From the Shadows

by Rebecca York

  Turning toward the bookcase in back of the desk, he started pulling out volumes, holding them spine side up and shaking them.

  Taking her cue from him, she lent a hand. But the search was only an exercise in futility.

  “There are rooms downstairs I’ve never been in,” she said as she watched Alex shove the last tome back into the bookcase.

  His head came up, and he gave her a long look. “Like the art gallery?”

  “What art gallery?” she asked, aware that he was watching her carefully.

  “It’s got some unusual paintings and sculpture.”

  The tone of his voice made her ask, “You mean of a sexual nature?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lee showed it to you?”

  “I found it when I was here the other day. I was searching for him and stumbled in there. It looked like one of the paintings was missing.”

  “Did you take it?” she asked.

  “Of course not! Why would I tell you about it if I’d taken it?”

  She shrugged. “To test me. Every chance you get, you act like you don’t believe me.”

  “It’s my old cop habits.”

  “You’re sure it’s not more than that?” she asked, hoping he was going to give her a better reason, like he’d caught his wife in a lie and he was having trouble with trust issues.

  But he simply shrugged, turned away and started down the hall. She followed him, breezed past and pulled on a door that looked as though it opened into a closet. Instead, there was a flight of stairs leading up.

  “The attic?” Alex asked.

  “Yes. Lee was putting some stuff up there once when I was here.”

  Alex felt along the wall and located a light switch. An orange glow warmed the darkness above as they began to climb the stairs. At the top, they both paused to get their bearings.

  Like the rest of the house, the attic was neat, with boxes arranged along the perimeter and a fair amount of floor space in the middle.

  The air felt hot and dry, but luckily it was too early in the season for serious heat to have built up.

  “You take one side, I’ll take the other,” Alex suggested.

  In her present mood, she might have asked if he trusted her to tell him she’d found anything. Instead, she pressed her lips together and bent to the first box. Bold black letters told her it contained Christmas Ornaments. And when she pulled open the flaps, she did indeed find shiny glass balls packed in tissue paper. Rooting through them, she discovered nothing else hidden below the carefully packed layers.

  She was looking through a box of canning jars and wondering why Lee had kept them, when an exclamation from Alex made her whirl around.

  He had pulled a black and silver, flat-topped metal trunk from the pile of boxes and was sifting through the contents.

  “What?” Crossing to him, she saw he was holding up a faded cotton dress. Along the neckline was a dark brown stain.

  “That looks like blood,” she breathed.

  “Yeah.”

  They both stared at the dress.

  “Why would he have that?” she finally asked.

  “Good question.”

  He laid the dress on the lid of the trunk and dug deeper. This time he came up with baby clothes. Two tiny under-shirts. Some plastic pants that crinkled when he touched them. Cloth diapers.

  To her questioning look, he only shrugged.

  Alex’s hand was probing the sides of the trunk, when a noise outside made her turn sharply. It sounded like a car had pulled up in front of the house.

  “Go see if we’ve got company,” Alex commanded. “Maybe Lee’s home.”

  “And we’re poking through his attic,” Sara muttered, feeling the blood drain from her face. Quickly she crossed the floor and peered out the dingy window. Her heart started to pound as she spotted a vehicle in the driveway.

  “So is it Lee or your friends from the militia?” Alex asked.

  “Neither one. It’s some guy I don’t recognize,” she answered, struggling to control her voice.

  BEHIND HER, Alex stood up and moved to the window, following the direction of her gaze.

  “Lewis Farmer,” he muttered.

  “Who?”

  “He works for Lee. Does handyman jobs,” he said, keeping his voice low and even as he pulled her back from the glass, holding her against his side as he angled himself so that his face was barely showing.

  “Does he have a key?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  She stood there with her pulse pounding, feeling the tension in Alex’s body as she thought up good reasons why she was in here wearing a pair of latex gloves. At the moment, none of them made sense.

  Aeons dragged by as she waited to find out if the guy was coming inside and marching straight up to the attic. When she finally heard Alex let out a breath, she tipped her head inquiringly toward him.

  Before he could answer, she heard an engine start.

  “I guess he was just making sure the place was locked up tight,” she said.

  “Right. But maybe it’s time to beat a hasty retreat.”

  She slid him a sideways look. “Did you, uh, have some kind of run-in with him?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You’re kind of tense.”

  “We go way back. He and I weren’t exactly friends in high school.”

  “He was in another clique?”

  Alex gave her a hard look. “Yeah.”

  She wanted to ask for more details, but his face discouraged any probing.

  Striding away, he closed the trunk and looked around the attic before they descended the stairs, closing the door behind them. Then Alex made sure the handyman had really left before leading her to the back door.

  Without speaking, they retraced their steps to his SUV, where he backed out of the narrow lane and headed toward his house.

  “Why did he pack up a bloody dress and baby clothes?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” he answered, but volunteered no more information.

  She looked at the rigid lines of his face, thinking that he’d come to some conclusion that he wasn’t prepared to share.

