Mountain Shelter. Cassie Miles

Twenty-Two

       Extract

       Copyright

Chapter One

      With eyes wide open, Jayne Shackleford stared at the glowing numbers on her bedside clock: 9:29. Though it didn’t really make a sound, she heard tick-tick-tick. She rolled over so she couldn’t see the number switch to 9:30 p.m., which marked a sleepless half hour in bed.

      She wanted a full eight to ten hours of deep, delta-wave slumber before she performed the operation tomorrow morning. Was anxiety keeping her awake? It shouldn’t. Her success rate with this neurosurgical procedure was nearly 100 percent: thirty-three operations and only one partial failure. That patient hadn’t died, but the surgery didn’t erase the effects of his stroke. She had this procedure in the bag. There’d be no problems. Why so tense?

      Possibly, she was overly eager, like a kid waiting for Christmas. About an operation? Tick-tick-tick. But she couldn’t imagine any other pending moment of excitement.

      Flinging out her arm, she reached for the wineglass on the bedside table. She didn’t take sleeping pills, but she’d found that a glass of merlot before diving between the covers helped her ease into REM.

      Her fingers brushed the glass. It slid off the nightstand and fell to the floor. “I’m a klutz!”

      The irony annoyed her. She could perform delicate microsurgery without a slip, but when it came to regular life, she was the queen of clumsy, barely able to walk across a room without tripping over her own feet. Her nanny used to say that Jayne was so busy racing to the summit that she couldn’t bother to look where she was going. Well, yeah! How else had she gotten to be a top-rated neurosurgeon by the time she was twenty-eight?

      Though tempted to ignore the spill, she didn’t want to ruin the pale peach Berber carpet that had taken several hours and the advice of two interior designers to select. She sat up on the bed and clapped to turn on the lights. Nothing happened. She clapped again, an undeserved ovation. No glow.

      Pushing her long brown hair away from her face, she reached for the switch on the lamp and flicked it. The light didn’t turn on. And the digital clock had gone dark. Her electricity must be out, which meant she’d have to go down into the creepy basement to the fuse box. Well, damn. This wasn’t supposed to happen. After the last bout of piecemeal repairs on her two-story house, the electrician promised her that she wouldn’t have problems. At least, not until the next time she did renovations.

      And then, the neighbor’s dog sent up a howl.

      As if she needed another annoyance?

      The chocolate Lab, with dark brown fur almost the same color as her long hair, wasn’t usually a barker, but these occasions when he—or was it female?—dashed around woofing reminded her why she didn’t have pets. Barefoot, she padded to the window and peeked through the blinds at her usually quiet neighborhood in the Washington Park area of Denver.

      Peevishly, she noted that everybody else’s lights were on. Looking down from the second floor, she saw the Lab dashing back and forth at the fence bordering her yard.

      She should yell something down at it. What was the animal’s name? Something with a k sound, it might be Killer or Cujo.

      The light at the top of her neighbor’s back steps went on and potbellied, bald-headed Brian appeared in the doorway. He called to his dog, “Cocoa, hush. Is something wrong? What’s wrong, Cocoa?”

      Did he expect an answer? Jayne simply couldn’t abide people who spoke to their pets. Though she had high regard for the intelligence of nonhumans, she didn’t like to see animals treated in an anthropomorphic manner, i.e., asking their opinion or dressing them in doll clothing. Such interactions lacked focus and functionality. In this case, however, Brian’s voice had an effect. Cocoa ceased to woof, charged toward the house, crashed up the back stairs and through the door.

      The neighborhood was tranquil again. Jayne looked down at the five-foot-tall chain-link fence covered with English ivy that was already starting to turn crimson in late September. As far as she could tell, there was nothing to bark at.

      She opened the blinds so she could use the moonlight glow through the window to see. Going down to the basement meant she needed something on her feet. As she slipped into her moccasins, she heard noises from downstairs. Not the tick-tick-tick of a soundless clock, but a click and a clack and the squeak of a floorboard. The sound of a door being opened. Footsteps.

      Impossible! No way could an intruder break in. She’d purchased a state-of-the-art security system that set off an alarm and called the police if a door or window was compromised. The system worked on battery even in a power outage. Jayne had specifically asked about the backup—electricity was fragile.

      She crept around the edge of her bed to the nightstand where her cell phone was charging. She wanted to be able to call 911 if she heard anything else. Her thumb poked the screen to turn it on. There was no response, no perky logo, not even a welcoming beep. What was wrong with this thing? There had to be enough juice—it had been charging for the past hour. She held the phone close to her nose and pressed in various spots. The screen remained blank.

      The noises from downstairs became more distinct. She was almost certain that she heard heavy footfalls crossing the bare wood kitchen floor. The amygdala in the frontal cortex of her brain sent out panic signals, causing her pulse to accelerate and her muscles to tense. If she had an intruder, what should she do? Fight or flight? Fight wasn’t her forte. She didn’t own a gun and knew nothing about self-defense. Maybe she could hide...under the bed...or in the closet.

      Any hope that she might be imagining this nightmare vanished when the third step from the bottom of the staircase squawked. The flicker of a flashlight beam slid across the carpet onto the landing outside her bedroom. Flight, baby, flight.

      There was only one place to run. She dove into the small adjoining bathroom and closed the door. Not exactly a fortress. The door was flimsy; the lock wouldn’t hold. She had to find something to brace against the door.

      The beam from the intruder’s flashlight shone under the lip of the bathroom door. He was right outside, only a few feet away from her. The knob rattled as he turned it.

      She tore down the stainless-steel rod that had been holding the shower curtain around the old claw-foot bathtub. Thank God, she hadn’t remodeled in here yet. Thrashing and yanking, she managed to brace the pole between a cabinet and the door.

      “Jayne,” he whispered, “let me in. I won’t hurt you.”

      Damn right, you won’t. “I called nine-one-one.”

      “I don’t think you did.” He kept his voice low, but she detected a hint of an accent. “I don’t think your phone works.”

      He must have done something to disrupt her cell-phone signal. And turn off her security system. And cut her electric.

      He was smart.

      And that was bad news for her. He’d be able to figure a way around her crude door brace in seconds. She couldn’t just stand there, wringing her hands. She needed to escape.

      The narrow window was her only outlet. If she could get the old paint unstuck and open the glass, she could slide down three or four feet to the slanted roof that covered the wraparound porch. From there, she could lower herself past the eaves to the porch railing.

      He pounded the door. “Open up, Jayne.”

      Using her hairbrush as a wedge, she forced the sticky window latch to release. Frantically, she shoved the glass open. A brisk autumn breeze whooshed inside, and she shivered. Her skimpy cotton nightie wasn’t going to provide much warmth. There were beach towels on the top shelf of the cabinet near the door. One of those would have to do.

      She