“Like hell. Why is it you never give me credit for anything? Wasn’t it my idea to drug the old farts’ tea with sleeping pills earlier? If we do this right, they’ll never wake up; it’ll be a piece of cake.”
“More like taking candy from a baby.”
They snickered like school children.
Completely at home in their surroundings, they showed no concern for waking the old couple as they entered the tidy but outdated kitchen. One of them reached to flip on the light switch, looking around in disgust. “Look at this dump. This place must be fifty years old. Can you believe people actually live like this?”
“Well, not for long, huh?”
That made them start giggling again. They began pulling open kitchen drawers, digging around until one of them let out an excited squeal at finding a large butcher knife. A gloved hand brought it down in a wide arch as the sharp blade carved air in a practice swing.
“Perfect. You ready?”
“I still have to load the gun.”
“You should have done that already. For chrissakes…”
“Look, I’ve never actually fired one before, just handled a prop. I told you that. And this is one of those big ones, a .357.”
“Fine. I’ll be down the hall. I knew you’d flake on me.”
Leaving in a huff, the one with the knife left the kitchen and walked down an unlit hallway using the wall as a guide, heading toward the master bedroom.
Once inside the room, moonlight framed the window, casting eerie silhouettes on the walls. But the intruder never noticed. Standing next to the man’s side of the bed, the shadowy figure watched as the old man’s chest rose and fell, watched as he slept.
After all the months of planning, it came down to this one moment in time. At the thought of actually plunging the knife into flesh and connecting with bone, the intruder’s hands started to shake so much that the knife fell on the ugly, carpeted floor. In the blink of an eye the amphetamine rush faded, offering one last chance for reason. While bending down to retrieve the knife, there was still hope.
They didn’t have to do this.
But movement in the doorway added one more shadowy outline to the room.
“You can’t do it, can you? All that big talk; all of your big plans. You drag me all the way to Hicksville in the middle of the damn night and can’t fucking go through with it.”
“Shut up. I’m nervous. That’s why I dropped the knife.”
“Sure that’s it, you’re nervous because you’ve talked this to death until I’m sick of it. Now just when it gets dicey, you want me to do your dirty work. Figures.”
As the argument grew more heated, the gun dangerously waved back and forth while the shadows on the wall mimicked their bickering movements.
Despite the sleeping pills earlier, it didn’t take long for the loud voices to wake up the woman. She tried to pull herself out of slumber and sit upright. The gun went off. A brilliant flash of gunfire lit up the small bedroom as a bullet entered the woman’s chest, sending her backward.
Reacting to the noise, the man attempted to crawl out of bed to try to escape. Another blast pierced the air. It went wide. But then another shot rang out. This time the bullet hit its mark, leaving a hole in the man’s head.
The one holding the knife simply stood frozen in place, watching the event play out in slow motion, watched as the couple’s blood splattered the headboard, sprayed the walls, and soaked the bed linens.
“Snap out of it. Don’t just stand there. It’s done now. You know what you have to do, right? The newspaper said the other crime scenes had words written in blood―all over the walls. Can you do that?”
Woodenly the one with the knife nodded.
“Good. Hop to it. I’ll go pop open the champagne.” She strolled off down the hallway, singing the tune, “We’re in the Money”.
Knowing what had to be done, the one holding the knife dipped the end of the blade in some of the excess blood. Using the sharp point, the letters began to take shape. Soon the words PIG, DEATH, and DIE, appeared on the wall in blood red. Checking her work, she got a little pissed when she saw that some of the letters had started to run down the wall, spoiling the perfect script. But she really lost it when she looked down and realized some of the old farts’ blood had gotten on her dress.
“Goddamn it! I just bought this outfit two days ago,” she screamed as she viciously plunged the knife into the already dead woman before turning to the man and doing the same thing, hacking into the bodies with a vengeance.
The clock next to the bed read three minutes past three.
