Sandy looked up, tears streaming down her face and dripping from her chin. ‘She screamed, Joe. I was too afraid to move. I was too afraid to break my promise. My mom screamed and I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t hear one single sound from my father. Not one single sound. I waited and a minute must have passed. Then I heard it again; that noise. They were gone.
‘I couldn’t go outside. It would have been me too. Do you see?’ Her issues of guilt showed starkly her vulnerability, and Joe was resolved to believe her and protect her from anyone or anything that threatened her life.
‘Yes. I see. It’s okay babe.’ He was crying a little himself now, despite his reluctance to do so. He wanted to be a pillar - to support his wife through anything. He wanted to be strong and keep his emotions under control for her sake. But seeing her in this state made it impossible for him to stay fully in control of himself. It was as though two strong hands wrung out his eyeballs and he didn’t know how to handle her pain - but they were one and he had to hold her, grasp her pain and share it with her. He would do anything to lessen her burden.
‘I sat inside the house wondering what I could do.’ Her recollections were punctuated by long sniffles that made it hard for her to catch her breath. ‘I kept on hearing that scraping sound. It went on for twenty minutes, but I was so scared I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything to help them, but somehow I knew they were already gone. I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I still can’t explain; but I knew they were gone. Eventually the noise stopped.’
Her grip upon the hand of her husband tightened considerably, and Joe Myers was surprised to feel a twang of pain traveling through his little finger and up to his wrist. This is it, he thought. Brace yourself.
‘Oh…’ Sandy’s sobs reached a pinnacle and for a second it felt to her as though her heart had stopped beating. Her head started to feel light, and she wondered if her heart had missed a beat to signify a part of herself had died with her parents that evening ten years before.
‘It was horrible Joe. What he did to them, it was horrible.’ Sandy half reached for, half swooned into Joe’s arms and he held her, both of them silent for a moment except for the muffled sounds of grief that each of them emitted.
He continued to hold her and she continued to hold him, neither sure of the future but both sure of the present; both sure of the limitless and solid love bond between them; both sure that no matter what happened to them, they would still hold that limitless bond, even if it was in another world.
‘After they were killed I found the letters. There were thirty letters.’ She drew away from his close embrace and spoke more quickly, taking Joe by surprise as his brain tried to process all of the information she imparted to him.
‘Each letter contained a different message threatening their lives. They kept every one of them, in neat order. I couldn’t believe it Joe. I went through them. The last one said ‘I am watching you’. Within a week they were dead.’
Sandy wiped a hand across her face and Joe felt her tears on his cheek.
‘Then, six weeks after they were killed, I received one. I was terrified. I knew the threat was real, but there was nothing I could do. The police couldn’t find any suspects, and the letters kept on coming. I felt like I was being tortured, and for the first time I fully understood what my parents went through. For the first time, I understood the strength and bravery they had been forced to summon, and it was all for me. But the letters just stopped. Just as they’d started, they stopped. I thought that was it. I thought I had survived. I heard nothing else, all through our marriage.’
‘So he just got bored and left you alone?’
‘Today I got numbers twenty-nine and thirty.’ Her voice was shaky as she made this final revelation to her husband, and she watched the color drain from his face with the realization of the link. Now he knew the full story.
‘Jesus Sandy, what are we going to do? Have you called the police?’
‘I don’t want to call the police, Joe. They couldn’t do anything then, and they won’t be able to do anything now.’ She was resigned to this as a fact, but Joe was determined that they would not be helpless. He had to get them through this. For the sake of all of their lives.
‘Did you give them to the police? The letters, I mean.’
‘No, I was too afraid Joe. I’m gonna have to go away for a while.’
‘Okay… we’ll get out of here. We’ll go and get the boys and then we’ll shoot through. Go somewhere quiet where we can try to work all this out.’ His tone was hurried and adrenalin surged in his body. He was ready to run with his wife. He was ready to run to the other side of the planet if that was what they had to do.
‘You go and get the boys. I’ll stay and get some things together for us to take with us.’
‘What do you mean?’ He was horrified at this suggestion. He wanted them all to stay together and live under the proverbial ‘safety in numbers’.
‘You might not be safe here alone, Sandy. You have to come with me.’
‘It’s okay, Joe. I’ve been safe here all afternoon. I’ll lock the door behind you. It won’t take you long to get the boys and get back here, and we can’t just whisk them away without any of their things or an explanation, can we?’
What she said made sense to Joe, but still he was amazed that she would want to spend any more time alone. Her motives were questionable, and he feared she would be gone when he returned.
‘Are you sure about this babe?’ he asked her, with reluctance that was plainly visible to her pained eyes.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She hugged him and continued, ‘When you get back honk the horn and I’ll come out.’ She knew that she would not be hearing the horn - he wouldn’t be sounding it when he saw that the Suzuki was gone.
