Thankfully, he’d sunk the cleaver in so deeply he was having a hard time yanking it back out. Then, suddenly, he did.
It was going to be a shame that I hadn’t taken the time to pull on a sweatshirt, although the UPS man seeing my tacky, worn bra would soon be the least of my worries.
“Get down!”
I kissed carpet.
The report was louder than today’s fire alarm, but staccato—bang, bang, bang—and over more quickly, yet my ears rang just the same. A current that smelled of smoke swirled past, then something thudded next to my head.
The meat cleaver had missed me by an inch, slicing into the carpet and not my brain. The maniac fell right next to me, his weight causing the floorboards to jump beneath my cheek. I stared into his dead eyes.
Talk about a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.
*
Bobby kicked the weapon away from the intruder’s hand. He’d seen enough dead men to know that this one was. Still, he was taking no chances.
He’d left the school in a rush, thinking Raye would be safe inside. He was nearly an hour away, driving past fields dotted with pumpkins, before it occurred to him that the kids were not imprisoned inside all day. They imbibed in that dangerous activity known as “recess,” and their teachers probably did too.
He’d turned around, then gotten stuck in a bumper-to-bumper jam when an eighteen-wheeler had jackknifed on the expressway. After taking the next exit, he had become horribly lost—the GPS on both his phone and the rental car telling him his destination lay on the other side of a field dotted with massive windmills. Unfortunately the road it instructed him to take through that field, in an annoyingly robotic voice he wanted to reach into the machine and rip out by the throat, did not exist.
He’d arrived at New Bergin Elementary after school let out. Seeing a janitor dumping garbage, Bobby flashed his badge, and determined that nothing worse than an unscheduled fire alarm had broken up the day. As it was Friday, all of the teachers had already gone home.
Terrified he would find Raye bleeding and branded in an alley, he sped to her apartment, relieved to pass no commotion on the streets. He parked in front of her building and ran up the stairs. He arrived just in time.
His chest hurt. He couldn’t decide if his fear had been worse upon seeing the maniac so close, huge blade lifted to plunge into her back, or seeing the knife tumble from the man’s hand toward her head.
He had no idea how the thing had missed her. Halfway down it had shifted, as if a sudden breeze, or invisible hand, had pushed it just enough.
“Are you all right?” Bobby went onto one knee, laid a finger to the man’s neck. As expected, the maniac had no pulse.
Raye continued to hug the carpet. He began to worry that the intruder had done something more than sink his cleaver into the wall. She was missing a shirt.
Bobby tried not to be distracted by the long, smooth expanse of her back—so pale it shimmered—but for just an instant he was.
Then a chill current of air that smelled strongly of wood smoke stirred his hair, and he lifted his head to make certain the fool had not started a fire somewhere. There was nothing in the room but the two of them and the dead man.
“Raye.” Bobby touched her shoulder. “You’re scaring me.”
She made a strangled sound—half sob, half laugh. “I’m scaring you? Can you move the huge knife that almost gave me a lobotomy?”
“Sorry, no.” She tilted her head, so she could meet his eyes, but she remained on the ground. “This is a crime scene.”
She muttered a word she could never use in school.
“Can you stand?”
“I can, but I’m not going to.” She let out an annoyed huff. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to always wear clean underwear in case you were in an accident?”
His mother had been a cop, as had his father. The only noncop in their family was Bobby’s brother, Aaron, who’d gone to the dark side and become a lawyer.
Their parents had met on the job, stayed on it until they couldn’t anymore, then opened a private security firm, which they operated to this day. His mother had never once mentioned underwear to Bobby that he could recall.
“Did you hit your head when you fell?” he asked.
“If only. Then I wouldn’t know, or maybe I wouldn’t care, that I’m lying here in my oldest, grayest, most worn bra.”
“Oh.” He’d lived in New Orleans all his life. Folks danced on tables in fewer clothes than she wore now, and a lot of those clothes looked worse for the wear than what he could see of hers.
He stepped into her room and retrieved a green and gold sweatshirt from the end of the bed, thankful he wouldn’t have to rifle drawers to find her something to wear. People kept odd—read scary—things there. He should know. And he didn’t want to know that about her.
Bobby returned, dropped the shirt next to Raye’s hand, turned, and pulled out his cell.
“Someone already called.”
Bobby paused, finger poised over the nine. “What?”