The dream left Kit fog-brained and out of breath like she’d been running down that dark country road. Trying to catch her breath, she blinked around her own bedroom.
Total darkness. Instinctively, she bumbled toward the lamp on the bedside table to turn on the light. Her eyes landed on the only significant light source, the digital bedside clock, burning in bright red numerals. A steady 3-0-3 glowed back at her. Three minutes past three. The exact same time the couple had died in the dream.
Trembling and sweating after watching the murder play out, she struggled to get rid of the image of the couple’s eyes as they stared back into hers. Dead eyes.
She had seen two people die right in front of her. No, in the dream, she corrected. It had been a dream.
Flipping the switch on the lamp, she panicked when the light didn’t come on. With her hands still shaking, she opened the drawer of the nightstand and felt around for the flashlight, praying the batteries worked.
Thumbing on the flashlight sent a narrow stream of light into the dark room.
At that moment, Pepper, who’d been asleep on her bed, went on alert, letting out a guttural growl. “What’s wrong, boy? You have a bad dream, too?”
But the dog stood up on the bed, turned his attention to the double French doors at the end of the room. She directed the flashlight on the doors.
“We need more light,” she told the dog. But for an instant, she was afraid to move from the security of the covers. It seemed the death scene from the dream still gripped her in fear.
And her dog was still snarling.
She drew in a shaky breath and decided to get up. “Come on Pepper, we need to check the lights.” As soon as her feet hit the hardwood floor, she threw on a robe and hurried out to the landing, trying the light switch there. No light. With her flashlight and Pepper at her side, she made her way slowly down the stairs to the second level.
When she got to the living room she flicked on the light switch. No light there either. The electricity was obviously off. With her flashlight, she peered into the open area of the kitchen, which was totally black except for the light from the flashlight. She shined the beam at the old-fashioned wall clock above the stove and saw the time had stopped at 2:30.
Pointing the light in the direction of the microwave, the clock was nothing but a black rectangle.
Rationale left her momentarily as she wondered why the digital clock in the bedroom worked. Then she remembered the clock radio came with a backup battery feature that kept it working in the event of a power failure. Relieved to know the clock worked because of practical technology, she struggled to remember the location of the breaker box. The garage; it’s in the garage, she thought. Damn.
While her courage remained at a premium, she quickly took the stairs down to the first level, past the laundry room, and unlocked the door going out to the garage.
Blackness greeted her. Before stepping out into the blackened hole, however, she shined the flashlight under the Jeep and around the sides as best she could. When she determined no monster lurked there, she gingerly stepped out onto the concrete in bare feet. The cold floor had her picking up her pace.
She hurriedly approached the box hung on the sidewall and threw back the metal door casing of the breaker box. Sure enough, each breaker was in the OFF position. Methodically, she flipped each breaker back to ON. To test her work, as she left the garage, she t
urned on the light by the door to the laundry room.
Light filled the space, as well as the stairwell. She left the lights on all the way as she and Pepper climbed back up to the second floor.
Once she reached the living room, she flipped on the light switch and sighed when the room lit up like Christmas.
She headed to the kitchen, but got no further than its entrance when fear had her stopping. She thought she heard voices. I’m losing my mind. But then the voices grew fainter, and she heard only the familiar sound of ocean surf outside.
Were there tourists walking on the beach at three in the morning? she wondered. Is that why Pepper had growled?
When Pepper gave a half-bark, she looked at him and shook her head. “No way. We are not opening that door and taking a stroll outside now. You’ll just have to hold it till morning. Or not. Either way, we’re not going out there in the dark.”
But her unease didn’t abate. Whether it was the disturbing dream or Pepper’s behavior, something seemed―off.
To make sure she was alone in the house, she walked each room with Pepper by her side. It took under fifteen minutes for her to determine that no one else was in the house. Still rattled, it was apparent she could not return to sleep in her bedroom. For a moment, she thought of calling the police, but thought better of it. After all, what would she tell them? That she’d had a nightmare and the electricity had gone off and she’d heard voices outside on the beach at three in the morning?
