Four

by Jane Blythe

  “I guess.” It was a possibility, Jack acknowledged. “But Tarek hadn’t been out in months, so this wasn't some spur of the moment thing. If he picked those victims for a reason then he’s been planning this for months.”

  “We are going to have to go through their lives with a fine-tooth comb,” Rose said. “Starting with workers and residents from the apartment building. See if anyone there has a grudge against both of them. Then see whether their lives intersect anywhere else. Someone has come into contact with both of them somewhere—once we find out where he saw them and how he fixated on them, then we’ll find him.”

  “Tomorrow, though,” Belinda announced, getting to her feet. “Now everyone goes home, gets some rest and comes back fresh tomorrow. We want to find this guy before anyone else winds up hurt.”

  * * * * *

  8:13 P.M.

  She was on edge.

  Laura couldn’t deny it.

  She had been pacing her apartment all day. Unable to settle at anything. She didn’t even think she’d had anything to eat. Every time she tried to do something, she got all shaky and nervous and ended up abandoning the task to pace. Moving was the only thing that helped to calm her when she was stressed. And so, she paced. She had probably covered a couple of miles already today just by walking backward and forward across her apartment.

  The police had been here again this morning. That made two days in a row. Two days in a row that something bad had happened in her quiet apartment building. At least, it was supposed to be quiet here. That was why she had originally chosen the building. And in the ten years she had lived here, it had been quiet.

  Only now that seemed to be over.

  A murder and a rape.

  That’s what had happened just a few floors away from where she lived.

  Earlier today, Laura had given in to the need to know what was happening around her and had called downstairs and spoken with one of the doormen. She had lucked out and her favorite one was working. Connor was one of the few people who Laura still spoke to. He didn’t know what had happened to her, but he knew that she was agoraphobic. Connor often helped her out, accepting deliveries for her so she didn’t have to deal with the deliverymen. He even left her things outside her door so she didn’t have to speak to him in person. Connor knew that she couldn’t cope with talking to people face-to-face.

  Murder and rape.

  Here.

  In what was supposed to be her safe place.

  What if something else happened here?

  Two nights, two crimes—were they related?

  Did it really make a difference?

  Laura wasn't so naïve as to think that there was zero crime here in her building, but these weren’t just a burglary or break and enter. These were major crimes. The worst crimes. And they had happened just a couple of floors from where she lived.

  Should she move?

  She had been debating it ever since Connor had told her what all the police activity had been about.

  But would moving really be the answer?

  Wherever she moved could be just the same as here.

  Crime was everywhere. Laura knew that all too well.

  Even if she decided to move, could she really handle it?

  The truth was, she really didn’t think she could.

  Ten years of living alone. Never seeing anyone. Never talking to anyone other than Connor the doorman, and ironically, her patients. Well, not technically patients. She worked as a counselor for a helpline for kids. Before her life had fallen apart, Laura had been studying to be a psychologist. She had wanted to help kids who were in trouble, and even after everything that had happened to her, she had found a way to do it. She enjoyed it. It made her feel like she was making a difference in people’s lives. Even if she’d let her own life get messed up beyond repair, she was helping others from making the same mistakes that she had.

  But talking to troubled kids on the phone was not the same as talking to people face-to-face. And to move would involve a lot of talking. She would have to find a suitable apartment. She would have to sign a lease. She would have to hire movers. She would have to explain to another doorman that she couldn’t go outdoors and ask him to handle all her deliveries.

  And worst of all, she would actually have to go outdoors.

  That scared her more than anything else.

  She knew she couldn’t handle that.

  Her apartment could be falling down around her, and she still wouldn’t be able to make herself walk out her front door.

  So, she was stuck here.

  She would just have to hope that the spate of violent crimes in the building was over.

  Maybe there was a simple explanation for them, anyway.

  Maybe, as much as she hated to even think it, the victims had in some way deserved what had happened to them. Maybe they weren’t good people. Maybe they had gotten themselves mixed up in something dangerous. Maybe they hadn’t just been innocently going about their lives when tragedy had struck.

  Maybe they weren’t like her.

  She had never even met the men who had hurt her. She hadn’t done anything to them to warrant what they had done to her.

  They had hurt her simply because they had wanted to. They hadn’t cared about the consequences for her or themselves.

  What they had done to her had changed her entire life.

  It had cost her everything.

  And now, she didn’t know how to get her life back. Didn’t even know if she wanted it back.

  There was another solution to her living situation.

  She could always go home.

  Home.

  The word sounded foreign to her now. For ten years, this apartment had been her home. It had been her sanctuary. Her safety net. Because she had pushed away what should have been her real safety net.

  She had pushed away her family.

  They had been by her side throughout her stay in the hospital.

  They had been by her side throughout those first days and weeks.

  They had been by her side throughout the police interviews and the psychiatrist visits, as she told her story over and over again so many times that it began to feel like nothing more than a story, something that had happened to someone else.

  They had been by her side throughout the nightmares and the flashbacks and the panic attacks.

