get away from him. “Is Detective Caldwell coming here?” she asked, glad that at least Kate had been at school.

  “I don’t know.”

  Lydia looked toward the left, wondering where Jesse was. He knew how to protect himself, but this man—if he was the bomber—had nothing to lose by killing him. Or her.

  She clasped her hands together in her lap, squeezing so tightly her knuckles whitened. She checked her watch. Jesse had been gone fifteen long minutes. What if the intruder hid and then attacked him? No, he’d be all right. Brutus, too. They worked well together.

  Lord, I haven’t asked for much, but please keep Jesse and Brutus safe.

  The prayer came to her mind unexpectedly. She hadn’t prayed much in the past years. She’d given up when hers went unanswered after her daughter died.

  Finally, five minutes later, Jesse came around the side of the house with Brutus but no intruder. She sank against the back of the chair and unclasped her hands. He was unhurt. But the man was still out there.

  Jesse mounted the steps. His look zeroed in on her. “Are you okay?”

  She started to nod, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t all right. A huge knot twisted her stomach. Her ribs were sore, and finally she was beginning to realize how close she had come to being hurt or killed. Again. The trembling sped through her body, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  “Officer Williams, why don’t you walk through the house? See how the man got inside.”

  Her head lowered, she heard the screen door bang closed. She sensed Jesse moving toward her, but for the life of her, she couldn’t look at him. If she did, she might totally fall apart, and she couldn’t. It wouldn’t change anything.

  Jesse squatted in front of her and laid his hands over hers.

  She finally looked into his eyes. The kindness in them battered at the dam she desperately tried to shore up. They weren’t even friends anymore. All she was to Jesse was a possible witness to a crime…one who couldn’t even remember anything to help the police—to help herself.

  He cradled her hands between his as though he cared. His gaze softened, and for a few seconds, she was swept back to when they had been dating and she’d fallen while skiing. He’d been there by her side almost instantly, holding her like this and asking her if she was okay.

  She slid her eyes closed before the emotions cramming her throat turned to tears and demanded release.

  “Lydia, I’m not going to let anything happ
en to you. Thomas is going to move you to a safe house, and you’ll have a guard with you at all times. That’s what he’s working on right now.”

  She coated her dry throat and asked, “How did you know what was going on? If the officer hadn’t turned on his siren and arrived when he did…” The sounds of the intruder attacking her door echoed through her mind as though it were still happening. She flinched with each strike.

  Jesse released her hands and drew her to her feet, then wrapped his arms around her. “We now believe the waitress was murdered. When I was told about the autopsy report, I headed here while Thomas dispatched a patrol car in the area.”

  “If the officer had been five minutes later, the intruder would have gotten into my bedroom. My gun wasn’t loaded. It should have been.” She pulled back from Jesse. “I never unloaded it. Dad had it there, and I kept it in the same place.”

  “Would Kate have?”

  “I’ll ask her, but I don’t think so. She doesn’t like guns, and when Dad tried to teach her to shoot, she refused. But she never had a problem with me having it for protection. She just didn’t want to be the one holding it.”

  Jesse glanced around. “Let’s go inside. I see a few of your neighbors are getting curious.” With his arm around her shoulder, he walked with her into the foyer. “When you feel ready, I want you to tell me and show me what you did when you came home.”

  Lydia cupped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no. Mitch is still out in my car in the garage.” She hurried toward the kitchen and almost ran into Officer Williams coming out of the room. She could vaguely hear Jesse talking to the police officer as she entered the garage.

  When she opened the door, Mitch perked up and slowly climbed down. “I’m sorry it took so long.” She petted him, glad he hadn’t been with her. He might have gotten hurt further trying to apprehend the intruder.

  The German shepherd was learning how to compensate for his lost leg. The K-9s she treated were always very smart dogs and able to adapt to different kinds of situations they found themselves in. He followed her into the house. His tail began to wag when he spied Brutus near Jesse.

  “Where’s Officer Williams?”

  “Checking the perimeter. We haven’t figured out how the man got into the house.”

  “You think he had a key?”

  “I don’t know. If so, how did he get it?”

  Which also brought up the question why did he kill the waitress at the hospital but not her? He didn’t try until now. “If he’s trying to kill me, why now and not at the hospital?”

  “Several reasons possibly. You had people in your room coming and going all the time. Kate. Bree. Me. Your assistant from work. The waitress didn’t have any family nearby. She’d recently moved to Alaska. Usually it was just staff moving in and out of her room. If he impersonated an orderly, he could find enough time when no one else was around.”

  “Do you have a photo of the man you think did it?”

  “Yes, a couple, but not any good ones.” Jesse opened his cell phone and showed her the ones Thomas sent him from the surveillance cameras at the hospital. “I know that part of his face is hidden, but does this trigger anything? Was it the man you saw today?”

  She stared at the pictures—one with the left side of his face while the other was a full-body shot, but in the distance and not clear. “This guy has blond hair so that’s different from the intruder.”

  “Hair color can be changed.”

  “It’s hard to tell for sure. His build seems familiar if I use the door as a reference point for height, but he’s chubby around the waist. I don’t think the guy in my house was.” But uncertainty nagged her. Was she trying to fill in details because she wanted to remember? Was she missing something? She thought back to the visitors and staff who were in her hospital room and…

  Jesse started to take his cell phone back.

