She considered calling Lucky, but he had enough to deal with. He didn't need a hysterical sister-in-law on his hands in addition to a cantankerous, pregnant wife.
She had insisted in her conversations with
Chase that telephone creeps never actually did anything. They got their kicks by scaring their victims because they were usually terri
fied of or traumatized by women. So why was she placing any credence in this last call?
Because he had called her the night Chase left and every night since. He was knowledgeable about her comings and goings and seemingly everything else about her. And for the first time, he had started warning her that he was coming after her. He intended to take it a step further than telephone terrorism.
Leaving all the downstairs lights on, inside and out, she returned to her bedroom. She didn't fall asleep for a long time. Every sound in the house was magnified by her fright.
She scolded herself for being so afraid over something as ridiculous as telephone calls. It wasn't like her to cower in fear and tolerate something like this. She always tackled her problems head-on.
Tomorrow, she vowed, she would do something to put a stop to this.
It wasn't quite dark when Chase arrived at the house on Woodbine Lane six days after leaving it, but the sun had already set and the yard was deeply shadowed beneath the trees.
Marcie's car wasn't there. He was glad. He wasn't sure what he was going to say to her when he saw her. During his absence his anger had abated, but he was still distraught over living in Tanya's house with another woman… and liking it so much. Unable to deal with that aspect of it, he dwelt on Marcie's clever maneuvering and how unconscionably she had manipulated him.
He slid his key into the notched slot of the front door lock and tried to turn it. To his annoyance and puzzlement, it wouldn't unlock.
After several attempts, he stood back, placed his hands on his hips, cursed impatiently, and tried to figure out another way into the house. All the other exterior doors locked from the inside.
The only immediate solution he saw was to break one of the frosted panes of glass beside the front door, reach in, and unlock it from the inside and then get to the digital alarm pad before it went off.
He scouted around the yard for a stout stick, and finding one, carried it back to the door.
The window shattered after his first hard rap.
He reached in, groped for the lock and unlatched it, then opened the door. His boots crunched on broken glass as he made for the alarm transmitter. He punched out the required code, but the forty-five-second interim beeping didn't stop.
"Damn!"
Wasn't anything working right tonight? He tried the code again, meticulously depressing the correct digits. The beeping continued.
Knowing that the central control box was in the utility-room closet, he started across the living room at a run, hoping to get there and disconnect it before the actual alarm went off.
"Stop right there!"
Chase came to a jarring halt and turned toward the imperative voice. He was struck in the face by a brilliant beam of light and threw up both hands to ward it off.
"Chase!"
"What the hell is going on here? Get that light out of my face."
The light was switched off, but the glare had temporarily blinded him. Several seconds elapsed before he could focus. When he finally located Marcie, she had moved to the alarm pad. After she punched in the correct sequence of numbers, the beeping stopped, making the resultant silence even more pronounced.
It was as shocking as the sight of his wife, who, in one hand, was holding a high-powered flashlight, and in the other, a high-powered pistol.
"Is that loaded?" he asked temperately.
"Yes."
"Do you intend to use it on me?"
"No."
"Then I suggest you lower it."
Marcie seemed unaware that she was still aiming the handgun at his midsection. Her arm came unhinged at the elbow; she dropped the gun to her side. Chase realized the pistol would be extraordinarily heavy in her feminine hand. It would have been hard for many men to tote.
He moved to a lamp, switched on the light, and received his third shock. Marcie's face was ghostly pale, in stark contrast to the black,
knit turtleneck pullover she was wearing. Her hair was pulled back sleekly away from her face and wound into a mercilessly tight bun on her nape.
Apprehensively he approached her and lifted the handgun out of her hand. She was staring at him fixedly, drawing his attention to her eyes. They were ringed with violet smudges, looking as though they had both been socked very hard. He remembered seeing them badly bruised when she lay in the hospital bed following her auto accident. She had been pale then, too, but nothing like now.
He clicked on the safety of the pistol and set it on an end table. Then he took the flashlight from her and set it aside also. "Want to tell me what's going on? Have you always had that gun?"
She shook her head no. "I bought it Tuesday."
"Do you know how to use it?"
"The man showed me."
"What man?"
"The pawnbroker."
"Jesus," he muttered. "Have you ever fired the thing?"
Again she shook her head no.
"Good. Because if you had, your shoulder would have probably knocked your ear off when you recoiled. Not that you would have needed an ear any longer because the blast would have deafened you.
Who did you intend to shoot?"