  In his driveway, he sat for several moments, staring at the house, and she wanted to break the silence between them. But she didn’t know what to say. She’d thought that making love with him might change things between them. But he seemed to have locked it away in a compartment.

  Finally he reached for the door handle.

  “Wait. You’re not really going to eat that stuff you brought back from the restaurant are you?”

  He glanced at the carton on the floor. “No, I guess not. We may as well throw it away.”

  Sara picked up the bag, looking around for trash cans as she joined Alex in the driveway. He was intently inspecting the house and the grounds.

  Alex had started up the steps to the porch. Sara was a few paces behind him, when an unexpected noise shattered the afternoon stillness.

  It was the sudden sound of loud, angry barking. Not the high-pitched yipping of a pint-size dog. This was the deep, menacing barking of a large animal.

  “What the hell?” Alex muttered, whirling to face the sound.

  In the next second, a vicious-looking brown and black mongrel came racing toward them from around the side of the house.

  Frozen in place, Sara watched it making straight for her, its eyes fierce and its jaw working as if it was anticipating the joy of sinking its teeth into her flesh and tearing her to shreds.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sara saw Alex whirl toward the animal as he pulled the gun from the waistband of his slacks.

  She felt as if she were caught in the eye of a hurricane. Time seemed to shift to slow motion, so that the whole scene hung suspended before her, captured as a single frame on a videotape.

  Her fingers tightened around the restaurant bag, and she suddenly remembered what she was holding.

  Food. A bag of food.

  H
er lips moved but no sound came out.

  Finally, she found her voice, the word no blasting out from her throat in a desperate plea.

  With shaking fingers she tore open the bag, pulled up the lid on the container and tossed the contents onto the sidewalk in a rain of french fries, onion rings and hamburger.

  As the dog caught the scent of the food, he stopped in his tracks, his head going down to the pavement where he started sniffing avidly, then scarfing up the remains of Alex’s lunch.

  “Open the door,” she gasped.

  He was already turning the key in the lock.

  Then he barreled down the stairs, caught her under the arms and lifted her off her feet.

  Behind her she heard the sounds of frantic eating as Alex carried her across the porch and threw her inside the house.

  The dog finished the food and started up the steps behind them, but Alex had already slammed the door.

  Cursing loudly, he pushed her toward the floor, then followed her down, his gun still in his hand.

  “What? He’s not coming through the windows,” she gasped out.

  “Think about it! That dog didn’t come leaping at us until we were out of the truck and walking toward the porch. Those bastards from the militia compound brought him and held him on a leash until they picked their moment to let him loose.”

  Sara sucked in a shuddering breath as she watched Alex advance toward the back of the house. Keeping low, he moved to the side of a kitchen window and took a cautious look outside.

  “I just saw one of them coming toward the house. He probably figures I’d be dog meat by now.”

  “Your brother?”

  “I don’t know. You stay back and stay down.”

  She advanced to the kitchen doorway, watching as he kept his eyes trained on the window. After several seconds, he knocked out a pane of glass with the butt of the gun, then stuck the weapon through the opening and fired.

  The shot was returned almost at once. Sara watched in silent disbelief. A couple of days ago she’d asked if he was like a hired gun from the Old West. Now the image came back to haunt her.

  He ducked back from the window, turned and saw her in the doorway. “Get back in the hall!”

  She couldn’t move, couldn’t leave him in the kitchen. She’d grown up around here, where hunting for food and sport was part of the normal pattern of life. Probably the men out there had rifles, while Alex only had a handgun.

  “Is there a rifle in the house?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t take his eyes off the window as he answered. “Up in my bedroom. In the right side of the closet. The ammunition’s in the top dresser drawer.”

  She took a deep breath and started back down the hall, moving quickly, keeping low. Still bent over, she dashed up the stairs and into the room where he slept. The closet was to the left of the door. The rifle was where he’d said it would be.

  From outside she heard another round fired. Then more glass breaking inside the house and the sound of Alex’s gun.

  Sprinting to the dresser, she opened the drawer. But someone outside must have seen her through the window, because a bullet crashed through the wall and into the room.

  She heard herself scream but she stayed in the room long enough to open the drawer and find the shells. Then she dashed back the way she’d come.

  Outside, the dog was barking as he raced back and forth along the porch, jumping at the windows and the door. When he saw her, he threw his body against one of the living-room windows, but the glass held.

  Alex was crouched beside a set of shattered glass panes.

  Looking back at her, he ordered, “Stay down and slide me the rifle and the box of bullets. Then get back into the hall and call Hempstead,” he said, reeling off the number. “Tell him I made a mistake about not pressing charges.”

  She did as he asked, watching him load the weapon, then move to another window.

  Creeping into the hall, she picked up the pocketbook she’d dropped on the floor, found her cell phone and dialed.

  More shots sounded as she reached the chief.

  “What the hell is going on?” Hempstead asked.

  “We’re at Alex’s house. And the militia’s here! They sent a dog to tear us apart as we climbed out of the car. When that didn’t work, they started shooting.”

