Walker had taken the term “chemistry” to a whole new level. She’d come home to cool down, but that didn’t look like it was going to happen any time soon.
She gathered the papers into a neat stack and carried them to her bedroom, loathe to leave the letters out where just anyone could see them. Specifically, where Kate’s prying eyes might spy them. Even though Kate knew the basic events of the weekend, the words in these letters were Christopher’s mind and heart and needed to be protected. On an impulse she slid them in the middle of a stack of printed pages that was the beginning of her next manuscript, the follow-up to
Bite-Sized
that her publisher had been asking for. That she’d had trouble writing.
Every time she sat down to write she’d felt like a cheat, a fraud. She’d been sure she’d be found out, exposed, the psychologist telling everyone how to deal with their grief when she’d been running from her own. Now she sat down in front of her computer, new ideas filling her mind. And she began to write the story of the old woman she’d met on the plane all those years ago. The woman who was afraid to go home because her husband’s shoes were in the foyer. The paragraphs flowed and the old woman’s story became her own. A story she was now unafraid to write.
So deep was she into her work that she didn’t notice the sunlight growing dim or the shadows growing longer as the sun went down. She didn’t hear the creak of her kitchen door opening, nor the footsteps on the stairs. A split second of warning was all she had before a big gloved hand covered her mouth and yanked her to her feet.
She struggled, her feet blindly kicking behind her.
No
. She bit the hand that covered her mouth and drew a breath to scream when with a grunt the hand let go. But her scream was cut off, a rag shoved in her throat, so deep she gagged.
He’ll rape me,
she thought, her lungs unable to get enough air.
God, please. No. I just started over. Please
. . . She was pushed to her bed, the man’s knee shoved into her kidney as he held her down. Tears stung her eyes. Pain and fear warred as her mind tried to stay calm. He yanked at her hands, tying them behind her back. Then he tied her feet and wrapped another rag around her eyes.
The pressure lifted from her back and she gritted her teeth, preparing herself . . .
The bed creaked as he got to his feet.
But he didn’t touch her. Emma fought to breathe evenly through her nose as she listened. He was unzipping her overnight bag, dumping it on the floor. Ripping drawers from her bureau. She heard more sounds from over by her desk, the scrape of plastic, the dull clang of metal. A muttered curse.
Then he left her room. She heard him downstairs, moving all the boxes she and Kate had packed. She heard tape ripping from cardboard, again and again.
I have to get help,
she thought. He could come back when he finished doing . . . whatever it was he was doing. There was a phone on her nightstand.
I can do this,
she thought.
I’ve answered that phone in the dark a hundred times.
She inched toward the top corner of her bed, like a caterpillar, swung her legs over the side of the bed and struggled to sit up, as soundlessly as possible. The nightstand was against her knee. She leaned over, knocked the receiver off the phone with her chin. Nearly fainted with relief when she heard the dial tone. Nearly fainted from terror when she realized that he might hear it, too. He was still downstairs. In the kitchen now. She could hear the occasional clatter of dishes or silverware as he continued his search.
For what? Right now, that didn’t matter. What only mattered was calling for help. She bent her face close to the buttons and carefully she ran the tip of her nose over each one, grateful Will had insisted on a no-nonsense office-style phone. She pictured the position of the numbers nine and one.
911. She pushed the buttons with her nose, cursing the shrill tones that seemed