  They had been by her side throughout the trial.

  And then she had simply left.

  The day the guilty verdict came in, she had packed up the few personal belongings that she couldn’t live without and rented this apartment. She hadn’t told her family where she was going. She hadn’t given them her address. She hadn’t even told them goodbye.

  Sometimes she wondered if they still thought about her.

  Were they angry with her for disappearing?

  Were they worried about her?

  Did they think she was still alive, or did they think that she had committed suicide?

  Suicide had been on her mind a lot those first horrible days. She had been in so much pain, physically and emotionally, that she had thought it would crush her. And yet, she had battled through it.

  Because of her family.

  They had given her strength when she hadn’t had any of her own.

  They had been there for her unconditionally.

  And yet, she had run.

  Run and hidden.

  She just couldn’t face being around people.

  She hated herself, and she didn’t want to be with people who didn’t hate her, too.

  She hadn’t deserved her family’s love and support.

  She hadn’t wanted it, either.

  She had just wanted to be alone.

  And alone was what she was now. Was what she would always be.

  That didn’t stop her from wondering about them, though. Wondering what her big sister was up to these days. Mary would be thirty-four years old now. Was her sister married? Did she have kids? And what about her parents? Th
ey would be in their early sixties now. Were they still keeping good health or were they starting to develop some of the problems that came with age?

  Laura missed them. Sometimes so much, she physically ached with it.

  Maybe she should reach out to them. Give them a call. Let them know that she was okay. Apologize for leaving the way she had. Ask them to let her come home. Ask them to take care of her again because she wasn't doing a very good job of taking care of herself.

  Tears had welled up in her eyes without her even realizing it, and as she reached for her phone they began to trickle down her cheeks.

  She should do it.

  Call.

  Even if they were angry with her, they would still be happy to hear from her. Wouldn’t they?

  Her finger hovered over the keypad.

  Would they be happy to hear from her?

  Doubt began to creep into Laura’s mind. Just like it did every time she considered reaching out to her family.

  She hadn’t deserved their love and support back then, and she certainly didn’t deserve it now.

  She had made her choices. And now she had to live with them.

  Slowly, she put the phone back down.

  She wouldn’t call them. She’d never call them. Somehow, no matter how much she wanted to, she just couldn’t.

  Instead, she all but ran to her bedroom, threw back the covers and crawled into bed, then drew them back over her head.

  Laura hated herself. She hated her life. She hated that she had nothing solid to hold on to. Nothing solid to keep her grounded when fear had her feeling like she was floating alone in a vast ocean.

  Curling herself into a tight little ball, Laura cried.

  * * * * *

  9:21 P.M.

  “Hey, Paige.” Jack grinned at her as he opened his front door.

  “Hi, Jack.” She smiled back.

  He kissed her cheek, then held her by the shoulders, examining her. “I haven’t seen you in a while; you're looking good.”

  “Thanks.” Paige was pleased that she was finally in a place where she was feeling good and looking good. It had been a long six months.

  “Hi, Elias.” Jack shook her husband’s hand.

  “Hey, Jack,” Elias returned.

  “Ryan said he invited you, but he wasn't sure that you would come.” Jack held the door farther open for them to enter. “I'm so glad you did.”

  The reason her partner hadn’t known whether she would come for dinner with their friends was because she had turned down a lot of invitations the last few months. At first it was because she just wasn't physically up to going out. And then it was because she wasn't emotionally up to going out. The attack that had almost killed her had left her completely shaken up.

  Physically, she was finally pretty much back to where she’d been before her assault, but it had been a long road getting there. Her assailant had beaten her with a baseball bat, leaving her with serious head injuries, a broken arm, broken ribs, a punctured lung, and internal bleeding in her abdomen. She had been in a coma for eight days before finally waking up in the ICU. It had taken a while for her body to regain its strength, but lots of physical therapy had paid off, and she was now ready to go back to work the beginning of next month.

  Emotionally, things had been a whole other board game. Paige was much better at dealing with physical pain than she was with emotional pain. An incident with her mother’s stalker when she was a teenager had left her sensitive to stalkers. When someone had begun stalking her shortly before her attack, it had brought up some old memories. That had left her on edge. And that had led her to being distracted and subsequently assaulted. The knowledge that the person who had tried to kill her was still out there was terrifying. It had led to hypervigilance, trouble sleeping, and a pressing tiredness that made getting through each day difficult.

  But by far the biggest thing she had had to deal with following her attack was learning that she would never be able to have children of her own. Still in her early thirties, that was a blow. Especially since she knew how much her husband wanted kids. Elias had assured her repeatedly that he didn’t care–that he was just glad he hadn’t lost her. That they could adopt when she was in a place where she was ready to do that. But it didn’t change how she felt. She was devastated about it, both for herself and for her husband.

  Other than Elias, the only other person who knew about her not being able to have children was Ryan. Her partner had been a rock for her these last six months. She knew that he felt guilty about letting her get attacked in the first place, even though it was obviously not his fault.