She pictured getting a response from Max St. John. Would he put the cuffs on her immediately or simply bypass jail and send her straight to the loony bin?
She considered calling Jake, just to hear his voice, but then remembered he’d had enough to deal with when he’d dropped her off. An image of what they’d almost done on the boat popped into her head and she grew suddenly hot. She desperately wanted to call him. But then realized that’s exactly what a lovestruck teenage girl might do.
She decided that was a bad idea.
But her mind couldn’t shake the dream. She considered calling Gloria, maybe get her take. She had no doubt her aunt would find it fascinating since she’d always believed in stuff like premonitions and woo-woo psychic abilities that included dream interpretations.
Unlike Alana, Kit had never openly criticized Gloria about her weird beliefs. Alana had often called her sister crazy. In fact, over the years when Alana was particularly cruel in her comments regarding Gloria, Kit had staunchly defended her aunt. All those séances, her so-called telepathic visions, her self-proclaimed psychic abilities, might have been unorthodox, but Kit had simply taken it in stride.
But then Gloria had never embarrassed her like she had Alana. There was the time Gloria had taken out her tarot cards in the middle of a party she hadn’t been invited to and enlightened the mayor’s wife that her husband had been cheating. Now that had been fun to watch. Then there was the time Gloria advised Alana’s potential real estate client, a Saudi prince, that it would be unwise to purchase a particular house because evil spirits dwelled there. The prince had found another real estate agent.
Each time Gloria’s unconventional moments humiliated her sister, Alana would explode in a verbal attack, calling Gloria everything from a phony to a raging lunatic. Kit came to realize over the years that Gloria was just a bit different, an unconventional sort who marched to the beat of her own drum and was a kick to be around. But in reality, Kit had a harder time with Gloria’s beliefs than she’d ever let on. Taking Gloria’s side over Alana’s was pure instinct, but in truth, Kit had never really put much store in her aunt’s weird, woo-woo theories.
Until now.
Bone tired, she decided sorting out the dream at this hour was too much anyway. She decided she might as well go back to bed after all. As she climbed the stairs with Pepper, she couldn’t stop thinking about those two old people in the dream. She couldn’t get their faces out of her head.
And the killers—were—familiar, the way they spoke to each other, the way they bickered. The images hit a little too close to home.
Maybe she was projecting her own fears from childhood. Maybe it was the stress from the long day, the funeral, the explosion on the water. Maybe all of it had contributed to the dream of witnessing coldblooded murder.
But what exactly had brought the enemy into her head, into her bed and thus, into her sleep. She obviously hadn’t put that much behind her.
When she reached her four-poster bed, she instinctively got down on her knees and hands to look underneath just in case. Of course, there was no one hiding there.
She crawled back into bed and tried to put Alana and the murder out of her mind, snuggling as far beneath the covers as possible, as if hiding under the covers would alleviate the fear she felt, the aloneness.
She lay there with Pepper by her side half of her afraid to move and the other half afraid not to, scared of returning to sleep, of closing her eyes, wondering if the dreadful nightmare might return.
As the minutes ticked on, she dozed fitfully, drifting between awareness and unconsciousness. But the faces of the murdered people in the dream wouldn’t go away, especially the terror she’d seen in their eyes.
And the killers―their faces, those coldblooded eyes wouldn’t go away either.
After a time, she gave up the notion of trying to go back to sleep and decided she had to get up in another hour anyway. She curled up under the covers, picked up the remote, clicked on the television, then the VCR.
Her father’s image appeared on screen, this time in color, riding on the back of a beautiful black stallion. He delivered his lines, tipping back his tan cowboy hat looking as handsome as she remembered.