  “On our way,” Hempstead informed her and hung up.

  The shooting stopped, the sound of silence strangely unreal.

  Crunching across broken glass, Sara kept below the window level as she moved to Alex’s side. “Are you hurt?” she asked, relieved when she saw no blood on his clothing.

  “I’m fine. I think I got one of them. Well, he was still on his feet, but I could see he was wounded. I think the yellow-bellied bastards are cutting their losses.” He glanced away from the window for a moment and scowled at her. “But I told you to stay the hell out of here.”

  She nodded tightly, needing to be with him. Needing to feel the warmth of his body pressed to hers. But she knew that he had to keep his full attention on the scene outside, in case the shooters’ withdrawal was just a ploy to get him to lower his guard. So she moved back to the hall doorway, her ears trained toward the woods that bordered the stream.

  There were no more shots. It seemed that once the bad guys realized that Alex was going to keep shooting, they’d turned and run.

  The dog was another matter. He was still outside on the front porch, barking and throwing himself against the windows, trying to get in. If he found the shattered window in back, they were in trouble.

  Alex’s thoughts must be taking the same turn as hers. “There’s lunch meat in the refrigerator. And some fried chicken. Get it,” he shouted as he turned and pounded up the steps.

  Moments later he was back with a bottle of capsules.

  He rolled one inside several pieces of meat, then slipped another under the chicken skin.

  Back in the living room, he put the chain on the door, moving back as the dog lunged for the opening, his jaw snapping.

  “Easy, boy. Easy,” he said. “Don’t those jerks feed you? Want some more dinner?”

  Avoiding the dog’s snapping teeth, he tossed the chicken onto the porch. When the dog had wolfed it down, he followed it with the luncheon meat.

  “What did you give him?”

  “Sleeping pills.”

  “You need sleeping pills?”

  “The doctor prescribed them. I didn’t like the effect so I only took a couple.”

  “Alex…”

  “Let’s not focus on medications,” he said in a thick voice. Moving toward her, he pulled her into his arms. There was no thought of resistance. She melted against him, closing her eyes as she listened to the sound of sirens in the distance.

  Minutes later, two patrol cars rolled into the driveway and pulled in front of the house. Hempstead and two deputies climbed out. One’s name tag said Sullivan. The other, Garnette.

  One of the men jumped back when he spotted the brute of a dog. But the animal was lying on his side, eyes closed, breathing evenly.

  The deputies eyed her and Alex suspiciously. She met their stares head-on. Probably they were remembering that Alex had just been released from jail yesterday morning and now he was in trouble again. No doubt they were assuming it was his own damn fault—until they found out otherwise.

  “What the hell happened?” the chief demanded as he moved cautiously toward the porch.

  “Like Sara told you. The militia brought over an attack dog to tear us up. You might want to get him to a vet. He’s had a couple of adult-size sleeping pills.”

  “They won’t kill him,” the chief answered. “Unless he’s been guzzling them along with booze.”

  “His handlers were waiting back in the woods,” Alex said.

  “You saw them?”

  He nodded. “Three or four of them.” He led the way through the house and into the kitchen.

  The chief whistled when he saw the broken glass and bullet hole
s. “Looks like you had yourself a little firefight,” he commented.

  “Yeah. Out on the public road when they attacked Sara, they stuck with handguns. Back here where they couldn’t be seen, they brought out something a little more serious. I imagine the owners of the house aren’t going to be too pleased. I guess I’d better arrange to get the windows boarded up.”

  “I’ll get a crime-scene team out here,” the chief said. “And see what we can find out about the weapons.”

  “There’s a bullet somewhere upstairs, too,” Sara told him.

  Alex whirled toward her, a curse on his lips. “You forgot to mention that to me!”

  “I’m fine,” she told him. Then, ignoring his scowl, she gestured toward the stairs as she explained to the chief, “Alex sent me up to get his rifle. I guess they saw me through the window.”

  “I think it’s time to reevaluate pressing charges,” Alex growled.

  The chief nodded. “I think it’s time to pay a visit to the old Fairmont Estate.”

  “I’d like to go along,” Alex said.

  “This is official police business.”

  “Yeah, well, they just paid me a visit.”

  “You can’t be sure it was them.”

  “I think I can make an educated guess.”

  The chief nodded.

  Alex looked from Hempstead to Sara and back again. “The trouble is, I can’t take her along. And I haven’t had time to talk to Erin Stone about borrowing her place.”

  Sara angled her chin upward. “I thought I made it clear that I don’t like the two of you discussing my safety as if I’m not here. I can go back to Wendy’s condo. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind my staying at her place while you guys go off and do the dangerous stuff.”

  Alex considered her suggestion. He didn’t like it for the reason he’d previously given. And he didn’t like leaving her alone when she’d already been in danger twice today. On the other hand, at the moment, he liked the Stone place even less. Because it was isolated, and if the bad guys found her there alone, she’d be a sitting duck.

  “You’re planning to go over to the militia compound as soon as possible?” Alex asked Hempstead.