Читать книгу Mountain Shelter - Cassie Miles, Cassie Miles - Страница 9

Chapter One

With eyes wide open, Jayne Shackleford stared at the glowing numbers on her bedside clock: 9:29. Though it didn’t really make a sound, she heard tick-tick-tick. She rolled over so she couldn’t see the number switch to 9:30 p.m., which marked a sleepless half hour in bed.

She wanted a full eight to ten hours of deep, delta-wave slumber before she performed the operation tomorrow morning. Was anxiety keeping her awake? It shouldn’t. Her success rate with this neurosurgical procedure was nearly 100 percent: thirty-three operations and only one partial failure. That patient hadn’t died, but the surgery didn’t erase the effects of his stroke. She had this procedure in the bag. There’d be no problems. Why so tense?

Possibly, she was overly eager, like a kid waiting for Christmas. About an operation? Tick-tick-tick. But she couldn’t imagine any other pending moment of excitement.

Flinging out her arm, she reached for the wineglass on the bedside table. She didn’t take sleeping pills, but she’d found that a glass of merlot before diving between the covers helped her ease into REM.

Her fingers brushed the glass. It slid off the nightstand and fell to the floor. “I’m a klutz!”

The irony annoyed her. She could perform delicate microsurgery without a slip, but when it came to regular life, she was the queen of clumsy, barely able to walk across a room without tripping over her own feet. Her nanny used to say that Jayne was so busy racing to the summit that she couldn’t bother to look where she was going. Well, yeah! How else had she gotten to be a top-rated neurosurgeon by the time she was twenty-eight?

Though tempted to ignore the spill, she didn’t want to ruin the pale peach Berber carpet that had taken several hours and the advice of two interior designers to select. She sat up on the bed and clapped to turn on the lights. Nothing happened. She clapped again, an undeserved ovation. No glow.

Pushing her long brown hair away from her face, she reached for the switch on the lamp and flicked it. The light didn’t turn on. And the digital clock had gone dark. Her electricity must be out, which meant she’d have to go down into the creepy basement to the fuse box. Well, damn. This wasn’t supposed to happen. After the last bout of piecemeal repairs on her two-story house, the electrician promised her that she wouldn’t have problems. At least, not until the next time she did renovations.

And then, the neighbor’s dog sent up a howl.

As if she needed another annoyance?

The chocolate Lab, with dark brown fur almost the same color as her long hair, wasn’t usually a barker, but these occasions when he—or was it female?—dashed around woofing reminded her why she didn’t have pets. Barefoot, she padded to the window and peeked through the blinds at her usually quiet neighborhood in the Washington Park area of Denver.

Peevishly, she noted that everybody else’s lights were on. Looking down from the second floor, she saw the Lab dashing back and forth at the fence bordering her yard.

She should yell something down at it. What was the animal’s name? Something with a k sound, it might be Killer or Cujo.

The light at the top of her neighbor’s back steps went on and potbellied, bald-headed Brian appeared in the doorway. He called to his dog, “Cocoa, hush. Is something wrong? What’s wrong, Cocoa?”

Did he expect an answer? Jayne simply couldn’t abide people who spoke to their pets. Though she had high regard for the intelligence of nonhumans, she didn’t like to see animals treated in an anthropomorphic manner, i.e., asking their opinion or dressing them in doll clothing. Such interactions lacked focus and functionality. In this case, however, Brian’s voice had an effect. Cocoa ceased to woof, charged toward the house, crashed up the back stairs and through the door.

The neighborhood was tranquil again. Jayne looked down at the five-foot-tall chain-link fence covered with English ivy that was already starting to turn crimson in late September. As far as she could tell, there was nothing to bark at.

She opened the blinds so she could use the moonlight glow through the window to see. Going down to the basement meant she needed something on her feet. As she slipped into her moccasins, she heard noises from downstairs. Not the tick-tick-tick of a soundless clock, but a click and a clack and the squeak of a floorboard. The sound of a door being opened. Footsteps.

Impossible! No way could an intruder break in. She’d purchased a state-of-the-art security system that set off an alarm and called the police if a door or window was compromised. The system worked on battery even in a power outage. Jayne had specifically asked about the backup—electricity was fragile.

She crept around the edge of her bed to the nightstand where her cell phone was charging. She wanted to be able to call 911 if she heard anything else. Her thumb poked the screen to turn it on. There was no response, no perky logo, not even a welcoming beep. What was wrong with this thing? There had to be enough juice—it had been charging for the past hour. She held the phone close to her nose and pressed in various spots. The screen remained blank.

