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Apparently she’d gone out, roaming in the night with that blood-speckled knife in her hand, returning to lock herself in behind her bolted doors and windows.
Or someone had come in.
And vanished, leaving her locked in?
Not possible.
Molly looked away from the knife. She understood she was going to have to do something. She wished she knew what.
Deep inside her, the fine edge of control was popping, shredding in audible snaps. She wouldn’t survive finding herself another time curled up on the floor. She knew that as well as she knew anything.
Turning back to the sink, she turned the water on more slowly this time and splashed her face and scrubbed her hands yet again while she sorted through her terror-blasted thoughts. Numb, scarcely aware of what she was doing, she lathered her hands over and over, soaping and scrubbing her nails, her palms, between her fingers, as she tried to reason through what had happened. Step by step, using logic to distance herself from the edge of the chasm, she considered the possibilities.
Thought was a barricade against the fears nibbling at the edge of her consciousness.
She could call the police. As much as she loathed the idea of seeing them in her house again, she probably should call them. But if she did, they’d think she was crazy.
Maybe she was. But she’d always heard if you thought you were crazy, you probably weren’t. Right now she wasn’t sure where that theory left her, aside from giving some perverse comfort. The police would do one of two things—either ignore her or laugh at her.
She couldn’t blame them. What, after all, was there for them to check out? Her knife? Her blood in its handle?
Her outstretched fingers shivered as she looked at them.
Of course it was her blood.
Unthinkable if it were not.
Frantically she searched her hands, looking for scratches on one hand, pressing the water-pruned skin, stretching it, looking between her fingers.
She sagged against the sink when she found the deep cut at the base of her right thumb. A gouge into the flesh. She touched it, felt the flap of skin. Obscene.
In her shock at finding herself once more on the kitchen floor, she hadn’t felt the dull throb of the gash in her hand. Hadn’t felt anything. Until now. As if she’d turned on a switch, her whole body ached.
Maybe she had been sleepwalking.
Drying her hands against her pajama bottoms and rubbing so hard against her leg she had to bite her lips against the pain, Molly tested that idea. The pain, real in its viciousness at the bottom of her thumb, was so alarming that she panicked to think she’d been sleepwalking, wandering upstairs, downstairs, all around the town…
“Stop it.” Her voice was startling in the quiet of the orderly kitchen, the single sound in all that humming silence.
She wouldn’t let herself lose control.
Molly took ten deep breaths. “Okay,” she said when she’d finished. Needing the reality of a human voice, even her own, she continued, “Okay. No one came in. Fact. Nobody could have.” Thinking, she shook her head slowly, and wet strands of hair slid across her chin. “Not past all those locks. And out? Leaving everything locked behind? Only a ghost, maybe. And there’s no such thing as ghosts. No such thing as the Bermuda Triangle.”
In spite of her weak attempt at humor, she shuddered again in the dim morning. She would have found greater comfort if she could forget all the people who did believe in the Triangle and ghosts. In the uncertain light of these moments between night and dawn, the idea of ghosts fluttering through her home wasn’t something she could cope with. Not after everything else. Ghosts who slipped through locked doors and windows. No, much better a real, tangible explanation for what was happening to her, no matter how terrifying.
That left sleepwalking.
But she didn’t have a history of sleepwalking.
She no longer dreamed.
Her breath came in wheezes. On TV she’d seen a report about the behavior people were capable of while in the grip of unconscious sleep.
The reporter had interviewed a woman who “woke up” over and over in her kitchen, eating, making sandwiches. Other people discovered themselves eating cigarette butts as if they were food. Nocturnal bingeing. People did strange things in the nighttime hours.
Murder, even.
A man had, supposedly, walked out of his house, driven to a relative’s home, strolled in and murdered the family.
While he was asleep.
Sleepwalking.
Madness.
Molly touched the wound on her hand.
Her blood.
She rubbed the spot over and over, trying not to think about alternatives.
Her blood.
He’d been watching her for a long time. Prowling around her house, moving silently along the gallery, watching her during the long nights. Now, he moved closer. It was time.
The small smack against the kitchen door shot Molly upright, her hands over her mouth.
A second smack. Purposeful.
She edged to the door. Worse to stay listening to that muffled sound and not know what it was.
If she wanted to keep her sanity, she had no choice.
Holding the shutter carefully so that she could look out onto the gallery, Molly saw only darkness.
Again the sound came, lower, from the floor.
