Targeted. Becky Avella

portrait that schoolkids brought home each year, or the type that schoolteachers had taken for their staff photo. The innocence of it screamed at him. This picture did not belong in the house of a killer.

      He spoke into his radio. “Attic’s clear, and Sarge?” He swallowed, hating to be the bearer of such bad news, but if anyone could help this woman right now, it was Terrell Watkins. “Sarge, you need to get up here and see this.”

      His eyes traveled back to the photo. She must be Hale’s next victim. Rick groaned. She was out there somewhere in the city, unprotected and unaware that she was standing in the crosshairs of a psychopath.

      But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst part was, Rick knew her.

      * * *

      A car in the distance backfired, causing Stephanie O’Brien to drop her keys. She scooped them up and stomped the rest of the way past the playground’s graffiti-decorated retaining wall to the front doors of Lincoln Elementary School.

      Stephanie rolled her eyes. It wasn’t like her to be so jumpy, but about halfway through her trek to the school she had begun to feel as if someone were following her. But every time she peered over her shoulder, she didn’t see anyone behind her other than a few bustling people who seemed a lot more concerned with getting out of the freezing rain than with causing her any trouble.

      You traveled alone to Africa and back three times before your twenty-fifth birthday, and now you’re afraid of walking a few blocks to school? She had hoped that common sense would drive away the uneasiness, but it hadn’t. Stephanie pulled her arms in tight to her body and tried to talk herself out of the anxiety creeping up her spine and into her imagination.

      To get to the elementary school where she taught fifth grade, Stephanie walked through familiar neighborhoods full of run-down houses that begged for fresh paint and small apartment buildings with rusted metal swing sets in their play areas. Properties and cars were locked behind six-foot-tall chain-link fences, and overgrown, neglected rhododendron bushes commandeered the sidewalk, forcing Stephanie to step into the street if she wanted to pass. Garbage blown out of Dumpsters lay damp along the edges of the buildings and the fences.

      The area was a bit rough around the edges, but until today, it had never felt dangerous to her. In fact, these neighborhoods bordered the neighborhood where she lived. Stephanie didn’t own a car, so it was routine to trudge back and forth between home and work through this area. It was also common for her to be working in her classroom over the weekend to prepare for the school week ahead. She looked over her shoulder again. This wasn’t different from any other trip to school, so why did it feel so different?

      Tiny droplets from the hood of her raincoat dripped onto her cold nose, reminding her she needed to shake off this silliness and get inside before she drowned. Real Seattleites might be too cool for umbrellas, but at the moment Stephanie would gladly look like a tourist if it meant being dry. It was May for goodness’ sake; shouldn’t it be warmer?

      She glanced over her shoulder one final time before she let herself into the dark building and typed in the security code. The door shut with a bang and a click as it locked behind her. Other than the squeak of her wet tennis shoes on the waxed tile floor, the hallway stretched into silent darkness.

      She flipped on the light in her classroom and locked the door behind her. She threw her keys on her desk and shimmied out of her wet coat. She cranked up her stereo extra loud. The music and the light drove away the eeriness as Stephanie sat down and grabbed the stack of work waiting for her.

      Settling into her chair, Stephanie spread open her lesson plan book and lifted the photo she kept paper-clipped to the inside cover. In the picture she held Moses, the sweet, chubby toddler who had stolen her heart the last time she had visited her younger sister, Emily, in Liberia. Moses’s round black face looked straight into the camera, his smile wide, while the photograph captured Stephanie’s profile as she stared adoringly at the little boy on her hip. Stephanie’s heart lurched with longing as she relived the moment in her mind now.

      After her third trip to visit her sister and brother-in-law in West Africa, Stephanie had physically boarded the plane for home, but she had left her heart behind in the red African dirt. Her life now revolved around figuring out how to get back there as a full-time missionary, but the process wasn’t going well at all. She didn’t have the money to sustain herself without being a burden to Emily and Ty, and with their first baby on the way, they didn’t need to take care of her as well on the meager salary they received from an international missions board.

      Stephanie swiped her finger across the picture of Moses’s face. I miss you, baby boy. I wonder how big you’ve gotten this year. She needed to ask Emily for a more recent picture. She clipped the photo to the book where it belonged, sighed and settled in to do the work in front of her.

      An hour passed before the sound of jingling keys in the hallway jerked her attention away from the stack of essays she was reading. The doorknob to her classroom turned. Was a janitor working today? They didn’t usually work this late on weekends, but who else would have a master key? Maybe Jim Mendoza, the principal?

      Stephanie bit the inside of her cheek. Who was it? Reaching behind her, she fished her cell phone out of the pocket of her wet coat hanging on the back of her desk chair. She glanced at the phone and then tossed it on the stack of papers in front of her. She had forgotten to charge the battery again. Her stomach knotted as she waited for whoever it was behind the door to enter.

      “Who’s there?” she called.

      The door swung open, and a pallid face peeked around it. His washed-out blue eyes widened. “It’s just me.”

      She released all the air she’d been holding as she realized it was the IT guy who had been helping her install all of the new technology she had received from a grant she had won for her classroom. He dropped in unannounced all the time, but this was the first time he had come on a weekend.

      Stephanie lowered the stapler in her hand. She must have grabbed it without realizing it before the door opened. Her cheeks burned. She hoped he hadn’t noticed the threatening way she had held it. What good would a stapler have done her if it truly had been an emergency?

      Her laugh sounded forced and flat in her own ears. “You scared me.”

      The blond man stood on the classroom door’s threshold, his tool bag in hand. He stood perfectly erect, unblinking.

      “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”

      “Did you need anything?”

      He pointed at a stack of shipping boxes she hadn’t noticed sitting near the front whiteboard. “I thought I would get a head start setting those up for you so you can use them on Monday,” he said.

      After she won the grant, boxes like these had slowly trickled into her classroom. It felt like Christmas every time a new one arrived. She eyed a large flat box and hoped that the smart board she was looking forward to using was inside it.

      Stephanie nibbled on her lower lip, not liking being alone with a man she didn’t know well, but she was unsure of what to say or do that wouldn’t come across as rude. “Um, sure, I’ll just get out of your way, then.”

      “Thank you, Stephanie.”

      It was probably nothing more than the overactive imagination she had been combating all day, but something about the way he pronounced her name sent a shiver scampering up her spine. She gathered up her lesson plan book and the stack of essays and moved to the opposite corner from where he stood in the doorway.

      “You’re welcome, Julian. Let me know if you need anything.”

      She walked to the round worktable, but before she sat, movement outside startled her.

      “Rick?” She cocked her head, confused.

      Why was Terrell’s friend Rick Powell out there? She gasped. Rick wasn’t just standing at the window; his gun was pointing directly at her through the glass.