Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  It was heavier than it looked.

  There was usually a magic button somewhere—a switch to make it work, a safety thing—but I had no idea what I was looking for. I could only hope it would work if I needed it to. I lifted the gun in both shaking hands and aimed it at the killer.

  He hesitated on the steps.

  He was at least as big as Cambel, and he was fifteen feet away. I couldn’t let him come any closer. If he made it through the doorway, Jacob and I were both dead. I rested my finger on the trigger. If I fired, I was bound to hit him somewhere . . .

  “You won’t shoot me, Holly,” the man said. I hated the way he said my name, as if he liked the taste of it on his tongue. But he wasn’t as certain as he pretended to be. He’d hesitated.

  “I’ll try,” I promised. I didn’t want to shoot him, but I would. I needed to get the door closed. I trusted the metal door; I didn’t trust this weapon in my hands. Help needed to come before I accidentally killed us all or some poor pedestrian.

  I stepped forward slowly and kept the gun trained on the killer as I tried to nudge Jacob’s legs aside with my feet. He would wind up twisted like a pretzel on my kitchen floor, but that was infinitely better than dead.

  “You always were the brave sister,” the man said.

  I recognized this man’s voice, but it didn’t belong to my foster brother. It was older and deeper. Marx was very wrong. There were two of them, but convincing him of that would be nearly impossible.

  “I don’t have a sister.”

  “Not anymore.”

  For some reason, his response was like a punch to the gut. It made me feel like I’d lost something precious I didn’t even remember having.

  He took another slow step forward. “Stop,” I demanded. My voice shook as much as my hands.

  “You value life too much to take it, Holly. You were the one who cried when you saw the kitten dying on the front porch. Someone had slit the poor thing’s throat. What was its name? Buttercup?”

  His soft-spoken words struck a nerve in my memories. I didn’t remember the kitten, but the grief of a child who’d lost her pet seeped through me.

  “You’re starting to remember,” he said, and there was a hint of pleasure in his voice. “I can see it in your beautiful brown eyes. The fear, the confusion . . .”

  The man twisted the knife in his hand as he took another step forward. He wasn’t going to listen to me. He was going to force me either to pull the trigger or to back down, and I suspected he thought I would back down.

  The pressure of the leg against my ankle reminded me that, no matter how much I didn’t want to pull this trigger, it wasn’t just my life on the line. Jacob was dying on my floor.

  “Please stop,” I begged.

  He took another measured step forward.

  I kept my eyes open, but I didn’t remember anything but a blinding sound after I squeezed the trigger. The bang that reverberated around my apartment was petrifying, and I found myself crouched by the open doorway a moment later with my hands over my ears. The gun was still in my right hand.

  Good grief, I was going to accidentally shoot myself in the head. Before I could drop the gun, I saw movement on the steps out of the corner of my vision. I scrambled over Jacob’s legs for the door.

  Jacob was just far enough out of the way that I was able to slam it shut. The killer turned the knob and pushed before I could bolt it, and I let out a yelp of terror as my feet slid backwards. I pushed, but I had no traction. He forced me back with ridiculous ease until my feet connected with Jacob’s side.

  My arms were exhausted and trembling from dragging Jacob, and if the killer wanted in badly enough, he could probably just blow on the door and knock me over. I felt him lean his weight against it, and I whimpered from the added stress.

  And then suddenly the resistance was gone and I fell into the door, knocking it shut. I bolted it with practiced quickness and hunkered down with the gun gripped tightly between my knees. I was afraid to put it down; what if he came through a window? They were narrow, but if he was a contortionist, he might manage it.

  “You’re mine, Holly,” the man whispered through the door, and I shuddered.

  I braced myself for violent slamming on the door or shouts of rage, but there was only the distant wail of sirens. I closed my eyes as relief washed over me. Help was coming.

  I wondered if the police had scared the killer off or if this visit had only been intended to terrify me. If terror was his goal, he deserved a gold sticker. I was still shaking when heavy pounding erupted on the door minutes before the sirens arrived.

