by Brenda Novak
But she couldn’t. She was already in too deep with Luke. For better or for worse, she’d finally summoned enough trust to at least try for the kind of relationship every woman wanted.
Her father had called three times while she and Geoffrey were talking, but she hadn’t answered. She felt slightly guilty about that because she knew he couldn’t be calling from Carly’s house. He wouldn’t have dared anger his young wife by showing he cared that much. Which meant Carly must’ve kicked him out. But even the thought of him on his own didn’t make Ava want to speak to him. Why did he reach out to her only when he didn’t have anyone else?
“What a day,” she grumbled. Hoping to relieve the residual tension from her talk with Geoffrey, she stepped into her shower and felt more relaxed when she got out. She toweled off and was about to put on a nightgown when she remembered Luke’s sweatshirt. She preferred to sleep in it, to feel close to him. But she couldn’t find it. She thought she’d left it on the floor, the bed or her chair, but it wasn’t any of those places.
He must’ve taken the sweatshirt with him when he went home this morning. She’d been so humiliated and embarrassed by Geoffrey’s sudden appearance that she hadn’t watched him collect his things. She’d gone into the kitchen and made coffee while waiting for them to leave.
She checked the clock. Nearly midnight. At this rate, morning would come far too soon.
Finished dressing, she turned off the lights and climbed into bed. She’d cut off her relationship with her father and Geoffrey and welcomed a new man into her heart and her bed, all on the same day. What would tomorrow hold?
Who could say? She fell asleep happy in spite of all that, because she was dreaming of Luke swimming toward her in the river, the moonlight glinting off his bare arms and chest.
Kalyna parked nearly half a mile from the pier where Ava docked her houseboat. It was after midnight. Even with a full moon, the lack of streetlights made this place seem darker than anywhere she’d ever been—except for the inside of a coffin. Not many people could say that with any authority, but she could. Mark had put her in one. It’d been part of their usual game of Truth or Dare. She always chose Dare. Dare got you what you wanted. Truth only got you into trouble.
The ground was too spongy for her footsteps to make any noise. As she got out of the car and went to the trunk to get her tools, a loud chorus of cicadas welcomed her to the delta, along with the fecund smell of vegetation. Using a flashlight to avoid walking into a tree, a ditch, a puddle or a slough, she slung her backpack over one shoulder and kept the beam pointed at the ground to avoid being detected in case anyone else was in the area.
But she’d been here before. She knew there was no one else. No other houses. No other boats. Nothing to worry about.
The darkness felt thick enough to slice with her knife—probably because it was so hot and there was no wind. Beads of sweat rolled between Kalyna’s breasts as she hiked to the road and made her way down to the pier, but she didn’t think the temperature was exclusively to blame. She had so much adrenaline pumping through her it felt as if her heart would leap right out of her chest.
Ava’s houseboat was as dark as the night, but the lapping of the water against its sides helped cloak the creak of Kalyna’s footsteps on the wooden pier. She was fairly certain Ava was home, and she was fairly certain Ava was alone. It was a weeknight, her car was where she usually parked it and there were no other vehicles. Kalyna had called Luke from a pay phone only forty minutes ago, and hung up when he answered, just to be sure he was at his apartment.
The boat rocked slightly when she climbed aboard. Wondering how sensitive Ava was to such minute changes in her surroundings, Kalyna snapped off the flashlight and held her breath. But Ava didn’t come out to see what was going on. If she was home, she was dead asleep.
Soon, she’d just be dead.
Chuckling silently at her own joke, Kalyna felt her way around the exterior of the cabin to the window with the cut screen.
A splash sounded not far from the boat. Startled, Kalyna froze. The noise had been loud and close, as if something large had dived into the water. But she had nothing to fear from the river. There were no crocodiles in the Sacramento delta. There were some pretty big salmon, though. They came in from the ocean and swam upstream to spawn. She’d probably heard one jump.
Getting back to work, she found the cut in the screen. The window was closed except for a very small crack. Everything was just as she’d left it.
The window squeaked as she opened it, so she had to go slow and do it by inches. There was another splash a few seconds later, but she paid no attention. She was too focused on creating a space big enough to accommodate her.
When she had the window open as far as it would go, Kalyna squeezed her upper body through. The metal rim dug into her hips, but she managed to balance, relieving the pain until she could grab the inside wall to steady herself. From there, she dragged her legs in and was just trying to get down off the dresser when she lost her balance and fell, taking the lamp with her.
A crash woke Ava. She lay in bed, blinking at the darkness, trying to figure out exactly what she’d heard. It’d been loud, she knew that—too loud to be the kind of settling noise that used to frighten her before she’d grown accustomed to the creaks and groans of living on a boat.
She sat up, listening, and heard sounds of movement in the next room. Someone was in her house!
As she scrambled out of bed, her mind grasped for a logical explanation. Was it her father? Did he need a place to stay? Or could it be Geoffrey? When he’d left, he’d been pretty upset.
She couldn’t imagine either one of them coming into her house in the dark of night, though.
Where was her phone? She’d called Luke to tell him good-night once Geoffrey was gone. Where had she put it? She had to find it. She needed it right away, needed to call for help.