She finally drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 14
A ringing doorbell roused Kit out of a deep slumber. Before she could crawl out of bed, she had to untangle the sheets and push Pepper off her legs. Meanwhile the doorbell kept ringing. Through bleary eyes, she looked at the clock; it read 6:35. Shit, she’d overslept.
But who on earth would be ringing her doorbell at this hour of the morning? Her mind formed a mental picture of Max St. John and Dan Holloway.
As she grudgingly crawled out of bed, she pictured a contingent of police waiting on her front porch to arrest her, pictured the neighbors leaving their bowls of corn flakes long enough to come out on the street and stare as the police led her away in handcuffs.
And when the doorbell kept ringing she knew it must be the police; why else would they be so impatient? With a sickening dread in her stomach, she took her time making her way downstairs to the second level. The doorbell finally went silent, but seconds later the pounding began.
As soon as her bare feet hit the tiled entryway, an image of Collin Boyd popped into her head. So did fear. Before she ever reached the front door, she yelled at the person on the other side, “I’m armed. I have a vicious attack dog and I’ve just called the police.”
The pounding stopped.
She went closer to the peephole and peered out. Relief washed through her knowing it wasn’t the police or Collin. Jake stood there staring back at the front door, looking tired and upset as his hands rested on his hips in a warrior-like stance.
He might as well have been wearing combat fatigues instead of a dark tailored suit with a white dress shirt opened at the collar. Despite the fierce look on his face, a rush of sexual heat sent her glancing at her reflection in the mirror hanging to the right of the door.
She let out a groan. Her hair stuck up in spikes like a punk rocker. But she opened the door anyway with as much panache as she could muster.
“Why are you here so early?”
Jake noticed her rumpled mass of hair and the dark circles under her eyes. But in a matter of seconds his gaze drifted to the silky robe she wore and settled on the peaks of her breasts. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
Not a stitch.
Kit studied his combative appearance as he charged past her into the hallway. “Early? When you
didn’t show up for work this morning, and you didn’t answer your phone, Baylee got worried, almost closed up the shop to come and check on you. Instead, she called Gloria, Gloria called me. After what happened the other day with Collin, there were people worried about you. I drive like a bat outta hell to get here and find you just wanted to sleep late. Couldn’t you have called Baylee and told her that?”
“What are you talking about? I had a rough night.” Her temper shot up. “So I’m running later than usual, slept in until six-thirty. I don’t understand why you’re here so early—and yelling at me.”
“Early? It’s ten-fifteen. What makes you think it is six-thirty, Kit?”
“The clock in the bedroom said six-thirty.”
“Then the clock is wrong.” He held out his arm and showed her the time on his wristwatch.
The Rolex read 10:15.
She reached out and grabbed his arm, staring at the time on the watch. She glanced around the living room and then ran to the kitchen. The microwave clock flashed on and off in green digital numbers that blinked 0:00 back at her. The kitchen wall clock showed the time as 8:35. For some reason, she picked up the telephone. “There’s no dial tone. The line’s dead.”
A cold shock went through Jake. He heard her say, “I had an electrical meltdown at three o’clock this morning. The electricity went off. Now the phone’s dead. When you rang the doorbell, I thought it was…a lot earlier. The alarm didn’t go off.” A sob broke out of her throat. “And now you’re yelling at me. Why are you yelling at me, Jake?”
“Because…damn it…” He sucked in a breath. “The whole way here I was scared shitless something had happened to you. When Gloria called and said you never showed up for work―”
She launched herself at him.
He caught her, wrapped her up. She stuck like a magnet, molding her body to his. She nuzzled his neck before he reached and covered her mouth. He moved his hand up to her neck to support her head as she ran her hands through his hair.
Kit parted her lips, returned his forceful kiss with a slick one of her own. Desire, greater than before, pulled at her belly. Holding his head with both hands, she encouraged more. Jake responded. He nibbled her ear, nuzzled the hollow of her neck before moving back to her mouth.
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