Staring through the window, Molly saw a shimmer of motion, a flick of dark against dark. Something was out there.
Eyes were gleaming up at her.
Real eyes, not metallic reflections of her own fear-glazed self. A stray cat. Real. Nothing to make her hide behind locked doors jiggling with imagined fears.
Drawn to the reality of the cat, she carefully released the bolts. Damp air rushed in as she held on to the screen door and looked down at the cat staring back at her with unblinking gold eyes.
Large, with powerful muscles along his flanks and shoulders and a broad head with a bumpy, hooked nose, he was the most beautiful animal she’d ever seen. Rain-wet, his black coat was shiny and sleek.
“Hey, puss,” she whispered, looking down the length of the gallery. Off to her left she thought she saw movement, but it was only a mourning dove winging off into the rain, disturbed by the rattle of the opening door.
Imperiously unmoving, the cat sat with his long tail curled around his front paws and watched her with unwinking golden eyes.
“Looking for any port in a storm, fella?” Molly stooped and touched her nose to the screen door close to the cat, comforted by the presence of another creature. This big cat with his unwavering gaze was solid and tangible in the quicksand of her thoughts. “You’re a beauty, you are.” Molly looked at his neck. “No collar? That’s a shame. I’ll bet there’s someone out there looking for you, cat.”
The cat tilted his head and lifted his paw to the door. He tapped it, an arrogant demand for service. Molly pressed her finger to the door and the pad of the cat’s big paw flexed. His claws pierced the screen around her finger, encircling the tip. Trapping it in the cage of his claws.
“Careful, buster. What do you want, anyway?”
The cat’s eyes never blinked.
“Oh? As if I should read your mind, huh? Food and a cozy spot next to the fire?”
Unmoving, utterly still, he watched her.
“Listen, buster, this is Florida. You’re not going to freeze.” Molly surveyed his body. Long, muscle-padded haunches. “You’re obviously not hungry. Couldn’t be. Vamoose, fella.” She tried to pull her finger away, but the cat tightened his grip, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Hey, this isn’t funny. Shoo, go away. I can’t help you. Sorry, but the last thing I need is a cat around here right now.” She wiggled her finger, but the cat held it firm. “If you were a dog, maybe I’d let you stay. I could use a real big, real mean dog. A brute. With a nasty disposition. A dog I’d keep for sure.” She pulled harder, futilely.
Uneasy, Molly raised her voice and looked around, sensing something ruffling her nerve endings. “Hey, listen, puss, let go. I want to shut the door, okay?” Molly thunked the screen with the fingers of her free hand.
So fast she never saw his movement, like dark lightning streaking, the cat fastened a paw around her hand, capturing a second finger and holding it with his claws through the screen.
“Well, buster, now we’re in a fine mess. Let go,” she ordered, glaring at the animal.
His gold gaze held hers. There was something in his somber stare that kept her looking, looking past the darker gold flecks, as if she were moving down a golden corridor faster and faster and faster, wind and air rushing past her, golden eyes locked on hers, drawing her deeper into that spinning gold….
Molly shook her head. Light lifted the edges of gray from the gallery and she could see out into her yard, down to the bayou veiled in rain. She sighed, exhausted and wrung out.
Looking back at the sleek animal in front of her, she frowned. “So, I’m a sucker for helpless critters, cat, but you’re the most unhelpless beast I’ve ever seen. And, like I said, you’re not a dog. Besides, cats are always looking down hallways as if they see something, and, puss, I don’t need you seeing things that go bump in the night, you know? I’m having enough problems figuring out which bumps are real and which ones aren’t. I don’t need you spooking the heck out of me.” Her voice dropped to a shaky whisper.
Not breaking her skin, the cat curled his claws tighter. That arrogance she’d noted earlier gleamed back at her from his gold eyes.
“You have some nerve, cat. Anybody ever tell you that? Yes, I know I like cats. Ordinarily.”
The cat arched his back, his claws still hooked in the screen around her fingers. Damp heat from his large body came to her in the chilly, rain-dark dawn.
Molly hesitated. “Listen, if I let you in, you can’t stay, hear? I mean, this isn’t your home away from home. You can come in for a while. Just until…” She stopped. She knew what she was doing. She knew she didn’t want to deal with the knife still in her kitchen. Twisting her fingers caught in his grasp, Molly continued, “Just until, okay?”
The cat blinked and sat back on his haunches, releasing her.
“Stinker. Bully.” She unlocked the screen door. “I guess you wouldn’t turn down a meal, huh?”
