Midnight Man (11 page)

Marissa had been feverish, jumping out of her skin. Suzanne imagined that she was having problems with Mr. Carson, whom she’d never met. But she knew what he looked like. Pictures of him, a handsome, blond, cold-eyed man, were pasted all over the apartment. Had been pasted. Now all the photographs of him had been either taken off the walls or placed face down on the coffee table. Clearly, there was trouble in paradise. That was confirmed by the tall, blond, cold-eyed man who’d nearly knocked her over as she was exiting Marissa’s building a few hours ago. He’d looked furious and Suzanne was sure that fireworks were in the offing.

It had been difficult to absorb Marissa’s hysteria while trying to deal with her wishes for her apartment, which changed hourly. They’d finally agreed to meet again in two weeks, when presumably Marissa would have a better grasp on what she wanted.

In the meantime, Suzanne had spent an emotionally exhausting afternoon and had had to skip lunch, which made her cranky.

Her evening ritual calmed her, soothed her. A hot bubble bath with lavender oil. A bowl of frozen minestrone heated up in the microwave, a glass of red wine, half an hour in bed with the latest Nora Roberts and lights out at ten.

Suzanne closed her eyes, savoring the clean linen sheets, the warm light eiderdown, and the stillness of the night. The weather forecast had been for snow and she’d opened the curtains in all the rooms because she liked snow. As she snuggled deep in her bed, sure enough, a few stray snowflakes were drifting down from the sky, visible in the halo of the streetlights. She could feel her muscles start to relax, feel that slow slide into sleep…

Which didn’t come.

Two hours later, the grandfather clock in her living room next door tolled midnight. She listened to the slow tock and whir of the mechanism, and then the solemn chimes. She counted twelve and sighed as she slipped her legs out of bed.

The night was beautiful. Low-lying fluffy white clouds, like a child’s vision of Christmas, hugged the tops of buildings. Fat, lazy cartoon flakes floated down, gently, as if they had all the time in the world.

Snow was kind to her street. It covered the ruts and cracks and potholes. It softened the buildings grown raggedy with age and neglect. It spread its gentle mantle over this part of town, abandoned and sometimes violent, full of unhappy, failed souls.

The night sky glowed, reflecting the bright lights of downtown off the low-lying clouds. The clouds shimmered and snowflakes danced. Suzanne watched for a few minutes, searching elusively for peace.

Like sleep, it wasn’t coming.

She felt edgy and unsettled, as if she had somehow crossed a divide without meaning to. Without even wanting to. Moved into a new part of her life where she didn’t know the rules.

Todd’s words kept coming back to her. It was true—she had always dated men with whom she knew she could keep the upper hand and it was also true that there was no question of her keeping the upper hand with John. He was a dominant male in every sense of the word.

Of course, they weren’t exactly dating. One evening out, one bout of sex… what was the word for that? Dating? She had no idea; it didn’t fit any of her neat categories. And to top it all off, they were living together. Or rather not living together, but living in the same building. Just the two of them.

John was like a tiger. A gorgeous, wild animal that needed to be approached gingerly because it could rip your heart out without even trying. You needed to keep your distance from beautiful, wild animals. How was she going to do that when she would be seeing him every day?

The silent night wasn’t offering up any answers, just gentle snowflakes slowly tumbling out of the shimmering clouds. A light played erratically against the low hedge of box trees, which ran along the side of the building, and Suzanne watched it flicker and glow against the dark leaves.

She peered more closely.

Why was it doing that? Where on earth was the light coming from? Not downtown, that was for sure. Not against her hedge.

And the light wasn’t a shimmer but a pinpoint glare. She frowned. A car? No, the beam was too small and it jumped around. And anyway it was coming from inside the hedge not from the street outside. At that angle, it had to come from…her house! From her office.

A fire!

Suzanne’s heart leaped in her throat as she ran to the door, ran through the living room and kitchen without bothering to switch on the lights. Each room had big picture windows and she watched the shiver and play of the light against the hedge as she went from room to room.

The little circle of light kept flickering on and off and she stopped, hand on the door that would take her into her office. Her mind was just catching up with her body.

What was she thinking? Was she crazy?

No fire would make that kind of light. A fire’s light would be steadier, and bigger. There was only one thing that would make a light like that. A flashlight.

And a flashlight meant…someone was in her office.

Thank God she was barefoot. She hadn’t made any noise. Whoever it was in her office can’t have heard her.

The door to the office was ajar and she carefully pulled her fair hair back from her face and peeped around the corner.

There was nothing to see at first, just the blackness of a large dark room. Then there was a bumping sound, like a human limb meeting a piece of furniture, and a soft curse. If she hadn’t actually had her head practically in the room, she wouldn’t have heard it.

Someone had broken into her house.

A man. The low pitch of the curse had been unmistakable. Then a dark form crossed the window, perfectly silhouetted against the brighter night sky and Suzanne’s heart stopped. Then started again, pumping hard. She had to clench her teeth to keep from gasping.

The intruder was tall, lanky, with longish hair brushing his shoulders, holding a pencil flashlight in one hand. The flashlight was the source of the light she’d seen spilling out the window.