Trying to get her bearings amid an avalanche of adrenaline, she spun in a circle as she struggled to remember. Then it occurred to her. Her phone was in the living room. She ran for the hall, but the person in the next room managed to disentangle himself from whatever he’d broken and came charging out at the same time. Ava almost ran into him before ducking back inside her bedroom and slamming the door.
The snarl that came from the other side as she locked it made every hair on her body stand on end.
“Open this door, bitch!”
Oh, God! It wasn’t a he at all. It was a she: Kalyna. Kalyna was standing between her and her phone—and she was trying to break down the door!
The whack of a heavy metal object made Ava gasp involuntarily. She flipped on the light to see the end of a hammer or crowbar come through the wood somewhere near her head. Kalyna was crazy, just as Luke had claimed. And she was violent, just as Ava had feared.
“Kalyna, stop it! You need to calm down. If you hurt me, you’ll go to prison.”
“I’m not going anywhere, except to Luke’s apartment to console him over your death,” she said.
She was serious. And because they were so isolated, she could say those words out loud, without risk of anyone hearing or coming to help.
Horrified, Ava stared at the door as Kalyna hit it again. Another hole appeared, close enough to the first to create one large hole.
“Where’s Tati, Kalyna? What have you done with her?”
This caused a brief hesitation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. She’s in Arizona, where she lives.”
“No, she’s not. She came here, to your apartment. I found her purse in your bedroom. What have you done to her?”
Kalyna smacked the door again. “You’re lying! I haven’t seen Tati or her purse. And how would you get into my apartment? It was locked when I got home, exactly the way I left it.”
Ava measured the distance from the dresser to the door. “It hadn’t been closed all the way when we—when I got there. I put Tatiana’s purse back under the bed, where I found it. And I locked the front door.”
The dresser had eight drawers and a mirror. It was heavy. Would she be able to move it? “Then how do I know about the wet carpet, Kalyna? The spot in front of your dresser?”
Silence.
“Kalyna?” If she could move the dresser so could Kalyna. But it might buy her some time….
“Did you make that spot? Did you spill something in my room?” Kalyna sounded bewildered.
Ava had never known a more convincing liar. “I didn’t put anything there. I saw the spot when I went in, looking for Tati. She’s missing and your father’s worried sick about her. Call him, see for yourself.”
“I’ll call him when I’m done here.”
“You killed her, didn’t you, Kalyna?” She began shoving the dresser toward the door. “You killed her and then cleaned up the blood.”
“Stop making shit up!” she screamed, whacking the door again. “I’d never hurt my own sister.”
“You killed your mother.”
“Norma had it coming. She had it coming for a long time. Tati’s never hurt anyone.”
The damn dresser moved, but only by centimeters. And it required so much energy. “Then what happened to her?”
“Shut up! Trying to scare me about Tati isn’t going to save you.”
Scare her about Tati? Could it be true that she didn’t know Tati had come to her apartment? Ava didn’t see how, but she tried a different tack as she continued to wrestle with the furniture in hopes of creating some sort of blockade. “Luke doesn’t want you, Kalyna,” she said. “He’s never wanted you. You’re doing this for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” she said. “I’m doing it for my own satisfaction. How dare you think you can take what’s mine? How dare you think you can be my friend and then stab me in the back!”
“You were lying to me the whole time, using me to punish Luke! How is it that I’m the one who betrayed you?”
Kalyna didn’t answer. She screamed in outrage and started swinging harder. There was no reasoning with her; she was too far gone to respond to logic. And it was only a matter of time before she hacked through the door. The doors on the houseboat weren’t solid. They were made with flimsy panels.
Her body clammy with sweat, Ava left the dresser where it was. Kalyna would be inside before she could get it all the way to the door. Instead, she went in search of something she could use to defend herself. But there wasn’t so much as an envelope opener in this part of the cabin.
She glanced at the window. Could she get it open and bust out the screen? Probably. But she couldn’t let Kalyna catch her partway in and partway out or she’d have no chance whatsoever. She had to finish moving the dresser, create another obstacle while she escaped through the window.
Another blow at the door rocked the whole boat. Kalyna was using a crowbar, not a hammer; Ava could see that now. She could also see that Kalyna was wearing latex gloves and a mask that covered all but her eyes—
Eyes! Dragging large gulps of air into her lungs, she raced to the bathroom and grabbed a can of hair spray from under the sink. When she returned, she held it behind her back. Then she banged on the wall to divert Kalyna’s attention from her feverish efforts to get inside. “Hey!” she yelled above the banging. “Hey, you listening?”
The hacking stopped, and Kalyna focused on her through the hole. In another second she’d bring that crowbar up for the final stroke, but it was enough time to give Ava the opportunity she needed. Taking the hair spray from behind her back, she sprayed it right into Kalyna’s eyes.
With a scream, Kalyna dropped the crowbar and staggered back. Ava had gotten a clear shot. Now she had to take advantage of what she’d done.
Her only thought on reaching her phone, she threw open the door and shoved past Kalyna.
