Obsession & Eyewitness. Carol Ericson

CHAPTER SEVEN

      MICHELLE SCREAMED AND tumbled to the floor. Her fingers had curled around the curtains, and they ripped as she brought them down with her.

      Still clutching a piece of white linen in her fist, she scrambled toward the bedroom door on her hands and knees. She glanced over her shoulder at the gaping rip in the curtains framing a smooth expanse of glass. No face. No hand.

      Had she imagined it, that hand clawing at the windowpane?

      Someone yelled and pounded on her front door. Michelle let out another yelp. She leaped to her feet and dashed for her cell phone, charging on the kitchen counter.

      “Michelle!” Another bang on the door. “Michelle! It’s Colin.”

      The phone slipped through her grasp as relief surged through her body. She peeked through the peephole and sagged against the door. With shaky fingers she turned the dead bolt and swung open the door.

      Colin charged over the threshold and Michelle didn’t know if he’d swept her into his arms or if she’d fallen there, but here she was tucked against his solid chest.

      “I heard you scream, what happened? Are you okay?”

      He’d heard her scream from down the block?

      She took a ragged breath that scorched her lungs. Maybe her scream had carried all the way to his house. “I—I saw something at the window.”

      “What window? Not the front?”

      “My bedroom window.”

      His arms tightened around her. “A face?”

      “A hand.” A tremble rolled through her, and his embrace got tighter.

      “You saw a hand at your bedroom window? Trying to open the window? Trying to break it?”

      “I don’t know. Maybe pressed against the pane, scratching at the glass.”

      He kicked the door shut behind him and advanced into the room with her still clinging to his neck. “Show me.”

      She untwined her arms and stepped back. She’d never been the clingy type before, but his strong arms had offered an oasis she couldn’t resist.

       Time to buck up and be a math teacher.

      She pointed to her abbreviated hallway. “My bedroom’s back here.”

      He followed her into the room, and she tugged on the hem of her T-shirt, for the first time realizing she was dressed for bed…or underdressed. Then she remembered the wording on the front of her T-shirt, and she crossed her arms over her chest.

      “Whoa! What happened to the curtains?”

      “I did that.” She gestured toward the piece of curtain she’d abandoned near the bedroom door. “I had it in my hand when I stumbled backward.”

      Colin prowled toward the window and yanked back the bedraggled curtains.

      Michelle jumped.

      He raised a brow. “Okay, what did you see?”

      “I was just about to turn off the lamp on my nightstand, and I heard a scratching sound at the window.”

      “Trees or bushes out there?”

      “No. Sand dunes.”

      “So you went to the window to check it out?”

      “Well, I sort of peered out, and that’s when I saw the hand.”

      “And the person attached to this hand wasn’t trying to open the window or break it?”

      “Not that I could see. It was weird. It was like a disembodied hand. I didn’t see anything else.”

      “The guy could’ve been crouched below the window, reaching up.”

      Michelle sucked in her lower lip. “Or maybe there was no hand or no body attached to the hand. Maybe I imagined it.”

      “Do you really believe that?”

      “I don’t know. After I screamed and headed for the door, I looked and there was nothing there.”

      “He heard you and took off. Believe me, that was some scream.”

      “How did you hear me? How did you get here?”

      A red flush crept across his face. “I…uh…was outside your house. Your scream carried outside the house, or at least I thought I heard something. And when I looked at your house, I could see the lights still on.”

      He’d been outside her house? “Why… What…?”

      “I couldn’t sleep. I went out to chuck rocks at the water. Since I hadn’t seen a patrol car since I’d been outside, I decided to cruise past your house myself.”

      “I’m glad you did. The hand freaked me out.”

      “So now you did see a hand.”

      Shaking her head, she shoved her hair behind one ear. “I don’t know, Colin.”

      “Do you want to call the police?”

      “I was on my way to do just that when you started pounding on my door. Do you think it’s worth it now? If there was someone outside my window, he’s long gone.”

      He shrugged. “They can dust for prints.”

      Her gaze swept Colin’s reassuringly large frame. He offered the only protection she needed.

      “Do you think a murderer is going to leave his fingerprints on windowpanes?”

      “Nope, but an even better argument against calling the local police is that I’d like to check the area around your window myself tomorrow morning. And I’d like to do it before some officer of the law tramps around out there.”

      “That settles it then. I’d rather have you looking out there than the cops who are already happy with their suspect.”

      Colin rubbed the gauzy material of the curtains between his fingers. “You need thicker curtains at your window.”

      “There’s nothing on the other side except the dunes, and I have a fence separating my yard from the dunes.”

      “Don’t the teenagers still hang out in the sand dunes?”

      “Once in a while, but they don’t venture into my yard.”

      “Maybe they did tonight.” He drummed his fingers against the window. “Do you have a sheet or something you can hang over this window?”

      Michelle gave him a sheet from the linen closet and he draped it over the curtain rod, covering the window and the torn curtains.

      “Thanks, Colin. I’m glad you were…taking a walk.”

      “Me, too, but I hope that’s not your way of kicking me out of your house.”

      “It must be past 1:00 a.m.”

      “Must be. But if you think I’m leaving you here alone with disembodied hands at the window and see-through curtains, you’re crazy.”

      A warm rush of…something sweet coursed through her veins. “I’m a mathematician. I’m too logical to be crazy.”

      “Except maybe crazy about pi.”

      She glanced down at her sleep shirt, her cheeks warming. “Oh, this silly thing.”

      “I like it.” His blue eyes glowed with an inner fire that singed the ends of her lashes. “I like it a lot.”

      She giggled. No, she laughed, because Michelle Girard never giggled. Then she ducked her head in the linen closet again. “I’ll get you a blanket and pillow for the couch. Unless you’d rather have a sleeping bag for the floor.”