Beachcomber (10 page)

His gaze fell on the phone. As a precaution, he’d cut the outside wires, but there was a good chance she had one of those damned cell phones. But using one that was not local was always tricky, in his experience, and hers would have been purchased in Philadelphia or possibly Atlantic City. Not that he meant to give her the opportunity to use it.

Moving carefully as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he crossed the living area to the arched doorway that led into a short, windowless hall. He knew it was short because he used the small flashlight he always kept on his tool belt to light his way as needed along the pitch-black passage. Quick flashes revealed chalky white walls. Beige carpeting. Two—three—four doors: three bedrooms and a bath. His footsteps made no
sound as he crept toward the bedroom at the far end.

It was the only closed door. He knew she was behind it without even having to look in the other rooms. He could hear her turning over in bed, hear her uneasy murmurs, hear her breathing. He could smell soap and shampoo and woman.

Was she awake? The faintest of doubts caused him to frown. If she wasn’t, she was a very noisy sleeper. He paused outside her door and pressed his ear to it. Everything he heard convinced him that she was asleep. He would creep up on her while she slumbered all unknowing, and hit her with his stun gun. Then she would be his.

At the thought, he felt himself starting to get excited. This kill had not been initiated by the beast, but the beast was growing interested. He could feel its rising tension, its anticipation. Christy Petrino was a young woman, attractive, of the physical type he liked. With Liz gone, she could be a playmate for Terri.

With that happy thought, he smiled at the closed bedroom door and reached for the knob. It was locked. Well, that was an easy problem to solve. He got out his pick again and, focusing his beam on the little hole in the center of the knob, slid it into the lock.

6

T
HE DREAM STARTED OUT
as a pleasant one: she was in her own apartment in Philadelphia, in the cheerful yellow kitchen loading her supper dishes into the dishwasher. It was almost nine at night, she’d been home from work for about an hour, and she still had more work in her briefcase to finish before she went to bed. A quick knock on the door of her apartment sent her walking across the polished wood floor of the entry hall to look out the peephole. Her sister Nicole’s ex-husband Franky was standing there. Franky had never been one of her favorite people even when he was married to Nicole, and he certainly wasn’t now that it was all over, but he pounded with real urgency even as she stared at him through the peephole and she opened the door. He practically leaped in on top of her.

“They’re after me! You gotta help me!” he begged, clutching her arms so hard it hurt. He was about her own age, a slight, handsome man with slicked-back dark hair and spaniel-brown eyes. Usually he was cocky to the point of obnoxiousness, but at that moment he was clearly terrified.

“Who’s after you?” she asked, frowning.

And then he’d told her… .

That scene segued abruptly into another: she was crouched beside the girl on the beach, her own warm fingers pressed to cold, sandy skin. A croaked, desperate
“help me”
was just audible over the sound of the incoming tide. A man was jogging toward her, dark and menacing against the starlit sky. There was something about that bulky silhouette that struck terror deep into her soul. She jumped up, screaming… .

Christy awoke with a start. For a moment she lay unmoving, blinking in the semidarkness, not quite sure where she was. Her heart pounded. Her breathing was erratic. She felt—in jeopardy. In immediate, life-threatening jeopardy. Her sixth sense was practically doing calisthenics, going all out to get her juiced up. Her nerve endings were going wild as they were flooded with urgent messages to get up and run.

Then her gaze slid to the narrow slice of light that she could see shining around the edge of the not-quite-closed door of the en suite bathroom, and some of her terror began to recede. She remembered turning that light on before she crawled into bed, remembered positioning the door so that the light would not be enough to keep her awake, but would be enough to keep her from being plunged into pitch darkness as soon as she turned off the bedside lamp. Everything then came back to her in a rush. Of course, she was on Ocracoke Island, in the beach cottage, in the master bedroom, in the king-sized bed. Curled up in a tight little ball peeking fearfully out from beneath the covers.

With a great deal of relief, Christy realized that she’d had a nightmare. What a surprise. After the horror of what she had witnessed on the beach, after everything that she had been through recently, a nightmare was probably the least of the reactions she could expect. She’d been
traumatized,
damn it. It was unfair. It shouldn’t have happened. She shouldn’t
be
here. She wanted her life back. Her safe, peaceful, happy life.

Fat chance.

This was all the fault of her loser ex–brother-in-law Franky Hill, who didn’t have enough sense to stay out of trouble and, more importantly, keep his big mouth shut. No, it was all Michael’s fault, because—

She broke off in mid mental rant to stare, open-mouthed, at the bedroom door. Or, more particularly, at the knob. It was turning.

For the space of a heartbeat, she simply gaped at it, refusing to believe what her eyes were telling her.

The knob couldn’t really be turning. Despite the sliver of light shining out around the bathroom door, the room was gray and shadowy enough for her to be mistaken. Plus, she wasn’t fully awake. What she thought she was seeing was probably just some leftover remnant of nightmare.

Or not.

That was the thought that popped into her head as the knob started turning in the opposite direction.

Her heart leaped into her throat. The hair on the back of her neck spiked upright. She stopped breathing. Her eyes stayed glued to that shiny brass knob, and
she watched with burgeoning horror as it continued turning slowly, stealthily, to the left.

No doubt about it: she was wide awake now and in full possession of every single one of her faculties. Unless this was some twisted, reality-show version of
Candid Camera
meets the
X-Files,
someone was outside her bedroom door trying to get in.