Padding in, his tail lifted, the cat moved across her gray floor like a dark cloud over shadowy water. Passing her refrigerator, he circled the kitchen until he came to the spot on the floor where she’d woken up.
For a long moment he stayed there.
He stopped next to the knife and looked back at her. His ears angled to the hall off the kitchen, listening. Listening to something beyond her hearing.
Molly watched the ripples move across his skin and felt an answering shiver move across her own. “Hey, c’mon, cat. Don’t do this to me. Really.” She rubbed her arms.
Smelling the handle of the knife, the beast parted his mouth in a feral baring of teeth. A low growl curled around the kitchen. His canines were long, white and very sharp.
“Stop it. This isn’t funny. I mean it,” Molly added, nerves twanging as he looked back at her with those wild gold eyes. He blinked again and moved closer to her, loose-jointed and muscular, stopping at her feet.
“All right. That’s fair,” she said, bending to pick him up. His fur was warm against her cold skin. “Unlike some guys, at least you listen. But you’d better mind your p’s and q’s, okay?” she babbled into the silky fur at his ear. “Or you’re out of here. And don’t count on gourmet food, either. Got it?”
Silently, he rested his front paws on her forearm, claiming her.
Molly held the heavy cat tightly to her as she walked through the rooms of her house, checking every window from top to bottom, every latch. All closed. Bolted. As they always were. She’d changed the locks, too, after the second incident. Even her brother Reid didn’t have a key to the new locks.
Molly didn’t realize how tightly her fingers were wound into the cat’s fur until he reached up and batted her face with the pad of his wide paw, drawing her attention. “Sorry about that,” she said, stroking the fur down his back and over his tail. He stretched up onto her shoulder. “Listen, cat,” she said, looking at him eye-to-eye and still feeling tremors way down in the cold spot inside her, “I’m at my wit’s end, and I can’t figure out what to do next. I’m too scared to fall asleep, and I’m so tired I don’t know what’s real anymore. I’m talking to a cat, and you don’t even purr.”
She sank into a chair in the living room and propped her feet on the matching footstool. Clutching the cat’s warm, sinewy body to her, she remembered the feel of the cold floor, the gleam of the knife. The look in her own reflected eye. Molly shuddered. “Hey, fella, I’m in over my head in really bad stuff,” she whispered, “and I’m sinking fast.” She buried her cold face in his fur.
Arranging himself in her lap to his satisfaction, the cat fixed her with that unwavering gaze as she muttered to him. He was so still and calm that some of her own tension seeped from her as she stroked him endlessly from ear to tail tip, the smooth, sleek fur and firm muscles solid and real against her fingers.
And all the while she stroked him, the cat was silent.
Moving closer, he watched her lean back in the chair, pale brown hair clinging to the chair fabric, her hands tangled in the black silk of the cat’s fur. Saw, too, the lines around her drawn, silvery gray eyes, the smudges of exhaustion underneath. He sensed the immense effort she was making as her small hands moved in an endless, hypnotic rhythm.
She might drowse now. Possibly. Or not.
He could wait.
But he knew she wouldn’t sleep.
Not tonight.
The piercing shrill of the doorbell jerked Molly to her feet. While she’d drifted off somewhere in her mind, the cat had disappeared, leaving long strands of black fur clinging to her fingers. Anxiously she brushed her hands down her pajamas, wincing at the ache in her hand.
She had no idea what time it was.
Peering through the privacy hole on the door, she saw that rain still dripped down the eaves and spattered the gallery. Her stomach curled in nauseating twists as she looked at the detective’s shield held eye level by the man standing in an easy, legs-apart stance at her front door.
Unlocking the door but keeping the chain on, Molly leaned her head against the doorjamb.
Choice had been taken from her.
“Yes?” Her voice was thready. To herself as she heard the edgy notes, she sounded guilty of unnamed horrors.
“Police.” Anonymous behind the silver-rimmed, round dark lenses of his sunglasses, he could have been anyone.
“Yes. I see.” Dread was moving through her in long rollers, gaining force, growing large and overpowering like enormous waves far out at sea.
She saw, too, the second man sitting in the passenger side of the black car parked in her driveway. She’d never heard it drive up. She must have dozed off.
Trying to sort out this new set of events, Molly rubbed her forehead fretfully against the edge of the door.
“We need to talk with you, ma’am.” Florida sand in his voice, a native, like her. She didn’t recognize his tough, sharp-planed face, though.
