With a curse, he called Mary’s house. He had to find out if she was okay. And if she was, he needed to warn her that the jig was up. This changed everything…
The phone rang several times.
“Answer, please answer.” He could hardly hear above the rush of blood in his ears, but he was fairly sure the voice that finally came on wasn’t a live one. A beep confirmed it. He’d reached her answering machine.
“Mary, take the kids and get out of the house! Immediately! Go somewhere safe. Malcolm knows you’ve been helping me. God, Mary, please pick up.”
The machine beeped again, this time to signal the end of the tape. Then a dial tone sounded. Sebastian would’ve redialed, but he was in too big a hurry. After he hung up, he called the police. Then he grabbed his keys and his coat and dashed out the door.
The telephone was his first clue that something wasn’t as it should be. When it rang, Malcolm didn’t wake Mary, although he’d been about to. He shrank back, into her walk-in closet. There was a phone on her nightstand, but she didn’t even stir. She probably didn’t get many phone calls in the middle of the night and assumed it was the TV, which got louder whenever a commercial came on. Or maybe she’d taken a sleeping pill. He knew she didn’t like living alone. She’d said so.
After what felt like an eternity, the ringing stopped. He could hear someone talking. An answering machine? It seemed to be coming from the middle of the house. But some guy selling exercise equipment on TV made it impossible to hear anything more than a low murmur.
What should he do? Get it over with? Or get out? Would lingering for another ten minutes get him caught?
The thought of prison terrified him. He knew what the inmates did to cops gone bad-even former cops. And what about his parents and siblings, and the men with whom he’d served on the force? They’d hear about it; they’d learn the truth.
Mary stirred as he left the closet. “Curtis?”
The phone had awakened her, after all. She believed the kids were up.
He hurried to the door and hustled down the hall.
“Brandon?” she called. She sounded more alert, almost frightened. Damn whoever had interrupted with that phone call! He’d been so close…
But he’d fix it, Malcolm told himself. He’d have another chance.
Afraid he might run into someone-like the police-if he went out the front, he darted into the laundry room and crossed to the back door. Without any streetlights, the yard was dark and provided more places to hide.
Opening the door as quietly as possible, he slipped into the yard and maneuvered through the shrubs. Then he hopped the fence, crouching in the corner of the neighbor’s yard to watch and listen. If that random call turned out to be nothing, maybe he could still get to her, demand Sebastian’s address before he killed her and disappear before dawn.
She’d heard movement. Mary was sure of it. Someone had been in her bedroom. She’d seen a large dark shape move quickly to the door just as she was coming awake. But both her boys were asleep and, when she roused them, they insisted they hadn’t gotten out of bed even to go to the bathroom. What was going on?
A sense of foreboding gripped her as she walked through the house carrying her son’s baseball bat. Looking in closets and peering around corners, she paused every few seconds to listen. But she heard nothing she didn’t hear every night.
When she reached the study, a rush of cold air hit her. It seemed to be coming from the laundry room…
Taking a slight detour from her frightened trek to the living room, she poked her head into the laundry and flipped on the light.
The back door stood ajar. She’d been right. Someone-a man, judging by the size of the shape she’d seen-had been in her house.
Fear made her knees go weak as she gaped at the fog blanketing her yard. If he was still out there, she couldn’t see him.
Her hands shook as she closed the door and drew the bolt. She hadn’t left it open. She knew that much. She’d locked this door and every other before bed, checked them twice. So how had he gotten in? And what did he want?
Was it a robbery?
Gathering her courage, she turned on the rest of the lights in the house. As far as she could tell, nothing had been stolen or disturbed. And she’d already made sure the boys were safe. Whoever it was hadn’t taken anything, but she figured it was best to report the incident. The police needed to be aware that there were burglars in the neighborhood.
She was about to call 9-1-1 when she heard a brisk knock at the front door. Parting the blinds on the closest window, she saw the flashing red lights of a squad car in her driveway. The police were already here. Someone else must’ve called them.
“Thank God,” she muttered and raced to her bedroom for a robe.
A second knock rattled the front of the house as she reentered the living room. “Coming,” she called. But she didn’t need to unlock the door in order to open it. Because it was already unlocked.
Even more confused, she swung the door wide, expecting the young, clean-cut officers on her stoop to offer some sort of explanation.
“Hello, ma’am.”
Now that she could make out their faces, she could tell that one was clearly older than the other. He was the one who spoke.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but we received a call about a possible intruder at this address.”
His words only created more questions. “You did?” she said. “I was about to place that call myself, but I haven’t had a chance.”
“Maybe it was your husband.”
“I’m divorced. Maybe it was a neighbor. Please come in. I don’t know what’s going on, but something’s up.” She waved them toward the couch. Then she spotted the flowers on her dining room table and caught her breath. Had it been Malcolm? Sebastian had warned her that he might act now that he had her address.
The thought that her home, her safety and her children’s safety might be compromised made her ill. She’d been through so much with the divorce, had just gotten on her feet again. She didn’t think she could deal with another upset, not like this.
The officer who’d greeted her cleared his throat. Dimly, she realized that he’d asked her a question. “Excuse me?”
“How do you know something’s going on?” he repeated.
She was about to explain when she heard the screech of tires. Someone else had arrived. Dropping the ends of the tie to her robe, which she’d been nervously fingering, she ran to the window to peek through the blinds again. Then she relaxed. This man she recognized.