  “Holly,” Marx called. I could hear the fear in his voice. The dispatcher had called him, and the news she would’ve relayed wouldn’t have sounded promising. Of course he would be the first to arrive.

  I stood slowly and opened the door. Marx looked rumpled from a night of interrupted sleep, but his eyes were alert. I caught the subtle stiffening of his shoulders as he looked me over. “Holly,” he said carefully, “Give me the gun.”

  I looked down at the gun in my right hand. My finger was still poised over the trigger. Oh . . . I’d forgotten I was still holding that. I removed my finger and placed the weapon carefully into Marx’s palm with a shaky hand. I was happy to be rid of it.

  Marx’s shoulders relaxed a fraction as he breathed, “Thank you” and handed the weapon to someone behind him. His hand came back to grip his own gun, which he angled toward the ground. “Where is he? Where did he go?”

  It took a moment for my brain to catch up. He was looking for the killer. Everything had happened so quickly that I couldn’t remember. “I don’t know.”

  I saw uniformed officers spreading out behind him, searching the property for the killer. I couldn’t even give them a direction.

  “I . . . shot at him,” I said numbly. “He didn’t think I would do it.”

  “I imagine he was unpleasantly surprised,” he grumbled. He shifted his weight so I could see past him to the bullet that had been mangled by the cement steps. “Unfortunately, you missed. And you’re lucky it didn’t ricochet back. Do you even know how to use a gun?”

  I stared at the bullet as I muttered, “I just took a crash course.” There was a pained expression on his face that I expected all members of law enforcement got when they found out a clueless person had just fired a gun. “I didn’t have a choice. Jacob . . .”

  I opened the door so he could see the body sprawled out across my kitchen floor.

  “Was the killer in here?” he asked from the threshold.

  “No.”

  He slid his gun back in its holster before stepping inside. He knelt on one knee beside Jacob and checked for a pulse at his wrist. “Paramedics!” he shouted over his shoulder, and then looked at me. “What happened?”

  “I opened the door to give him a hot chocolate and he was against the door. He just . . . fell. But his throat—”

  Two paramedics hurried through the doorway, and Marx moved out of their way. He caught my arm lightly and guided me into the living room. I stumbled as my eyes lingered on Jacob.

  “Is he . . . ?”

  “They’re gonna do everythin’ they can.” He tried to sound reassuring, but I could hear the fear in his voice. He cared a great deal about Jacob.

  I melted onto the edge of the couch as I watched the paramedics work on the young officer. His color was fading.

  “Holly,” Marx said, drawing me back to the moment. “Did he hurt you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did he say anythin’?”

  I shivered again as I remembered his last words to me. “He said ‘You’re mine, Holly’.” I couldn’t mask my fear when I looked at him.

  His expression was carefully neutral, but his voice was soothing as he said, “It’s gonna be okay. Did he say anythin’ else?”

  “When I pointed the gun at him, he said I was always the brave sister.”

  Marx frowned. “I thought you didn’t have a family.”
r />   “I don’t. I have . . . a dozen foster sisters, but . . . I don’t think that’s what he meant. When I told him I didn’t have a sister, he said ‘not anymore’.”

  “Detective,” a female officer said as she strode across the apartment to meet us at the couch. There was a small, plain box in her gloved hand. “This was left on the patio.”

  She removed the lid and tilted the box so we could see the contents. There was a small, stained collar that probably would’ve fit around the neck of a kitten. She removed the photo beneath it with gentle, gloved fingers and held it up for us to see.

  A small, red-haired girl sat on the steps of a porch, cradling a white kitten in her lap. She stared at the photographer with bright honey-brown eyes and an impish smile.

  The collar in the box was the same band that was around the kitten’s neck. And there was something silvery on the girl’s left wrist—a piece of jewelry. I lifted my arm and rubbed the old, worn bracelet on my wrist.

