style="font-size:15px;"> What was wrong? Why didn’t Richard answer? Her fears multiplied with every single …
The ringing stopped.
“Charlotte.”
“Richard? Where are—”
Click.
What the …? He hung on up her? A burst of anger surged through her. He knew what that did to her—how she’d received all those calls and hang-ups in the weeks following the kidnapping. It had taken months of therapy afterward before she’d even allow a phone in her rooms, longer than that to carry one with her.
Richard knew that. He knew … “Oh, my God.”
Embarrassment washed away her unkind thoughts, leaving Charlotte’s knees weak and her heart racing with concern. What if Richard was hurt? What if he was having a heart attack and needed her help? What if he hadn’t called her because he couldn’t?
She pocketed the phone and grasped the dead bolt above the doorknob. But her fingers danced over the steel pin, hesitating to grab hold. Could she turn it? Did she dare? Richard had been with her family from the time she was a child. He was family. He’d stayed on when he could have retired because she could almost function like a normal person when surrounded by familiar faces, by the handful of staff she trusted. If he’d been driving her the night of her high-school prom, he’d have gotten her safely home. He would never, ever intentionally frighten her.
What if Richard needed her?
Listening to her worries instead of the fear, shutting down her brain and following her heart, Charlotte curled her fingers through Max’s collar and turned the bolt.
She nudged the door open, barely wide enough for the dog to stick his muzzle out. Charlotte leaned into the crack until the moisture in the air splashed against her cheek. Max strained against her grip to squeeze through to the gap. “Hold on.”
She wasn’t ready to do this. She had to do this. Face your fear.
“Okay.” Taking a deep breath and holding it, Charlotte put her left eye to the narrow opening and peeked outside. Her glasses fogged up almost instantly, blinding her. But she pulled the frames away from her face and let the lenses clear. Once she’d readjusted them on her nose, she huffed out a curse at her temerity. She could see the light from the streetlamp at the edge of the parking lot reflected in every rivulet of rain that streaked the polished black fender of Richard’s BMW. The car was right there, parked a couple of feet beyond the edge of the green-and-white awning.
Charlotte pushed the door open a few inches more and let Max run out to sniff the rear tire. “Richard?” she shouted through the downpour.
She hurried out to the car. Rain spotted her glasses, distorting her vision before she got the back door open. But Charlotte never climbed inside.
“Are you okay?”
Reprimand gave way to relief. Then her mind seized up with a whole different kind of fear.
She darted around her door and pulled open the driver’s door. “Richard!” Her beloved friend was slumped over the steering wheel. “Richard?” Charlotte pulled out her phone, punched in a 9. She swiped the rain from her glasses and glanced around, making sure the narrow lot was still empty, before lightly shaking his shoulder. She punched in a 1. When there was no response, she slid her arm across Richard’s chest, her fingers clinging to something warm and sticky at the side of his neck as she pulled him back against the seat. “Oh, my God.”
Richard’s eyes were open, sightless. Blood oozed from the neat round bullet hole at his temple. She couldn’t bear to look at the pulpy mess she’d felt on the other side of his head.
Charlotte.
She jerked her hand away.
Richard never called her anything but “Miss Charlotte.”
Charlotte whirled around. “Face your fear,” she chanted. “Face your fear.”
He had her number.
Whoever had done this had taken Richard’s cell phone. She’d called him, and now he could call her back.
She shut off the traitorous phone and stuffed it deep into her pocket. She checked every corner and shadow, marked every movement—a car speeding past on the curiously empty street, a wadded-up fast-food sack skipping across the pavement and Max giving chase. “Max …?”
She put her lips together and tried to whistle.
But any fleeting sense of security sputtered out along with the sound. Was there something moving beyond the Dumpster at the end of the alley?
The rain had finally pummeled its way through her thick hair and crept like chilled fingers over her scalp. There were brick walls on three sides of her—three stories high with shuttered windows and iron bars.
And the Dumpster.
“Face …” How could she face what she couldn’t see? Her heart raced. Her thoughts scattered. The nightmare surged inside her.
Besides the dog and the dead man, she was alone, right? She saw no one, heard nothing but the wind and rain and her own pulse hammering inside her ears.
But she could feel him. A chill ran straight down her spine.
She caught sight of the blood washing from her stained fingers, dripping down into the puddle at her feet. She snatched her fist back to her chest, her feet already moving, retreating from death and horror and him.
Whether the eyes watching her were real or imagined didn’t matter. Charlotte’s reaction was intense and immediate. Run. Hide. She clicked her tongue. “Max! Come on, boy. Come on.”
But the scent of trashy cheeseburger wrappers was too enticing.
“Max!” Operating in a panicked haze, she put her fingers to her lips and blew. The shrill sound pierced the heavy air and diverted the dog’s attention. “Get over here!”
Max bounded to her and she scooped him up, yanking open the museum’s back door and dumping him inside. Charlotte slammed the door behind her and twisted the dead bolt into place. Oh, God. She hadn’t imagined a damn thing. Softer than the pounding of her heart, more menacing than the bloody handprints she’d left on her coat—footsteps crunched on the pavement outside. Running footsteps. Coming closer.
Charlotte grabbed Max by the collar, backed away.
“Charlotte!” A man pounded on the door.
She screamed, stumbled over the dog and went down hard on her rump on the concrete floor.
“Charlotte!”
She didn’t know that voice. Didn’t know that man.
How did he know her name?
Flashing between nightmares and reality, between Richard’s murder and her own terror, the pounding fists seemed to beat against her.
“Charlotte! Come on, girlfriend.