Thank God for the dresser she’d used to barricade the door. Wrestling it into place before she’d felt safe enough to turn in had left her sweaty and exhausted and feeling more than slightly stupid, but now her efforts with the unwieldy piece of furniture were paying off big-time. In fact, they just might save her life. Because if the knob was turning, clearly the cheap pushbutton lock had already been breached. Yes, she could see it, right there in the middle of the circle of brass, sticking up like an outie belly button. She swallowed as she faced the awful truth: the dresser was all that was keeping whoever was out there from being in here.

If she lived to be a hundred, she was never knocking paranoia again.

Even as she had the thought, she grabbed for her cell phone and the Mace, both of which she’d strategically positioned on the bedside table just in case, and rolled out of bed. Crouching like a runner at the starting line, she gave that twisting knob one more hunted look before catapulting for the bathroom. There was a window in the bedroom, an old-fashioned double-hung that looked out over a vista of sand and sea oats and picket fence that separated her house from that of her catloving
neighbor. Should she try to open it and climb out and run away? From what she remembered, it looked like it hadn’t been opened in years. She was willing to bet her life that the darn thing was swollen or painted or nailed shut.

And she had the dreadful suspicion that her life was exactly what was at stake.

Choking back a bubbling series of blood-curdling screams that were doing their best to strong-arm their way out of her throat, she carefully, quietly closed the bathroom door and pressed down the same kind of worthless, push-button lock that had failed to protect her in the bedroom. Heart thudding, breathing hard, she backed away from the door until her back flattened against cold, smooth, circa 1950s green tile, and punched 911 into her phone. Alerting whoever was trying to get into her bedroom that she was aware of his presence by screaming her lungs out did not seem like a smart thing to do. Besides, if she screamed who would hear her? The cottage walls were concrete covered with stucco, designed in the pre–air-conditioner era to provide insulation against the sweltering heat. Making noise was something better left for the police when they arrived. The dresser wasn’t
that
heavy. A few good shoves and a strong man would be in.

Remembering the big, burly figure she’d seen on the beach, Christy broke out in a cold sweat. She knew, absolutely
knew,
with a kind of instinctive certainty that she was never going to question again, that it was the man on the beach who was now outside her bedroom door. Clearly he was trying not to awaken her—and he
also probably hadn’t yet figured out what was keeping him out. When he did …

She thought of the poor dead woman with the slit throat, and started to shake.

“We’re sorry, it’s necessary to dial a one and the area code before accessing that number—”

Christy wrenched the phone away from her ear and stared down at it in disbelief. Of all the useless—

Thud.
The dull sound came from the bedroom and it galvanized her. She knew what it was. He’d figured out that something was blocking the bedroom door and was trying to shoulder his way in.

Dear God, I’ll go to Mass
and
confession every week for the rest of my life if you just help me out here.

On the theory that God helps those who help themselves, she dialed 911 again as she prayed, and at the same time glanced frantically around the windowless bathroom for anything that might be used to barricade the door. It was a small room, maybe seven by nine feet, with a black-and-white tile floor, green tile walls, and white fixtures. The sink was at one end, the tub was at the other, and the door and toilet both occupied the same wall. As far as containing something of substantial size that she could both move and use to block the door, she was pretty much shit out of luck. There was only a white wicker étagère …

Thud. Thud.

“If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help—”

Arggh.

Her blood thundered in her ears. Her heart pumped
in triple time. Mind racing, she dropped the worthless piece-of-junk phone on the green fuzzy rug that covered the toilet lid and grabbed the lone solid object—a glass-globed scented candle—off the étagère, placing it beside the phone. Then, she tipped the shelving unit over on its side, scattering the folded towels with which it had been laden all over the floor. The étagère wasn’t all that tall—maybe six feet, she guessed as she looked it over. But then, the bathroom wasn’t all that wide …

In the blink of an eye, she had that étagère in place, flat on its back with its four rickety-looking little top legs braced against the door. Unfortunately, the top of the étagère missed reaching the opposite wall by about a foot.

Thud.

Christy swallowed.

He was in the bedroom.

She could hear his soft footsteps on the rug. They stopped, and she imagined him standing beside the bed. Imagined him figuring out that she was not concealed there amid the mounded covers. Imagined him looking up to find light glowing out from underneath the bathroom door.

Her pulse skyrocketed. She drew in a deep, shaky breath as she fought back incipient panic. Too late to turn off the telltale overhead light. Not that turning the light off would help particularly. The closet and the bathroom were the only two places she could reasonably be. Listening intently, she heard him cross to the closet, heard the rattle as the louvered doors were pushed open. Then she heard him coming back.

Fear turned her blood to ice. She was cold and clammy, breathing hard. Time to face facts one more time: the bathroom wasn’t a sanctuary at all. It was a death trap.

Please, God. Please.

Her gaze lit on the wastebasket. She grabbed it and set it down between the bottom of the étagère and the opposite wall. Better, but no cigar. There were still a few inches of space remaining. She glanced around wildly.

More footsteps. Growing louder. Coming close. Then—hold your breath and wait for it—the doorknob moved. He had found her. He was just outside.

Her heart felt like it was going to pound through her chest. Her breathing came in quick, hard pants. A wave of dizziness assailed her. The room seemed to tilt.

Dear God, please don’t let me hyperventilate and pass out now.

Snatching up her plastic toiletries kit from the back of the sink, she crammed it down between the étagère and wastebasket. At least the space was now filled. The wastebasket touched the wall; the étagère touched the door.