  “This looks an awful lot like you,” Marx pointed out.

  “That’s because it is me.” I had no doubt about that, but I couldn’t remember a single detail about that moment. The killer knew things about my past that I didn’t even know, which tipped the odds even more in his favor. We weren’t getting any closer to finding him because we had none of the information. I realized in that moment: in order to survive this . . . I needed to find a way to unlock my memories.

  Chapter 16

  I SCRUBBED AT THE DARK stain on my kitchen floor, but it refused to come clean. This was the fifth time I had returned to it—after cleaning my bathroom and my refrigerator and even attacking the dust bunnies under the bed—but it wouldn’t disappear.

  A stranger walking through my door wouldn’t see blood, but I would never be able to look at it without seeing it. Jacob’s blood had become a permanent focal point of my home.

  Surrendering, I pushed myself to my feet and grabbed the rug Jace hated. I arranged it over the stain and then stepped over it. It would have to do for now. I walked to the door and tapped quietly with my knuckles.

  Sam released a patient sigh on the other side. “You’re like clockwork. That’s the second time this hour. You know you don’t have to keep checking on me, Holly.”

  I did, though. The killer had snuck up on Jacob and attacked him without anyone hearing a sound. I didn’t want the same to happen to Sam.

  “I prefer you breathing,” I told him through the door.

  “Stop worrying about me.”

  I unlocked the door and cracked it so I could see him through the narrow opening. Apart from looking exhausted, he was alive and well. “Are you gonna stop worrying about me?”

  His lips curved into a thin smile. “No.”

  “Then we’ve reached a stalemate.”

  I closed the door on his quiet grunt of amusement and returned to scrubbing the walls and baseboards. There had to be a speck of dust somewhere, and I was going find it.

  A car door slamming broke the monotony of my cleaning almost an hour later, and my attention shifted to the door; I hadn’t locked it after I checked on Sam. The flutter of anxiety in my chest calmed when I heard Sam say, “Marx.”

  “I need to talk to Holly,” Marx replied, but his tone sounded more tense than usual.

  I heard Sam shift away from the door to let him pass, but there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice as he said, “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

  Marx came through my door a second later and slammed it behind him. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and his face was a tempest of barely controlled emotion.

  The anger in his movements brought me to my feet. Staying on the floor made me feel too vulnerable. He threw the folder that contained the list of my foster homes onto the table and flipped it open.

  “I want answers, Holly, and I want them now.” His voice was so tight it was on the verge of snapping.

  “I don’t have any answers for you.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut in an obvious effort to control his emotions. “No more secrets. Stop protectin’ him.”

  “I’m not protecting him. I don’t —”

  He slammed his hands on the table, and I flinched. “Stop, Holly!”

  Marx never yelled or slammed things, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The eyes that held me smoldered with anger and grief, and while I didn’t want to believe he would hurt me, my instincts urged me to back away.

  I bumped into the wall behind me. “Is Jacob —”

  “Jacob’s dead.”

  His declaration startled me more than the low vibration of anger in his voice. I struggled to digest the news that Jacob had died. It was hard to reconcile it with the memory of the young man with the boyish smile and big brown eyes.

  I didn’t know him well enough to cry for him, but the tightening in my chest told me I wouldn’t escape the guilt and temporary grief that his death would leave behind.

  “This man slit his throat and left him on your doorsteps like a gift for you to find.” Marx’s voice was quiet with pain. “He was twenty-six years old, Holly. An only child. What am I supposed to tell his family when their flight arrives?”

  An only child . . .

  Jacob had been a casualty of this lunatic’s desire to taunt me. Guilt made my voice waver. “I’m sorry about Jacob.”

  Marx sighed heavily. “I don’t blame you for that. But I need you to help me before this man kills somebody else. I need you to tell me the truth, Holly, who he is, how I can find him, and what he wants from you.”

