Exposure
Authors: Brandilyn Collins
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Suspense, #Mystery, #Mystery And Suspense Fiction, #General & Literary Fiction, #Fiction - General, #Suspense Fiction, #Christian Fiction, #Fiction - Religious, #Christian, #Religious & spiritual fiction, #Paranoia, #Christian - Suspense, #Fear, #Women journalists
ZONDERVAN
Exposure
Copyright © 2009 by Brandilyn Collins
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Mobipocket Edition © MARCH 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-56152-1
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan,
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collins, Brandilyn.
Exposure : a novel / Brandilyn Collins.
p. cm.
1. Women journalists — Fiction. 2. Paranoia — Fiction. 3. Fear — Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.O4747815E92 2009
813’.54 — dc22 2008052611
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the
Holy Bible, New International Version
®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
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Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. www.alivecommunications.com.
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For my mom,
Ruth Seamands,
and the denizens of Wilmore
Contents
Exposure
with Your Book Club?
Insightful questions about the story and how it applies to your life can be found on my website at:
www.brandilyncollins.com
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.
1 John 4:18, NKJV
Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.
Rudyard Kipling
She’d forgotten to turn on the porch lights.
Kaycee Raye pulled into her driveway and slowed her red PT Cruiser. Her gaze bored into the night. The streetlamp across the road behind her dispelled too few shadows. Someone could be out there, watching.
Her gaze cut left to the neighbor’s decrepit black barn and its fence in need of paint. The barn hulked sullen and taunting, its bowed slats the perfect hiding place for peering eyes.
Kaycee shuddered.
She looked down Village Circle, running to the left of the barn into the apartment complex of Jessamine Village. All was quiet. Not unusual for nighttime in Wilmore, Kentucky, a small town about twenty minutes south of Lexington.
To the right of Kaycee’s house old Mrs. Foley’s wide front porch was lit. Kaycee stared into the dimness beyond the lamplight, searching for movement.
A curtain on Mrs. Foley’s side living room window edged back. Kaycee tensed. Backlit by a yellow glow, the elderly woman’s thin frame hunched behind the glass. Watching.
Kaycee’s fingers curled around the steering wheel.
It’s only Mrs. Foley
,
it’s only Mrs. Foley.
The woman was harmless. Still, a vise clamped around Kaycee’s chest. Since childhood she’d fought the strangling sense of being watched. Talk about Las Vegas odds — what were the chances of her buying a house next to a snoopy old woman?
Kaycee struggled to grasp the coping skills she’d learned over the years. Rational argument. Deep breathing for calm. Willing her muscles to relax. But her lungs only constricted more.
Swallowing hard, she eyed Mrs. Foley’s silhouette. Las Vegas odds? Maybe. But fears could come true, even one’s
worst
fear. Hadn’t that happened to Kaycee’s best friend, Mandy Parksley? Mandy had been plagued by the fear that, like her own mother, she would die young and leave her daughter, Hannah, behind. Kaycee insisted that would never come to pass. Mandy was healthy and fit. But at thirty-three she’d suddenly developed a brain tumor — and died within nine months.
Mrs. Foley’s head moved slightly, as if she was trying to see inside Kaycee’s car. That did it. Time to flush the woman out. Kaycee flicked on the light inside her Cruiser, leaned sideways, and waved with animation. “Hey there, Mrs. Foley!” She forced the words through clenched teeth.
The woman jerked away from the window, her curtain fluttering shut.
Breath returned to Kaycee slowly.
The bulb in her car seemed to brighten, exposing her to the night. Kaycee smacked off the light and glanced around.
Push back the fear.
But she couldn’t. At Mandy’s death a year ago, Kaycee’s lifelong coping skills had crumbled. Rational thinking no longer worked. If Mandy’s worst fear could happen, why couldn’t Kaycee’s? Maybe there
were
people out there watching.
How ironic that Mandy had been drawn to her through Kaycee’s syndicated newspaper column about overcoming fear. “Who’s There?” had millions of readers across the country, all so grateful to Kaycee for helping them fight back. Crazy but courageous Kaycee Raye. If she could overcome her multiple fears, so could they.
In the end, she hadn’t been able to help Mandy.
If her readers only knew how far down she’d spiraled since then.
Shoulders tight, Kaycee hit the remote button to open her garage and drove inside. As the door closed she slid from her car, gripping her purse. She hurried under the covered walkway to her back entrance, key in hand. Kaycee shoved open the door, her fingers scrabbling around the door frame for the overhead light switch. As the fluorescent light flickered on, she whisked inside, shut the door, and locked it.
Eyes closed, she exhaled.
The weight upon her lifted. In her own home she could relax. Unlike her mother, she didn’t peer out windows every minute. How she missed inheriting that habit, she’d never know. Still, all blinds and curtains had to be closed at night. She needed to complete that task. When she’d left to visit Hannah, it had been daylight.
Kaycee’s heart squeezed. Every time Kaycee was with Hannah — which was often, after she’d slid into place as surrogate mother — Mandy’s death hit her all over again. But this particular visit had been unusually heartrending. It had taken every ounce of fortitude Kaycee could muster to tell the begging, grief-stricken nine-year-old that she couldn’t leave her father and new stepmom and come live with her.
Kaycee placed her purse and key on the gray Formica counter at her left — the short bottom of a long-stemmed L of cabinets and sink — and inhaled the comforting smell of home. Tonight it mixed the regular scent of the old house’s wood with the chicken baked for supper. For once Kaycee had eaten a regular meal.
As the tension in her shoulders unwound, Kaycee breathed a prayer for Hannah. It wasn’t fair to lose your mother at that young age. But to see your father remarry within months, bringing a new mom with a daughter of her own into the house — Kaycee could strangle the man, even as she’d assured Hannah, “You can’t leave your dad; he loves you.”
“Yeah, like he loved Mom,” Hannah sobbed. “She might as well have been a dog that died. Just go out and get another one.”