As soon as she let herself in her front door, Cassidy kicked off her high heels. It had been a long day, especially with the excitement of watching Nicole catch Allison’s stalker. Her feet were killing her. You couldn’t spend sixteen hours in four-inch heels and not pay the price. But they did make her legs looks good—long and muscular.
Without turning on the lights, Cassidy dropped her purse and keys on the front table, next to the white vase filled with fresh-cut flowers that were supposed to bring abundance. The flowers had been fresh a week ago, so now they smelled more rotten than sweet.
But it seemed like they were working. Other stations were calling her nearly every day now, feeling her out about whether she might want to work in Las Vegas or San Francisco or Boston. Cassidy was spunky, they said. They liked that she wouldn’t take no for an answer. They flattered her, complimenting her voice, her writing, and her feel for a story. They told her she was sure to win an Emmy for her coverage of the Katie Converse case.
It had taken eleven years, but now Cassidy was finally at the place she had been daydreaming about since she graduated from college. She had started her career in Medford, a small town just above the California border, beginning as little more than a glorified gofer. But the good thing about being at an undersized station was that you got a chance to do a lot—even if it was for a salary that worked out to far less than minimum wage when you factored in all the hours. Then she had moved on to Eugene, a slightly larger town midway between Medford and Portland. She was again lowest on the totem pole, getting the worst segments, the middle-of-the-night stories, the drudge assignments, the silly lifestyle pieces. Once she had done a stand-up at the state fair holding a fourteen-foot python. They had had to stop taping four times because the snake kept wrapping itself around her neck. The whole time, she had been expected to keep smiling.
Eventually Cassidy had been able to take the next step and move on to Portland. If you wanted to get ahead in broadcast, you had to move again and again. With every move, you landed in a bigger media market and worked your way up once more. And if you were very, very lucky, as well as exceptionally good, you might make it to the networks.
Cassidy had paid her dues at Channel Four. To take the next step, she had needed a big story. And the universe had handed it to her in the form of Katie Converse. If she were going to make her move, she had to make it soon, while people still remembered who Katie Converse was. Because right now there was surely a reporter in Chicago who was riding the tiger of the stories of the kids in the collapsed skating rink.
In the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of wine without bothering to turn on the lights. She picked up the glass and carried it into the bathroom, then stripped and climbed into the shower.
Cassidy was rinsing the shampoo from her hair when she heard a sound. She didn’t know what the sound was, just that there was a noise that didn’t belong. It seemed to be coming from the living room. Maybe she was imagining things. Sound carried weirdly in these condos. Half the units were unoccupied, bought by real estate speculators who had been unable to sell when the bottom fell out of Portland’s condo market.
There. She heard it again. Even though she hadn’t finished rinsing her hair, she turned off the shower and held her breath. Now the sound was clear.
Footsteps. In her living room.
If she screamed, what would happen? How long would it take one of her few neighbors to respond? Would they even hear her? Many of them were probably asleep. A scream might not even register.
In her head she replayed the latest threat from her voice mail. Stop asking so many questions about that Katie Converse. It’s none of your business anyway. Back off that story or you’ll be sorry. She had become blasé about angry viewers. Could it be that someone had really gone so far as to break into her apartment?
Another thought occurred to her. Living alone, she never locked the bathroom door. In fact—Cassidy peeked out of the shower curtain to double-check—tonight she hadn’t even closed the door all the way. Long before anyone could help her, whoever was in the living room would get to her first.
How had they even gotten in? Hadn’t she locked the front door behind her? She thought she had, but she couldn’t be sure. After weeks of long days and this evening’s excitement, she was so tired that she was moving on autopilot.
The footsteps sounded closer. Could she get to the bathroom door before the intruder did? And if she did manage to lock it, how long would it hold?
Cassidy took stock. She had no phone, no gun, no weapon of any kind. She had a half dozen bottles of shampoo and conditioner, a loofah, and a bar of soap. She had a razor that she kept meaning to replace because it was barely up to the job of scraping the stubble off her legs.
She was a naked, wet woman trapped with an intruder and no one to hear her.
Cassidy took a deep breath and stepped out of the shower.
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Merry Christmas, Almost
December 13