She had trouble keeping things from her husband. Sometimes it seemed like they could read each other’s minds. But she had to get away as soon as she could. She must make sure that she didn’t put the lives of her family at risk. The one sure way of achieving this was to put distance between her family and herself. If she did, then her stalker’s attention would be taken away from her family, and they would have a better chance of coming through this whole thing unscathed. It was what Sandy Myers had to do. Sandy Carson might have frozen, but Sandy Myers was going to protect her family, even though it meant leaving them behind.
‘I’ll take the Suzuki, okay? It’ll be quicker than my Toyota.’ He knew that this was his final chance of making her change her mind. The Toyota would be no good if she were hoping to undertake a long journey. Maybe she would wait, knowing that the Suzuki was a much better bet for a fast exit. The Toyota was on its last legs.
Sandy visibly winced at this suggestion, realizing his motives and unhappy at being in a battle of wits with her husband. She felt totally alone.
‘Okay, you get going,’ she said, motioning towards the door and following him as he walked to it, ready to lock it behind him in an effort to fool him into thinking she was going to follow her asserted plan.
Joe planted a kiss on her lips and said, ‘Be here’. Then he turned and went out of the door, struggling to contain his emotions as he heard Sandy lock it behind him.
Sandy slumped to the floor with her back against the door and cursed her luck. She wasn’t certain she wouldn’t be better off walking away from the house. The old car wouldn’t get her very far before it either broke down or blew up. But she would give it a shot.
She had to get away.
She wondered if she would ever see her husband again, and her boys. Her wonderful boys. She would give anything for the problems of ten hours ago.
She decided to wait ten minutes before making her way away from the house. She would be running for her life, and she didn’t want to be stopped if her husband decided to wait and try to intercept her. She wanted him to be well on his way to collect the boys, so that she could go in the opposite direction.
What bothered her most about running for her life alone was the
fact that there were no guns in the house for her to take with her. They didn’t keep guns, despite their rights as Americans to defend their property. They worried that the children would get their hands on them, and neither Sandy nor Joe could understand parents that went on TV and attempted to advocate parents keeping guns, when in the last six months children had been killed in five states as a result of getting hold of their parents’ instruments of ‘protection’.
So it was the safety of her children that would make Sandy run for her life alone, and it was also the safety of her children that meant she would not be taking any weapons with her on her trip to Melissa Dahlia’s.
*
Sandy and Melissa had been friends since high school. They had been close for years, until they both moved away from their childhood homes. Melissa had moved to the coast, realizing her dream of living close to the sea, but sacrificing her chance of a career to do so.
On the rare occasions that the two women got to speak, it was clear to Sandy that Melissa had never regretted taking this decision. She had certainly never told Sandy of a time she regretted not being a broker any more. It depressed Sandy that she never got to see Melissa. That was the only drawback for them both. It was something they always discussed when they did speak - Melissa constantly asking Sandy when she was going to come and visit. But with Sandy’s life at such a hectic pace, she had never visited her friend’s house near Jones Beach.
Now was the time. It wasn’t too far away, maybe a hundred kilometers, and Sandy felt this to be a comfortable distance, at least for the time being, while she waited to see what would happen next.
She had just one thing left to do before she made her exit. Picking up a pen that sat on the coffee table, she glanced around before spotting a credit card bill. She took it up and wrote a hasty message on the back of the white envelope, explaining her reasons for leaving alone. She also penned a note to the boys, telling them to be good for their father.
It would take Joe somewhere in the region of forty minutes to get to Martha’s house, get the boys sorted out, and get back. Sandy wanted to be well away by the time he returned. She didn’t want there to be any possibility of Joe following her. The note did not give details of where she would be; she didn’t want them to know. She was determined that Joe, Sean and David would not get caught up in this. If anything happened to any one of them she was not sure her life could continue. She was not sure that she would be able to handle the guilt and loss that she had experienced before again without it killing her also. It was words to this effect that Sandy Myers quickly scribbled to her family before adding her name, three kisses and a PS that simply read, ‘I’ll see you when this is over.’
*
Joe had driven about two miles. His gut feeling was that she would not be there when he returned, but he could not turn back. He had to get the boys and make sure they were okay. He couldn’t just abandon them. The boys came before anything else, and he had to try and keep the family together as best he could. This thought spurred him on and gave him hope. They all had to make it through this - Sandy especially - because these two small and innocent creatures needed them, needed them to fight. And even if she did run tonight while Joe was collecting the boys, he knew it would not be because she was abandoning her family; it would be to protect them. He also knew that her desire to stay alive for the sake of her family was something that would double her strength and her willingness to fight, whatever the odds.