The noises from downstairs became more distinct. She was almost certain that she heard heavy footfalls crossing the bare wood kitchen floor. The amygdala in the frontal cortex of her brain sent out panic signals, causing her pulse to accelerate and her muscles to tense. If she had an intruder, what should she do? Fight or flight? Fight wasn’t her forte. She didn’t own a gun and knew nothing about self-defense. Maybe she could hide...under the bed...or in the closet.

Any hope that she might be imagining this nightmare vanished when the third step from the bottom of the staircase squawked. The flicker of a flashlight beam slid across the carpet onto the landing outside her bedroom. Flight, baby, flight.

There was only one place to run. She dove into the small adjoining bathroom and closed the door. Not exactly a fortress. The door was flimsy; the lock wouldn’t hold. She had to find something to brace against the door.

The beam from the intruder’s flashlight shone under the lip of the bathroom door. He was right outside, only a few feet away from her. The knob rattled as he turned it.

She tore down the stainless-steel rod that had been holding the shower curtain around the old claw-foot bathtub. Thank God, she hadn’t remodeled in here yet. Thrashing and yanking, she managed to brace the pole between a cabinet and the door.

“Jayne,” he whispered, “let me in. I won’t hurt you.”

Damn right, you won’t. “I called nine-one-one.”

“I don’t think you did.” He kept his voice low, but she detected a hint of an accent. “I don’t think your phone works.”

He must have done something to disrupt her cell-phone signal. And turn off her security system. And cut her electric.

He was smart.

And that was bad news for her. He’d be able to figure a way around her crude door brace in seconds. She couldn’t just stand there, wringing her hands. She needed to escape.

The narrow window was her only outlet. If she could get the old paint unstuck and open the glass, she could slide down three or four feet to the slanted roof that covered the wraparound porch. From there, she could lower herself past the eaves to the porch railing.

He pounded the door. “Open up, Jayne.”

Using her hairbrush as a wedge, she forced the sticky window latch to release. Frantically, she shoved the glass open. A brisk autumn breeze whooshed inside, and she shivered. Her skimpy cotton nightie wasn’t going to provide much warmth. There were beach towels on the top shelf of the cabinet near the door. One of those would have to do.

She grabbed a towel, threw it around her shoulders like a shawl and leaned closer to the door to listen. It seemed quiet. Had he left? She put her ear to the door. Her panic spiked.

What was worse than an intruder who had you trapped in the bathroom? Two intruders.

She heard them whispering. They were plotting together, and it wouldn’t take them long to determine that she was going out a window. She had to move fast.

She threw the oversize towel with an orange-and-yellow sun out the window, and then she followed, slipping through the bathroom window and down the bricks to the slanted roof over the front porch. The angle wasn’t steep, but her footing felt precarious. As she wrapped the sunny-colored towel around her shoulders, she realized that she’d brought the hairbrush with her. A weapon?

The bedroom window to her right lifted. The head and shoulders of a man wearing a black ski mask emerged. He was coming for her. The synapses in her brain fired like a pinball machine. She screamed.

His buddy might already be downstairs on the porch, waiting for her to drop into his lap. She glanced up at the narrow bathroom window. No way could she climb back in there.

He spoke in his whispery voice through the mask, “Be careful, Doctor. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“How do you know I’m a doctor?”

“I’d be happy to explain.”

He held out his arm, beckoning her toward him. In the moonlight, she saw what he held in his hand. “You’ve got a stun gun.”

He didn’t bother with a denial. “I don’t want to use it.”

He sure did. His plan was to zap her into a state of helplessness and carry her away. Anger cut through her fear. Using all her strength, she pulled back her arm and fired her hairbrush at him.

She was surprised that she actually hit him. And so was he. The intruder dropped his stun gun.

In the moonlight, she could barely see the outline of his weapon against the dark gray shingles. She scampered forward, grabbed the gun and brandished it. “Don’t come near me.”

He swung his leg over the windowsill.

She went to the edge of the roof. Climbing over the gutter attached to the eaves looked more difficult than she had anticipated. “Help, somebody help me!”

Brian had been on his back porch only a moment ago. She continued to yell. Where was the barking dog when you needed him? “Please help me!”

Her shouts had an effect on the intruder. Instead of climbing out the window, he pulled back inside. Taking advantage of his retreat, she crept across the roof until she was right above Brian’s porch, screeching like an emergency-alert siren.

His front door opened. Dumbfounded, Brian squinted up at her. In his left hand, he held his cell phone. From inside his house, Cocoa was barking.

