He turned to look at me. I looked back at him. Over six feet tall, a black ski mask hiding his face, wide shoulders under whatever black long-sleeved garment he was wearing, dark sneakers, and a shiny steel gun, which was currently pointed at my chest.
“Jesus,” I mumbled, in a voice so strangled with fear I wondered where it came from. “Take whatever you want. Please. Then just go. I won’t do anything, say anything, I won’t even call the gendarmes, the FBI, anyone.”
He approached the bed and stood over me, the gun still aimed at my chest. I wished I were under the bed with the cat. The cat gave a cautious meow. The intruder put out a hand and touched it gently.
A gentle man with a lethal weapon, I did not know what to make of this though I did know how frightened I was. I could not even think of how to escape, how to get myself off that bed, across the room, and through that door where I could call for help. But call who? No one was here. Of course, there was Verity, no doubt sleeping the sleep of the gods, exhausted by her misadventures, as I was myself. Or at least I had been until my night visitor appeared.
I struggled upward against Jerusha’s padded rose brocade headboard, thinking as I did so that if he shot me here it would ruin that poor woman’s lovely bed. Her history would go with it, there’d maybe be a mention in the tabloids of the “once owned by then-famous-celebrity Jerusha.” Not much of a legacy. I believed she deserved better and I suddenly decided to try to give that to her.
I leaped from the bed in a move never to be repeated in my entire life no matter how often I went to the gym. Fear definitely lends strength. I was on him before he knew it, scrabbling at his chest, my thumbs searching for his eyes, the dog nipping at his ankles, the cat slowly stalking around him, looking, I knew, for an opening suitable for claws. My defenders. My little family.
I didn’t realize I was yelling until the door was flung open and I glimpsed Verity standing there in an old T-shirt and skimpy shorts, golden hair straggling over her face. She peered through the strands, taking in the crime scene.
“Ohh…” she exclaimed, a hand flying to her mouth. And then she screamed.
Verity was a good screamer. It echoed off the walls, out the open french doors into the quiet night gardens, bouncing back just as the storm broke. Lightning illuminated us like a stage set: the two half-dressed women; the man with the shiny steel gun and a ski mask over his head; the small animals arranged before him, one growling, one hissing. I might have laughed it was so funny, except I was scared as hell. And the canary awakened by the storm-light kept on singing.
16
Before I could move, the man was gone, through the open french doors.
“Fine, I’ll call the cops,” I managed to say between claps of thunder. Then I remembered I was in France. I didn’t know the French equivalent of 911. “Ohh,” I stammered.… Verity understood at once.
“Call the neighbor,” she yelled, wrenching her hair back from a face parchment-pale under the soft light of my bedside lamp.
“What neighbor?” I could not think who she meant, I knew no one.
“That man, Chad, he lives next door.”
I understood she meant the doctor, Chad Prescott, who’d helped me after my accident and owned the land contiguous with mine. He was my only neighbor. I did not like him, he was gruff, abrupt, good medically I’m sure, but no charmer, and he wanted my land. He certainly did not like me and now I was supposed to ask for his help?
“Jesus, Mirabella, there’s a guy with a gun in the house,” Verity snarled. “Give me the phone.” She grabbed the handset and Chad’s card from the night table where I’d left it, quickly thumbed the number, and handed me the phone.
He answered on the second ring. I heard him say, “Yes?” He did not sound a bit surprised or even puzzled at being awoken in the middle of the night; his voice was light, expectant.
“It’s me,” I said (even as the thought crept through my head, it should have been, “It is I”). “Your neighbor,” I added.
“Ms. Matthews? I assume this is something important?”
You couldn’t shake this fella, he didn’t even sound interested in hearing my answer. But then I said, “There was a man in the house, in my room … he had a gun.…”
There was a short pause, a tiny flicker of time. “Are you alright?”
“Yup. Just scared.”
“Did you call the cops?”
I shook my head though of course he couldn’t see me. Verity came and slumped on the bed next to me. She swept her hair to one side, clutching it in a sideways ponytail. I’ll bet she was wondering what the hell she was doing here in this madhouse; she might have been better off with the cheating husband than with a potential killer running around with a gun.
The cat jumped up on the bed and went and sat on her lap. The canary sang, and the dog, panting as though from a run around the woods, reclined against my knee and I choked back my tears, not wanting Verity to see my fear.