Night Stalker. Shirlee McCoy

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      That made her nervous.

      The entire situation made her nervous.

      She took a step back, the 911 operator’s voice ringing hollowly in her ear.

      “Nine-one-one. What’s the nature of your emergency?”

      “I need the police,” Charlotte responded, her focus on the truck, the open door, the purse.

      “What—”

      A woman screamed, the sound breaking the early-morning quiet and masking whatever else the operator said.

      Charlotte whirled toward the sound, scanning the trees and the darkness, her heart pounding so frantically, she thought it might fly from her chest.

      “Ma’am? Are you still there?” the 911 operator asked.

      “I need the police,” she repeated, rattling off the address.

      She could hear the heavy pant of someone’s breath, the thud of feet on dead leaves. A man stepped onto the road, his back to Charlotte, his body oddly misshapen.

      She almost called out to him, but something kept her silent. A warning of danger that she heeded.

      “Ma’am? Can you tell me what’s happening? Are you in danger?” the 911 operator asked.

      As if he’d heard the words, the man swung around.

      She realized the truth about two seconds too late.

      He wasn’t misshapen.

      He was carrying someone—a woman slung over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

      Charlotte could think of a lot of reasons he might be doing that. Most of them weren’t good. Kidnapping came to mind. Carjacking. Murder.

      Her instincts were telling her to run, but her conscience insisted she stay.

      “What’s going on?” she called out, and the man took a step in her direction. Seemed to change his mind and turned toward the truck again.

      The 911 operator was speaking, but Charlotte couldn’t make sense of the words. She was focused on the man. The open truck door. The escape that would be at hand once he got his victim into the vehicle.

      “Put her down,” she demanded, and he swung around again.

      He didn’t speak.

      He didn’t warn her.

      One minute, he was holding the woman. The next, he dropped her like she was a bag of garbage he’d brought to the dump.

      “If you leave—” Charlotte began, planning to tell him that he could escape before the police arrived, that he could disappear and never be found.

      But he moved quickly, his body silhouetted by headlights, his face hidden as he lifted his arm, pointed at her.

      The world exploded, and she was flying, landing in soft grass and scratchy pine needles, her breath gone, the world spinning. Sky. Trees. Ground. Lake. The man. Moving toward her, a dark blur spinning like everything else.

      She should be scared. She knew that, but her thoughts were sluggish, her limbs leaden. She couldn’t run if she wanted to. Couldn’t get up.

      She heard sirens, feet on pavement, an engine roaring to life. Felt blood oozing from her chest, blood slushing in her ears.

      Someone knelt beside her. Not the man. A woman. Hair in her face, hands pressing against the wound in Charlotte’s chest.

      “Don’t die,” the woman murmured.

      She said something else, but the words were drowned out by the starless sky, the cool spring morning, the screaming sirens and the velvety darkness that swallowed them all.

      * * *

      Charlotte had changed.

      That shouldn’t have surprised Special Agent Adam Whitfield. He hadn’t seen his ex-wife in five years. A lot had happened since then. He’d completed his master’s in criminal profiling and had joined the FBI. He’d rented an apartment in the suburbs of Boston, created an entirely new life for himself.

      He was nothing like the twenty-four-year-old kid who’d driven away from Whisper Lake. He shouldn’t have expected that Charlotte would be the same person he’d left behind. He hadn’t expected it.

      But he’d still been shocked when he’d seen her. Not because she was connected to machines, tubes running from her chest and her arms. He’d been prepared for that. He hadn’t been prepared to see how thin she’d become, how frail. Her cheekbones were chiseled, her jawline defined. Even her hands were thinner, her fingers longer and leaner.

      In the seventy-two hours since he’d arrived, he’d gotten used to the tubes, to the hushed whisper of her breathing and the soft hiss of oxygen. He hadn’t gotten used to the newer, frailer version of his ex-wife.

      The woman he’d been friends with, fallen in love with, married.

      The one he’d had a son with.

      Lost a son with.

      Abandoned.

      He frowned.

      Abandoned was a harsh word, but an accurate one. He’d walked out on Charlotte because he hadn’t been able to bear walking past Daniel’s empty bedroom every morning. He’d wanted a fresh start in a new place, and he’d thought that Charlotte would want the same. When she’d refused to move away with him, he’d left the cottage, the town and the lake with his head high and his heart shattered.

      He hadn’t looked back, hadn’t returned for even a visit. Hadn’t called to see how she was, hadn’t checked in on her to see if she needed anything. They’d split their marital assets, washed their hands of one another and moved on.

      Or that was what they were supposed to have done.

      Moving on from the person who held your heart wasn’t easy.

      Now he was there, noticing the deep hollows beneath Charlotte’s cheekbones and the dark circles beneath her eyes. She’d cut her hair short and lost too much weight, but if he let himself, he knew he could still see the girl she’d been when she’d walked into his seventh-grade classroom all those years ago.

      He brushed a strand of straight black hair from her cheek.

      “Are you in there, Charlotte?” he asked.

      She didn’t respond. Not with a twitch or a flutter of her eyelids. If they’d still been married, he’d have touched her cheek, lifted her limp hand and squeezed it gently. He’d have leaned close and whispered that he was there and that everything was going to be okay.

      Instead, he let his hand drop away, settled back into his chair. He was tired, his muscles stiff from too many hours sitting. When he wasn’t working, he liked to keep СКАЧАТЬ