She wilted like a starched petticoat on a humid day. One second she was standing, the next she was crumpled into a little heap on the sofa. She buried her face in her hands.
It wasn't like Marcie to have fainting spells or crying fits. Alarmed, Chase sat down beside her. "Marcie, what is happening here?
What were you doing with that gun?"
"I wasn't going to shoot anybody. I was only going to frighten him with it."
"Frighten who?"
"The caller." She raised her head then and looked up at him. Her eyes were filled with tears, seeming larger and bleaker than ever.
"He's called every night since you've been gone. Sometimes two or three times a night."
Chase's jaw turned to granite. "Go on."
"He knew I was here alone. He kept talking about your being away. He also knows where we live.
And… and he said he was going to come after me. Chase," she said, her teeth beginning to chatter, "I couldn't stand it anymore.
I had to do something. So I had a locksmith change all the locks. I set another code on the alarm.
Tonight when I heard you on the porch, and you broke the glass and—"
He put his arms around her and drew her against his chest. "It's okay. I understand now.
Shh. Everything's fine."
"Everything is not fine. He's still out there."
"Not for long. We're going to put a stop to this once and for all."
"How?"
"By doing what you should have done in the first place. We're going to see Pat."
"Oh, no, please. I'd feel so foolish making this a police matter."
"You'd feel even more foolish if you had accidentally put a hole through me."
She trembled. "I don't think I could ever bring myself to pull the trigger on that thing." she said, nodding down at the pistol.
"I don't think you could either," he said soberly. "So in effect, that still leaves you defenseless when you're here alone." He picked up the pistol and crammed the barrel of it into his waistband. "Come on, let's go."
"Right now?" She resisted when he tried to pull her to her feet.
"Right now. I've had it with this creep."
They reset the alarm. There wasn't much they could do about the broken window, so they just left it.
"Where's your car?" he asked as they went down the front path.
"I started parking it in back."
Chase assisted her into the cab of his pickup and climbed behind the wheel. He'd just spent four hours driving from Houston and had been looking forward to getting out of the truck.
Lately, things rarely turned out the way he expected or wanted them to.
"I spoke to Lucky," Marcie said quietly once they were under way. "He told me you'd gone to Houston to see about the contract."
"The decision makers had narrowed it down to three drilling companies that had bid on the job. They wanted to talk with us personally.
After costing me five nights in a hotel
and a week of eating out, they picked an outfit from Victoria."
It had been a crushing disappointment, which a four-hour drive and two hundred miles hadn't ameliorated. He had invested almost two months' time and a lot of worry and planning in getting this contract and had ended up with nothing to show for it except an exorbitant credit-card bill.
What was worse, he had no other prospects to pursue. Thanks to Marcie's loan, he didn't have to worry from a financial standpoint, but his pride and sense of professional worthiness were still on the critical list.
"I'm sorry, Chase. I know you were counting on that job."
He gave her a brusque nod, glad that they had reached the courthouse and that he wouldn't be required to talk about it any more.
They caught Pat Bush in the corridor on his way out. "Where are you going?" Chase asked him.
"To get a cheeseburger. I haven't had dinner."
"Can we talk to you?"
"Sure. Why don't y'all come with me?"
"It's official."
One look at Marcie apparently convinced the sheriff that the matter was urgent. That and the pistol tucked into Chase's waistband.
He retraced his steps to his office and held open the door. "Come in."
Chase ushered Marcie inside. Pat's office hadn't changed since Bud Tyler used to bring his boys in for quick visits. While the two
men discussed politics, the ten-point bucks that always got away, all levels of sports, and local happenings, Chase and Lucky would strut around twirling fake pistols and wearing badges Pat had pinned to their shirts.
One time they'd gotten in trouble for drawing mustaches and silly eyeglasses on all the wanted posters while their father and the sheriff weren't looking. Another time they'd gotten whippings for dropping a lighted firecracker into a brass spittoon in the squad room.
Now, Chase laid the pistol on the edge of
Pat's desk. Pat regarded it closely, but didn't comment. He waited until they were seated across the desk from him in straight wooden chairs before removing the matchstick from his mouth and asking,
"What are y'all up to?"
"Marcie's been getting phone calls."
"Phone calls? You mean obscene?"
"And threatening."
"He hasn't actually threatened my life," she interjected softly. "He just says that he's coming after me to…
to—"
"To do all the things he's been talking about over the phone?" Pat prompted.
"That's right." After nodding, she left her head bowed.
"So it's definitely a man?"
"Definitely."