to start the coffee maker, she curled up on the couch while it brewed. But the cozy mystery lay unopened on her lap despite the fact that it was one that she’d anxiously been waiting to read. She sat quietly, trying to think of anything but the trauma she’d endured.
She looked over at the half-grown cat she’d so recently taken in. Her name was Lucy. Both the name and her reason for being here were fate more than choice. She’d taken the cat so one of the residents at the home where she worked wouldn’t lose contact with her pet and would still be able to see her. Now the adolescent cat was curled up on her raspberry-and-blue flowered armchair. Lucy had claimed that chair from the minute she’d been brought home. Kiera stood up and went to sit on the edge of the chair and ran her fingers through Lucy’s soft fur. The cat batted at her hand and curled up tighter, presenting her with her back.
“You win,” she said with a smile and went back to the couch. But, despite the cat’s rejection, it felt good to have her here, to have another living being sharing her space. In fact, she’d picked the cat up from her friend’s house the minute she’d been discharged from the hospital. But she knew that she needed more than Lucy to move past the trauma. She needed to dive back into the work she loved. Returning to her routine would get rid of the fear and uncertainty that had rooted in the midst of her life like a field of thistles. Even now, she missed her colleagues’ banter and the everyday comings and goings of the care home. The thought of that brought a touch of normalcy to the sense of unreality she’d had since she’d been kidnapped.
She stood up, paced and then sat down again. She knew that the experts disagreed with that theory. They thought that counseling sessions and rest were the answer. She didn’t need counselors or psychiatrists or any other health professional to talk her into wellness. What she needed, besides her life back, was to know that both her kidnappers were behind bars. That would make her feel so much better than any therapist ever could. But the authorities thought they had her attacker. No one believed that there were two involved in the attack for there was no physical evidence. Instead, the FBI had assigned a team of marshals to protect her. They weren’t here yet, and secretly she felt that they were putting them in place more to ensure that she didn’t skip town than to protect her. It was a feeling based on the way they’d phrased things as they laid their protection plan out to her. Whatever they thought about that—they were wrong.
It was five minutes to five o’clock.
The phone rang.
“It’s a prank,” she muttered. “Someone with a sick sense of humor.” That’s what the police officer had said when she’d told him that she’d gotten two calls early yesterday morning. One a hang up and the second heavy breathing. He hadn’t taken the calls seriously at all. In fact, he’d called the incidents unfortunate and bad timing, following so closely on the heels of all she’d been through.
Yet, in her heart she didn’t believe any of that. Her gut knew it would happen again and her hand shook as she answered.
“Hello,” she said and fought to keep the tremor from her voice. “What do you want?”
She was talking to dead air. They’d hung up just as they’d done yesterday at exactly this time.
If they followed yesterday morning’s pattern, they’d call again. In exactly ten minutes.
She hit End and wished that she could hurl the phone across the room.
She got up, dropping the blanket and the book on the couch as she went into her bedroom and over to the nightstand. She hesitated a second before opening the drawer. She looked at the gun lying there as if that would somehow make her feel better. The gun had rested in the bottom of her aunt’s purse for forty years, or so the woman who had raised her had claimed. She’d kept the gun after she had died, as a memento, nothing more. She didn’t like guns. And, for the longest time, aside from getting a permit to carry a concealed weapon, she’d kept it in a locked storage box. Despite the promise of police surveillance, being checked in on didn’t feel like it was enough. In her fear, she’d taken the gun out of the locked storage box the day after she left the hospital. Her life had turned on its head. Her aunt had been right, one should always be prepared. If she’d had the gun with her that fateful night, maybe she would never have been taken.
“Auntie Nan, you may have known what you were talking about,” she said. Her voice was soft, reflective. She looked upward as if somehow, somewhere, her aunt would be listening.
“Damn it.” She hated this, hated the fact that her life was in shreds and now she was the victim of some idiot. A prank caller on top of everything else was too much. For she knew her freedom would soon be curtailed by personal protection. A man prowling her property night and day was not something she wanted, and not, according to the FBI, anything she could avoid.
A US marshal was security she didn’t need. They’d soon be here anyway. What she wanted hadn’t seemed to matter in over a week. First the kidnapping and now in its aftermath, the surveillance, protection they liked to call it. Despite their insistence of vigilance, the irony was their reasons for it. They didn’t believe her claims that there was another killer. Instead, they feared that she would run. There was no danger in either option. She wouldn’t run and there was another killer. But Cheyenne wasn’t a place where a serial killer could continue his sick activities and not get caught. It wasn’t a place where he could blend in. It was a small city and that made it difficult to hide. Whoever the second killer was, he’d follow a pattern already established over the last year and head to a larger center where there was more opportunity. She was as sure of that as she was that the second killer existed. She tried to tell herself she was safe, that the fact that only one killer was behind bars, didn’t matter. She tried to tell herself that the killer that authorities insisted didn’t exist, was no threat to her but they would be a threat to another woman in some other town or city in this country. But despite thinking that, she wasn’t so sure that she was safe or, that it was over. She wasn’t a forensic expert or a psychiatrist, but she knew a little about serial killers. She’d met one face-to-face and she’d been in the presence of the other.
The other. She shuddered for it was the thought of that—of the one on the loose that terrified her most.
The one they hadn’t caught, the one they didn’t believe in, that one had been the leader. At least, that’s what she sensed. She also sensed that nothing would stop them. They’d go on, find a new partner, maybe work alone. But the end result would be that someone else would die. She shuddered. Someone had to stop the killing and to do that someone had to believe her.
At five minutes after five o’clock in the morning, the phone rang again. There was no point hesitating. That wouldn’t make any of this go away. She answered.
The deep breathing started. As it had before, it went on for a minute. This time she said nothing after the first hello, not for thirty seconds. Then she demanded that this end. She demanded an identity. She got neither of her demands. The phone call ended exactly thirty seconds after that.
She tossed the phone to the other end of the couch as if distance would make a statement, end the harassment. Prank calls were what she had thought yesterday. But now she sensed something else was at play, as a sense of déjà vu almost choked her.
* * *
THE SUN HAD only begun to rise when Travis turned the corner onto the quiet residential street. The assignment was low-key. That’s what he’d thought going in. He’d also learned a long time ago that situations like this could turn on a dime. And a second read of the file gave him a feeling that something was off. It was because of that, because he trusted his instincts, that he was here this early. His shift didn’t start for another three hours. Something told him that he needed to