“Nine-one-one,” she yelled.

“Your house is dark,” he yelled back.

“I have an intruder.”

“A burglar?”

Now was not the time for a discussion. “Call the police. Please, please, call.”

He gave her the thumbs-up signal and made the call while she perched above the eaves with her knees pulled up. Her long hair fell forward and curtained her face. Though she could have climbed back into one of the windows without too much difficulty, Jayne didn’t trust herself to move another inch, not even to grab the towel she’d dropped. Her throat tightened as she gasped for breath. Adrenaline flooded her system.

In her subconscious mind, she must have known something was coming. Tick-tick-tick. But she never expected this. Shivering and sweating at the same time, she held her left hand in front of her eyes. Her fingers trembled. A sob exploded through her pinched lips.

Suffice it to say, she would not be getting a restful sleep tonight.

* * *

AN HOUR AND ten minutes later, Jayne was still scared. Her hands had stopped trembling enough to type, but her nerves were still strung tight. Wrapped in Brian’s green velour bathrobe that smelled like pizza, she sat at the desk in his home office with Cocoa at her side. His house was smaller than hers, only one story, but he worked from home three days a week. The intruders should have come here. Brian’s computer equipment was worth more than anything she had at her house.

From the front room and kitchen, she could hear people coming and going, voices rising and falling. It was time for her to rejoin them, but she wasn’t ready. All she really wanted was to hide until the danger had passed.

She’d behaved badly when the police officers first arrived to rescue her from the roof. She and Cocoa had both been problematic. The chocolate Lab had been barking and baring his teeth, which seemed like threatening behavior but was, more likely, an adrenal fear response. The dog was scared of all these strangers. Jayne’s issues weren’t that different.

Frightened, she hadn’t known who to trust and didn’t like taking orders from anybody. Not the police. Not the paramedic who wanted her to get into an ambulance. She was disoriented. Her neat-and-tidy world had gone spinning madly out of control, and she was so damn scared that she could hardly move.

In Brian’s kitchen, a uniformed officer had pulled out a small spiral notebook and started asking questions. Jayne snapped. “Why should I give you a statement? I’ll just have to repeat myself when the detective in charge of the investigation arrives.”

“Calm down.” The officer—a thickset woman with short blond hair—gestured to a chair at the kitchen table. “Have a seat, Ms. Shackleford. May I call you Jayne?”

“It’s Dr. Shackleford,” she said through tight lips.

“Any relation to Peter Shackleford?”

“My father.”

The officer literally took a step backward. When hearing the name, a lot of people kowtowed. Although her father hadn’t lived in Denver for ten years, he’d left an impressive legacy including a twenty-seven-story office building downtown and a small airport, both named after the man the newspapers called “Peter the Great.”

Jayne hated using her parentage for leverage. She’d left home when she was really young to attend college and hadn’t moved back to Colorado until her father was settled in Dallas. Trying not to sound like a brat, she confronted the policewoman.

“Here’s what I’d like to do,” Jayne had said. “I’d like to take some time alone to calm my nerves and to use my neighbor’s computer to type up every detail I remember.”

“That’s not usually how we do things.”

“I have a rational basis for my suggestion.” She had explained that much of her work in neurosurgery focused on memory. According to some theories, it was best to write things down while adrenaline levels were high. She had colleagues who would disagree, and her words were taking on the tone of a lecture. “Without the sharp focus engendered by panic, the brain may sort details and bury those that are too terrifying to recall.”

The policewoman had patted Jayne’s shoulder. “Tell you what, Doc. You can take all the time you need.”

Hiding out in Brian’s office had given her a chance to catch her breath. She’d finished her statement for the police, printed it and sent a copy to her email. She should have emerged, but fear held her back. The tech-savvy intruders had chosen her house for a reason. She had no idea why, but she felt the pressure of danger coiling around her.

Cocoa rested his chin on her thigh and looked up at her. He truly was a handsome animal. She gazed into his gentle, empathetic brown eyes. He’d tried to warn her.

“I misjudged you,” she murmured as she stroked the silky fur on the top of his head. “I thought you were a pest with all that running around and barking.”

Not a good sign...she was talking to the dog.

There was a tap on the office door, and Cocoa thumped his tail twice—a signal that the person at the door was friendly, probably Brian. If a police officer had knocked, Cocoa would have growled.

Swiveling to face the door, she said, “Come in.”

In a quick move, a man with glasses and a ponytail stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He confronted her directly and said, “I’m the guy.”