The hang-up call that awakened Luke after he’d heard from Marissa and then Ava had come in almost an hour ago from a pay phone. A sense of foreboding had hung over him all night, but that last call had made it worse, made it impossible to go back to sleep. Who was it? Why would anyone call him from a pay phone at eleven thirty-five? Although he asked himself those questions over and over, he kept coming up with the same answer: Kalyna. Other than Phil’s death, she was responsible for all his recent unhappiness. But if she was the one who’d called, why didn’t she speak? What was the point of hanging up on him? It wasn’t like Kalyna not to have an agenda—not to engage him in conversation, at least.
Using the remote to turn off the television, he went back to bed and tried to sleep, but tossed and turned. He kept thinking about Marissa and Ava—and Kalyna, of course. Why the hell had she called him? What did she want?
Finally, with a curse, he chucked his pillows onto the floor and sat up. He might as well get out of bed and do something, make use of the time.
He polished his shoes and straightened his room. Then he started putting away the laundry Kalyna had done for him. He hated the thought that she’d touched his clothes. More than ever, he wanted her out of his life. But he knew that wasn’t likely to happen. Especially if the child she carried was his.
He hadn’t even broached the whole Kalyna mess with Marissa. Should he have? Would he tell Ava he finally had a chance to marry the one woman he’d loved since high school and have Marissa move out here so she could be close to him? He was tempted, partly because he was more capable of loving Phil’s son than any other man. Maybe this was how things were supposed to go….
But he kept seeing Ava staring up at him as he made love to her on the bank of that river.
Why couldn’t anything be easy?
He put away his socks, underwear, T-shirts and gym shorts. Then he came to his air force sweatshirt. He was about to stack it on the high shelf in his closet when it occurred to him that this was the sweatshirt he’d lent Ava.
He smiled as he remembered how tempting she’d looked in it….
But then his smile faded. He’d left this sweatshirt at Ava’s place. So how did it get in his laundry? Ava hadn’t brought it to him. When she’d come over today, she’d had nothing with her. Kalyna had delivered this sweatshirt….
His mind reverted to the call that’d troubled him since it came in. Kalyna had delivered the sweatshirt, and she’d used a pay phone to reach him at his apartment earlier. Not because she’d wanted to talk to him. She’d called to make sure he was home.
I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. If you so much as look at another woman, I’ll kill her….
Suddenly, Luke’s blood ran cold. Kalyna knew where Ava lived. She’d been there.
And, if he had his guess, she was going back.
Tonight.
Ava reached her phone but Kalyna was on her before she could press a single button. As tall and strong as some men, with military training to boot, Kalyna probably could’ve taken her without a weapon, but she still had that crowbar. Coming up on her from behind, she struck Ava in the back with it.
The pain that shot through Ava’s body was so intense she felt instantly nauseous. The second blow knocked her to the floor, and her phone dropped—where, she didn’t know. Kalyna was hitting her again and again, beating her in a rage.
Lifting her arms to protect her head, Ava turned and kicked her. Kalyna’s curse let her know the kick had hurt, but the reprieve didn’t buy her nearly enough time. The blows kept coming.
Ava curled up as Kalyna struck her arm, the other forearm, her hand, her shoulder. “I’m going to kill you, bitch!” she screamed over and over again.
Ava believed her. She fully expected Kalyna to keep swinging, fully expected to be beaten to death in her own living room. And this from a woman I once pitied, she thought distantly.
A second later, however, the blows stopped. Why? Did she have a chance to get away?
Gathering her mental faculties, Ava began crawling toward the couch. Her only plan was to get behind some kind of barrier. But then she became aware of another struggle taking pl
ace, a struggle that seemed to have nothing to do with her. What was going on?
More confused than ever—and probably a little delirious, as well—she gave up dragging herself and slumped onto her side so she could see what was happening. The only light came from the bedroom—the light she’d turned on herself—but it was enough to make out the silhouettes of two figures.
The second figure was that of a man. He was wrestling with Kalyna, trying to tear the crowbar from her grip. Ava could hear them scuffling, hear him cursing. She didn’t recognize his voice, but it had to be Luke, Geoffrey, her father, Jonathan or Pete. Those were the only men in her life. One of them had miraculously come to her rescue, right?
Wrong. It wasn’t any of them. She was sure despite the fact that her body was on fire with pain. This man was too short, too bald, too stocky and too unfamiliar.
“What’d I tell you, huh, Kalyna?” he said, breathing hard. “What’d I say?”
“I don’t give a shit what you have to say,” Kalyna responded. Her voice was still suffused with hate, but there was a quaver in it Ava had never heard before. Kalyna was scared. Why? Why would she be so frightened of this man?
“You should,” he said. “Because I made it clear what I’d do if you ever told.”
Ava sucked in a stabilizing breath. That voice. Maybe she recognized it, after all. She’d heard it before. She understood what they were talking about, too—remembered what’d happened to Kalyna’s mother and that hitchhiker. They were dead. Someone had killed them. Maybe Kalyna. Maybe…
Her thoughts were so muddled she couldn’t draw the name of the second person from her memory. She swiped at her face, trying to clear her vision so she could make out the details of the man’s appearance, but tears—or maybe it was blood—kept filling her eyes.