In his other hand, he was holding a big black gun.

Oh God, oh God!
She thought, taking an involuntary step backwards. Another curse, low and vicious came from the room. He had tripped over another piece of furniture.

Her office was complicated, almost over-decorated, which she’d done deliberately as an advertising tool, showcasing what she could do. It was almost impossible to navigate if you couldn’t see. The man was finding the furniture pretty much by touch. Or by banging his shins.

He had a gun. A burglar with a gun. Hadn’t she read somewhere that burglars don’t carry guns? That they know that the penalty for breaking and entering is much less than that for armed robbery. That they have a different psychological profile from other criminals and are basically non-violent.

All a burglar wants, the article said, is to get in, get as much of your expensive stuff as possible, and get safely back out.

Except he wasn’t doing that. The flashlight picked out her brand-new Bang and Olufsen, worth a lot of money—worth more, actually, than she could afford—then moved steadily on. It skimmed over her collection of antique silver frames collected by three generations of Barrons, which an appraiser date once said, was worth more than her new car. It lighted briefly on the original Winston Homer great-Granny Bodine had bought from the great man himself. Suzanne had used it as collateral for the mortgage.

The flashlight didn’t even linger over these items, but just kept roaming over the walls. Looking for something.

Looking for what? It was a poor part of town. There weren’t many buildings containing what the burglar had just skipped over as unworthy of stealing. What else could he possibly be looking for?

And just like that, Suzanne knew.

The burglar wasn’t there to steal her hi fi or her frames or her paintings.

He was there for her.

He was armed and on the hunt. Hunting her. For some unknown reason this man with the gun wanted to kill her. That was why he’d broken into her house and why he was ignoring all the valuable objects he could steal without any trouble at all. He didn’t want them. He wanted her and he was going to get her because there was no way out of the building except past him.

Her home was four big rooms, one after the other, and only the last one, her office, had a door leading out into the corridor. The rest were internal doors, and all the intruder had to do was go through them, one after another, until he found her.

The windows were alarmed and bulletproof. Opening a window would set off the alarm system, which could only be disengaged at the front door. There was no hope of breaking a window and crawling through. The man who’d sold her the windows had given her a demonstration of what bulletproof meant. He’d taken her to the company’s underground test room and fired a gun at a test windowpane, which had starred but hadn’t broken.

No way could she get through.

The closest police station was downtown. It would take them at least a quarter of an hour to get here and by then, the intruder would have gone through all the rooms, would have found her and…

John!! Only John was close enough—and tough enough and dangerous enough—to help her. If he was home.

Please be back, John, she prayed, running swiftly, silently, back through the kitchen, the living room and into the bedroom. She quietly closed each door, locked it, and then ran to the next.

The locked doors wouldn’t hold back a man capable of getting through her security for long, but maybe it would buy her a few minutes if he was trying to be quiet and not attract attention. All she needed was enough time to call John for help. If he was here, he was only across the hallway.

And if he wasn’t?

I’ll be home late, he’d said. What was late? Had he come back in while she’d been trying to sleep? Was he sleeping just a few feet away? Or was he still out of town, completely unable to answer her call in time?

Please don’t let him still be out of town!

She was sobbing as she locked the last door, the door to her bedroom. She was now as trapped as a mouse in a cage. If the intruder reached her bedroom, there was nowhere else to go, nowhere else to hide.

Fumbling, crying, she reached for her purse and with fingers that felt as thick as sausages rummaged for her cell phone. Her hands were shaking, useless. With a curse, she upended her purse, rummaged madly then—with a sob of relief—found her cell phone. She grabbed it and switched it on.

Her throat was raw from the panicked breaths she was gulping in. She held the phone in one hand as she frantically went through the seeming thousands of bits and pieces of paper in her purse with the other.

Damn! She was usually tidy, but she’d been so busy lately she hadn’t had time to clean her purse out. It looked like every number she’d ever known was written down on a small piece of paper. There it was! No, that was the number of her tax advisor. Old high school friend she’d bumped into at Nordstrom’s, antique dealer, and new hairdresser—all of them had scribbled their numbers on scraps of paper.

Think, Suzanne!
She commanded herself. She closed her eyes, jaw clenched, and tried to think past her pounding heart and shaking nerves back to when John had written his cell phone number down.

If the intruder had found her kitchen door and picked the lock, he’d already walked through it. It was basically an open space. No obstacles at all. He could already be in her living room, or worse. Maybe he was already at the bedroom door.

She whimpered.
Think!!

Cold, it had been cold outside. John had stood towering over her, angry with her because she’d called a taxi, writing his number down—she remembered his handwriting—bold, black, and distinctive—and she’d stuck it in…

Her planner!

Frantic, she scrambled for it, flipped through the pages and…there it was!

Shaking, she punched out the number, hoping she was getting it right on those awkward buttons. Hoping her shaking hands wouldn’t betray her. The phone buttons seemed so hopelessly small. What if she’d punched the number in wrong? Ah. The line connected and started ringing. Make it be the right number, she prayed.

One…

Did she hear a small thud in the next room? Oh, God.