  “Wait.” She clasped his wrist to still his movements. “I remember seeing a guy like this in my room. Bree had me walking in the corridor, and when we came back into the room, he was there. He said he had just finished changing my sheets and he rushed out. So many staff came and went, I really didn’t think about it, even though he struck me as a little weird. You know how it is in a hospital. The parade of people through your room makes it difficult to get much rest.”

  “That’s why I avoid hospitals as much as possible.”

  “Have you ever had to stay in one?”

  “Only twice in the ER. They almost admitted me the time I was shot, but I managed to avoid it.”

  “You were shot? On the job?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Hardly more than a flesh wound.”

  There was so much she didn’t know about Jesse now. And there was much he didn’t know about her. They were strangers in many ways, and that thought saddened her.

  After Lydia put some water down for Mitch and Brutus, Jesse said, “Tell me what happened once you came inside the house.”

  She went through the steps she’d taken earlier. “Cheri was carrying on, and I was following her cries and looking for where Charlie was. Neither one came to greet me.” She paused. “Wait. Where is Charlie? Cheri had been shut up in my bedroom.” She surveyed the hallway and began checking the rooms—the third bedroom that her dad had turned into an office, the bathroom, Kate’s room and then she came to hers, the master bedroom, with the door nearly destroyed. It drove home how close she’d come to being killed. “Cheri was on my pillow. When the pounding started, she went under the bed.”

  Lydia knelt on the floor and peeked under it. Two sets of eyes stared at her from the dimness. “Charlie is with Cheri. I didn’t put them in the bedroom. The intruder must have.” She pulled Cheri out and Charlie followed until he spied Jesse with Brutus and then he dashed out of the room.

  Lydia rose with Cheri in her arms and sank onto her bed. “Thank God he didn’t kill them. I don’t know what…” Her voice quavered, making the rest of the sentence difficult to finish. She hugged Cheri against her, her eyes watering. What could have happened hit her like an avalanche, and this time she couldn’t contain the emotions overwhelming her.

  Jesse sat next to her, his side pressed against hers as though to let her know he was there for her. She wasn’t alone. She buried her face in Cheri’s long fur as she struggled to stop the tears slipping down her cheeks. She appreciated Jesse’s silence because he knew how she felt about crying in front of others. She’d always fought not to, even when she attended her father’s funeral and Kate had bawled in her arms. As the older sibling with a grieving father, Lydia had learned to shut her sorrow down quickly after her mother left.

  Cheri’s purrs calmed her, and she drew in deep breaths to compose herself. “I start thinking about what could have happened to my animals or Mitch if circumstances had been different.”

  “And you. I want you to pack your clothes. After Officer Williams checks the perimeter, he’s going to pick up Kate from school a little early. I’ll need you to call the school and let them know. Then she’ll need to pack, and we’ll get out of here. I’m not sure they’ll find anything, but I’m going to have the crime scene techs here to check. Do you remember if he had on gloves?”

  The vision of the knife in the intruder’s hand materialized in her mind. “Yes, black ones. Not thick winter ones.”

  “I’ll still have them go through and take latent prints where they can.” His gaze latched on to the revolver on the bedside table. “Also go over the gun. See if there are other prints beside yours on it. And if he was here before you came home from the hospital maybe he left something or took something that would give us a clue.”

  “So you think he took the bullets?”

  “Unless Kate did. Probably.”

  “I’ll ask Kate about that, but I don’t think she’d have done it.”

  “Which means you might have had an intruder before today who went through your possessions.”

  So she hadn’t overreacted. “Why?”


  “I can only speculate.” Jesse twisted toward her and framed her face with his large hands. “Why would he be going around bombing different places in Anchorage? Or, why would he go through your belongings? Maybe to get a sense of you. We may never know. Not all people think in a normal, logical way. Their reasoning won’t make sense to us.”

  “Is there any way the person in my house was a robber and had nothing to do with the bombings?”

  “Have there been any breakins around here?”

  “Not that I’ve heard of.”

  “It’s possible, but usually when they break in, we can tell. This person didn’t. We need to proceed as if the guy behind the bombings either came himself or sent someone.”

  “To kill me,” she finally said aloud.

  Frowning, Jesse nodded.

  A shudder rippled down her body. “Then I’d better remember what he thinks I know. Somehow I must have seen him, but there were a lot of people there that day in the bistro, coming and going.”

  “You will.”

  “How can you say that? You don’t know for sure.”

  “Yes, I do. I’ve been praying you will.”

  She twisted around, leaning back as she looked at Jesse. “When you were in high school, you never went to church. What happened?”

  “I blame Thomas. After you left, he dragged me to his church. At first I didn’t pay much attention to what Pastor Paul was saying, but slowly the words began to sink in. My faith has helped me make sense of all the evil I see in this world. If I didn’t have the Lord to fall back on, I’m not sure I could be a police officer.”

  “And I did the opposite. I went to church all the time here, but when I left Anchorage, I grew further away from my faith. After losing my baby and Aaron’s betrayal, I was struggling just to get through each day. Working a full-time job and going to college took all my time. I’d come home and collapse on the bed.”

  “I’m sorry you went through that.”

  She tilted her head to the side and tried to read the true meaning behind those words. “Do you really feel that way? You have every right to say, you made your bed and now you have to sleep in it.”