*
Sandy stepped out into the evening breeze. The hair on her arms stood up immediately as she locked the door behind her and surveyed the scene. The car stood not fifteen feet from where she was, and the feeling that she had earlier experienced returned momentarily, pinning her to the spot. She stood still, struggling with the vastness of the world in which she lived. Not for the first time in her life, Sandy felt threatened by everything around her. It was a feeling that she remembered, but not one that anybody could enjoy. To be afraid of a sudden burst of bird song or the distant engine of a car was something that made a person’s nerves fray very quickly. The only thing that would make her feel a little more secure would be the humming of the car’s engine. It would be just that - a humming - but the fact that she would be on the move meant that nobody could surprise her. Once she was on her journey she should be able to reach Melissa’s without being stopped, and in one piece, as long as she could keep the car on the road. Her hypersensitivity to the things around her might make that difficult – she was liable to swerve the car if startled at all.
She managed to shake off her momentary paralysis and went hurriedly to the small car that reflected beams of fading sunlight. Once she was inside, she locked the door and paused for a moment’s reflection. The introduction of a barrier, albeit flimsy, calmed her slightly. It was a shield between her and the threat of the outside world - and the things that were in it.
She couldn’t believe this was happening all over again - it was like being caught up in an elaborate movie plot. She didn’t want to run away and leave her family, but what other choice did she have? While the abandonment of her family might cause them great emotional pain, she knew that if she stayed she may in fact bring them physical pain and suffering.
She looked at the house for a final time. It stood, constant and unchanging; something she had striven for and a symbol of the success they had achieved through all of their struggles for security. She would miss her home. This time twenty-four hours ago I was happy, she thought. Okay, I was run down and at the end of my rope, but I was happy.
Twenty-four hours ago her family had been the most important thing to her. Now the most important thing for Sandy Myers was fighting for survival against a predator she thought she had left behind her ten years ago.
She had a lonely and difficult journey to make on this cool June evening. It would be a tortured, uncertain passage that got harder the further away she got from her husband and her children.
She started the engine and drove into the evening, her fear meaning that she did not even wind down the window of the car. As she negotiated the first kilometer of her journey, her thoughts turned to how Joe would feel when he returned home. She hoped he would realize it to be the best option for all of them. Why risk four lives when only one need be risked? That was how she hoped he would see it; as being for the best. She tried to push feelings of guilt from her mind, and concentrate upon her journey. She would stop for no one and nothing, and would go straight to Melissa’s. What she couldn’t work out was what she would tell Melissa when she arrived. Sandy didn’t think her friend could handle her turning up out of the blue with a killer on her trail. She would have to make something up. Play it cool to begin with. If things got hot then she could leave. Melissa was a friend, but she would not expect Melissa to put her life in jeopardy in order to look after her. It just wasn’t fair.
Sandy advanced on her journey without incident. Her mind went around in circles, one minute wondering how Melissa would react to her sudden arrival, the next worrying that the boys would feel let down by the absence of their mother. She hoped Joe would be able to convince them that she was okay and would be coming back. This was what she expected him to do, but the reaction of the children was something that could not be predicted. That was the thing about children - they sometimes reacted in the opposite way to how adults expected them to react. Something that you thought would make them happy would often leave them in tears and vice-versa. Her recent problems with the children had made her reluctant to imagine having twin teenagers, now she wondered if she would make it to their next birthday.
*
Collecting the children took Joe a little longer than either of them had imagined. He was resolved in his desire not to alarm Martha when he arrived. This meant putting on an act for her benefit, explaining to her how Sandy had been feeling under the weather and had gotten progressively worse throughout the day with a cold that had lain her flat on her back, aching all over and unable to undertake her usual routine tasks.
The boys were both tired; the excitement of a change to their routine had exhausted them, and it took Joe a full five minutes to rouse them from their slumber. His journey took him an hour, and by the time he pulled into the drive and saw the Toyota was gone he felt as though he must have fielded a thousand questions from the excitable twins. He had deflected their questions by telling them much the same story as he had told Martha, preoccupied in what was almost prayer that the Toyota would be as he had left it and Sandy would be waiting patiently in the house with everything packed ready for their departure. He did not tell them they were going anywhere - his awareness that their mother may well be gone when they got back would have inevitably led to another thousand questions on top of the ones he had already been asked.
Sandy was forty kilometers away as they went through the door of the house and making better time than she had thought possible when she had left. She was sure Joe had probably found the letter some twenty minutes ago and would be explaining to the children that she had gone away to get over her ‘illness’. She didn’t think he would guess where it was that she had gone to; he would have possibly five or six places in his thoughts. It could be any of those places, or none of them.
Her main resolution was to get to Melissa’s house in one piece and contact her family, just to let them know that she was safe.
*
Joe entered the house with the children buzzing around him, trying to find out why their mother was not waiting for them. He picked up the note that Sandy had left for him on the coffee table. Reading it to himself proved difficult with the kids taking turns asking, ‘What’s going on Dad?’ and ‘Where’s Mom?’ and Joe took a moment to gain his composure and think about his answer.
‘Erm… your mom’s gone to stay with a friend. She’s got a cold that she doesn’t want you two strong boys to catch.’
He smiled weakly at the boys.
His wife was gone and he may never see her alive again. ‘Come on, you’d better get to bed, it’s been a long day. I’ll read you a story.’
The Hunter Inside Page 8