lived…it wasn’t her home. It wasn’t permanent. She was just a renter.
She’d lived a lot of places in her life, some of them scarier than others, but they’d all had one thing in common…they had been temporary stops, and this house was, too.
She wasn’t hungry and she couldn’t face studying. She was exhausted from grief over Lester and working after almost no sleep for the second weekend in a row. She stumbled down the hall to her bedroom, stopping along the way to reset the alarm.
That should make Hotwire happy.
Claire was dreaming. She was sleeping in the front seat of the old Buick she and her mom had called home for a few months when she was twelve. Part of her knew it was a dream, that she was a grown-up woman now, living in a house, not a car, but everything felt so real. She could even smell the must of the perpetually wet floor carpets.
She could hear her mom’s slow breathing from where she slept in the backseat and she could hear a siren’s wail. It was really close. The cops were coming…they would arrest her mom and put her in jail, too. Or maybe juvenile hall. Wasn’t it illegal to live in someone else’s abandoned car? She didn’t want to go to jail.
She started to whimper, fear clawing through her insides like an angry cat. Something came flying over the seat and landed against her face. Her mom’s pillow? Why had she thrown it? Claire tried to push it away, but it wouldn’t budge.
She struggled, desperation choking her.
She came awake with a jolt. She couldn’t breathe. There was something against her face and she could still hear the siren’s wail from her dream.
It was the alarm.
Someone had broken in. Someone who was holding a pillow over her face.
She opened her mouth to scream, but the pillow blocked it.
She thrashed, but couldn’t get any leverage.
The person was saying something. Counting. Her hands flailed and her right one hit a hard object. Then she remembered.
Hotwire had made her put a can of mace at the head of her bed. Weak from lack of oxygen, she grappled for it. There…got it. She fumbled with the safety, terrified she wouldn’t get it undone in time. Then, she directed it above the pillow over her face and pressed the button. And kept pressing while she waved it back and forth.
Vicious swearing. No more weight against the pillow. She pushed it up and sucked in air while terror-induced adrenaline caused her body to buck under her assailant. She managed to knock him sideways. She rolled off the other side of the bed and hit the hardwood floor with a thump.
The phone was ringing, but she couldn’t move to answer it. She was too busy trying to breathe. She pushed up onto her knees and sucked in one shuddering, noisy breath and then another. Her lungs were still starving, but she had to get out of there.
Her assailant lurched to his feet and lunged for her with a clumsy movement. She brought the mace up and sprayed again, this time aiming directly for the eye holes in his dark ski mask. He reared back, screaming. She ran for the door, but her oxygen-deprived body was clumsy.
She made it to the hallway, the house alarm screaming around her. Disoriented, it took her a fraction of a second to decide which way to go. She rushed for the front door, but she was only halfway across the living room when something grabbed her hair and yanked. She went backward and landed with a painful jarring flat on her back.
She saw the foot coming toward her head, but couldn’t do more than try to roll out of the way. She didn’t make it. Pain exploded in the back of her head and then everything went black.
Her head hurt like someone had used it for hitting practice with a brick bat. She groaned.
“Miss Sharp, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” came out a husky slur.
“Can you open your eyes?”
“Can try…” She willed her eyelids to peel back and winced when they did. “Too bright.” She shut them again.
“Please, Miss Sharp, I need you to open your eyes and keep them open.”
“Hurts…”
“I’m sorry.” The voice was kind.
She would try to do what it wanted.
She opened her eyes again, this time blinking at the brightness and trying to let her vision adjust. A light flicked in her left eye and then her right. She flinched from it. “No.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“Okay. Thank…you…” Her voice trailed off when she found it impossible to finish the thought.
He touched her head all over and her neck, asking questions. She tried to answer, but she cried out in pain when he probed the back of her skull.
“You’ve got a nasty bump here.”
Memories were flooding back. “Kicked me.”
The man made a disgusted sound and then asked, “You remember what happened?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good news.”
“Really?” She didn’t particularly enjoy remembering those terrifying moments.
“A concussion is usually accompanied by retrograde amnesia, the inability to remember what happened just prior to passing out.”
“Don’t have a concussion?” she asked, confused.
“I’m not sure, but your ability to remember is a good sign that if you do have one, it is not severe.”
“Who did this to you?” Another voice. Male.
She turned her head toward the voice and tears sprang into her eyes when excruciating pain shot through her head.
The voice belonged to a uniformed policeman.
Old conditioning died hard, and she cringed at the sight of the blue-clad officer standing so close. “Don’t know,” she croaked. “Wore a mask.”
“I’d like to finish my examination before you interview her.” The first voice belonged to a white-coated doctor, she now realized.
The policeman nodded.
She looked around her without moving her head. She was in an emergency room cubicle. How long had she been out? She didn’t remember leaving her home.
“How did I…”
“How did you get here?”
“Yes,” she sighed.
“A neighbor came to check on your alarm. He saw you lying on the floor of your living room through the open drapes. He called 911.”
“I