  “I told you the truth,” I said quietly. I recognized the man’s voice, but I didn’t know his name. I wasn’t sure I had ever known his name.

  “No, you haven’t. You have more secrets than the president. You dodge my questions every chance you get.”

  “Maybe you’re asking the wrong questions,” I challenged. His hands fisted on the table, and I took another cautious step back along the wall. Or maybe I should keep my mouth shut.

  “I want his name.”

  “I don’t have his name.”

  “A cop is dead!” he shouted, and I cringed at the dangerous volume of his voice. It could’ve been the emptiness of my apartment that exaggerated its booming quality, but that didn’t make it any less frightening.

  He’s not gonna hurt me. He’s just upset, I told myself. But in my experience, this kind of anger was often a stepping stone to violence. I tried to take slow, steady breaths through my nose to stay calm, but I was pretty sure I was panting like a racehorse.

  “This isn’t just about you anymore,” he continued. “He crossed a line when he killed Jacob, when he killed a cop. The NYPD will not let this stand. They will tear this case apart, and you had better not be standin’ in their way when they do, Holly.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself as the true meaning of his statement hit me. He wasn’t just talking about the NYPD; he was talking about himself. He cared about Jacob, and in his eyes I was standing between him and the identity of the man who killed him.

  “No more games, Holly. No more twenty questions,” he said, and I could see the effort it took for him to keep his voice level. He rested his hand on the list of foster homes and said with strained patience, “Who is he?”

  I swallowed the same old argument that sprang up in my throat—there were only so many times I could tell him he had the wrong person—but my silence only seemed to enrage him further. I cringed into the wall behind me when he slammed his hands on the table hard enough to hurt and shouted, “What. Is. His. Name!”

  “Marx,” Sam said with enviable calm. He had opened the door and stepped inside.

  “What, Sam?” Marx ground through his teeth.

  “You’re angry and you’re grieving. I don’t think this is the best time to have this conversation.”

  Marx shot Sam an impatient look. “This man killed Jacob. There is no better time.”

  “You’re scaring her.”

  His words dropped into the silence like a b
omb, and I saw Marx draw back with a startled blink before turning his gaze on me.

  I stayed pressed against the wall as I watched him warily, wondering what he would do next. If he lost it again, I was ducking for cover.

  “Holly . . . ,” he began.

  I slid toward the bathroom when he stepped forward. He stilled, visually tracking my movement towards the small room where I’d hidden from him the last time he’d made me “uncomfortable.” He swore quietly under his breath, grabbed the file off the table, and walked out of my apartment.

  I released a shaking breath before sliding down the wall to the floor. I dropped my head into my hands and ran my fingers through my hair.

  “I know he can seem pretty intense when he loses his temper, but he would never hurt you.”

  I glanced at Sam, who hovered awkwardly by the open front door. He looked ready to make a quick exit if I burst into tears, but I had no intention of crying.

  I wished I could be as certain as he was about Marx. But we hadn’t known each other long enough for me to be completely sure he wouldn’t hurt me, and it was that shadow of doubt that kept me from shouting back.

  Sam sighed when I didn’t say anything. “He doesn’t have any kids; his ex-wife didn’t want any, and Jacob was . . . as close as he was ever gonna get to a son.”

  He was grieving.

  “He’s hurt and angry right now, and the only way he knows how to deal with it is to find the person who killed Jacob. He’ll settle down, and then he’ll regret this conversation,” he explained.

  I regretted that conversation.

  “Why does he think you know the killer’s name?”

  I puffed out a breath and tucked my hair behind my ears. “He’s convinced the killer is someone I grew up with, but he’s wrong. And I’ve told him so, but he won’t listen.”

  “How do you know he’s wrong?”

  “Because if the killer was someone I grew up with, we would’ve been children together. Children’s voices change as they grow older.” I met his eyes, desperate for him to understand what I was saying. “But Sam, I recognize this man’s voice, because when I heard it eighteen years ago, it was exactly the same.”