  It had been her fault. She’d known that she shouldn’t have been at work that day. She hadn’t been sleeping, she hadn’t been eating, and she’d been injured just a couple of days before. She had been distracted. And that distraction had almost cost her her life.

  Ryan had also been the one to find her.

  Actually, he had saved her life.

  He had arrived in the middle of her attack and his arrival had spooked her attacker who had run away. Her doctors had told her that if she had received just a couple more blows, then she might not have survived.

  The fact that her stalker was still out there was as upsetting for Ryan and his fiancée, Sofia, as it was for her. The man who had stalked her had only done so because he perceived her to be a threat to Sofia, who he had been stalking for the last couple of years. He had decided that she was cheating with Ryan, and as such would cause pain to Sofia, so he had decided to take her out of the equation.

  Thankfully for all of them, the stalker had been laying low the last six months. Since her attack, he hadn’t made further contact with either her or Sofia. But knowing he was out there was awful. And the fact that he knew where they lived and worked was terrifying. She wanted him caught, but they didn’t even know who he was. Until he was identified and apprehended, she was never going to be able to truly move on.

  “Paige, you came.” Ryan stood and gave her a hug when they entered the kitchen.

  “I told you I would,” she grumbled, dropping into the chair he held out for her.

  “No, you told me you'd think about it,” Ryan corrected. “Hey, Elias, how’s it going?”

  “Things are going okay, although I'm not ready for Paige to go back to work next month.” Elias cast her a concerned glance.

  “Well, I'm going back, Elias,” she told him. They’d argued about it numerous times already. Paige knew that her husband had been truly terrified that he was going to lose her. When she had finally awakened in the hospital, the first thing she had seen was Elias’ worried, drawn, haggard face. The relief that had washed over him when he’d seen her awake had communicated just how scared he’d been that she would never wake up. When she had announced a few weeks ago that she was going back to work, he had protested vehemently. Elias didn’t like to let her out of his sight these days, let alone have her go back to work where she had been so violently attacked.

  Unfortunately for her husband, Paige fully intended to go back to work. She didn’t want to make Elias angry and she didn’t want to worry him unnecessarily, but she needed to work. She couldn’t spend any more time just sitting around. She was bored, and when she was bored, her mind wandered, and when her mind wandered it usually went to a bad place. And she had already spent enough time in that bad place; she didn’t want to be in it ever again. Getting back to work would help her recovery. She was literally counting the hours until she returned.

  “Don’t worry, Elias; I’ll look after her,” Ryan assured her husband.

  “I don’t need you to look after me,” Paige shot back.

  “If you say so.” Ryan grinned.

  Rolling her eyes at him, Paige was about to make a retort when Sofia and Rose came bustling into the room.

  “I got her back to sleep … Paige.” Sofia’s pretty face lit up into a smile when she caught sight of her. “Ryan said he wasn't sure you'd come.”

  “Hey, Sofia,” she returned
the other woman’s hug. “I told Ryan I would come, so I don’t know why he was telling everyone he didn’t know whether I would or not.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Jack’s partner Rose also gave her a hug. “When I called you to see if you were coming to dinner, you said you hadn’t decided.”

  Getting irritated now, “I don’t see why you're all making such a big deal about dinner. We’ve had dinner together before and it was never such a big deal.”

  “Because we’re worried about you,” Ryan replied calmly. “You hardly ever go out these days.”

  Frustration fading away, Paige knew she was lucky to have friends who cared about her. “Because it’s too stressful,” she murmured tiredly. As a cop, she had always been aware of her surroundings, but this hypervigilance was exhausting.

  “I know, honey.” Rose wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “It’ll get better with time.” She and Rose had been friends for a long time now. After Ryan, she considered Rose her closest friend. Rose had even been maid of honor at her wedding. She wouldn’t have made it through the last few months without her friend. Rose had visited her every day while she was in the hospital, and pretty much every day after she was finally released. No matter how many cases she was handling, and how busy her days had been, Rose had always made time for her. Often bringing cases with her for them to discuss because she knew that Paige needed to do something to keep her mind off what she’d been through.

  “Yeah, I know.” Paige offered her friends a watery smile. “Was that Sophie you were putting down?” she asked, changing the subject from herself to Ryan and Sofia’s baby daughter. Technically, the baby was Sofia’s aunt, but with no other family to raise her, she and Ryan had taken the child on and were raising her as their own.

  “Yeah, she’s teething.” Ryan smiled fondly. His little girl already had him wrapped around her little finger.

  “I bet she’s getting big; I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks.” Paige knew she couldn’t keep the hint of regret out of her voice. It still hadn’t really sunk in that she was never going to get to have her own children. And yet, Sophie wasn't biologically Ryan and Sofia’s and they didn’t love her any less. For the first time since she’d found out she would never get pregnant, the idea of adoption didn’t seem so bad. She wasn't ready for it yet, but maybe one day.