Page 2 of Homeport

She would get to it. Sooner or later.

But the windows glinted, and the ferocious faces of the gargoyles crouched on the eaves grinned. Long terraces and narrow balconies offered views in every direction. The chimneys would puff smoke—when someone took the time to light a fire. Grand old oaks rose high, and a thick stand of pines broke the wind on the north side.

She and her brother shared the space compatibly enough—or had until Andrew’s drinking became more habitual. But she wasn’t going to think about that. She enjoyed having him close, liked as well as loved him, so that working with him, sharing a house with him, was a pleasure.

The wind blew her hair into her eyes the minute she stepped out of the car. Vaguely annoyed, she dragged it back, then leaned in to retrieve her laptop and briefcase. Shouldering both, humming the final strains of Puccini, she walked back to the trunk and popped it open.

Her hair blew into her face again, causing her to huff out an irritated breath. The half-sigh ended in a choked gasp as her hair was grabbed in one hard yank, used as a rope to snap her head back. Small white stars burst in front of her eyes as both pain and shock stabbed into her skull. And the point of a knife pressed cold and sharp against the pulse in her throat.

Fear screamed in her head, a primal burn that burst in the gut and shrieked toward the throat. Before she could release it, she was twisted around, shoved hard against the car so that the blossom of pain in her hip blurred her vision and turned her legs to jelly. The hand on her hair yanked again, jerking her head back like a doll’s.

His face was hideous. Pasty white and scarred, its features blunted. It took her several seconds before the dry-mouthed terror allowed her to see it was a mask—rubber and paint twisted into deformity.

She didn’t struggle, couldn’t. There was nothing she feared as much as a knife with its deadly point, its smooth killing edge. The keen tip was pressed into the soft pad under her jaw so that each choked breath she took brought a searing jab of pain and terror.

He was big. Six-four or -five, she noted, struggling to pay attention, pay attention to details while her heart skittered into her throat where the blade pressed. Two hundred fifty or sixty pounds, wide at the shoulders, short at the neck.

Oh God.

Brown eyes, muddy brown. It was all she could see through the slits in the rubber fright mask he wore. And the eyes were flat as a shark’s and just as dispassionate as he tipped the point of the knife, slid it over her throat to delicately slice the skin.

A small fire burned there while a thin line of blood trickled down to the collar of her coat.

“Please.” The word bubbled out as she instinctively shoved at the wrist of his knife hand. Every rational thought clicked off into cold dread as he used the point to jerk up her head and expose the vulnerable line of her throat.

In her mind flashed the image of the knife slashing once, fast and silent, severing carotid artery, a gush of hot blood. And she would die on her feet, slaughtered like a lamb.

“Please don’t. I have three hundred and fifty dollars in cash.” Please let it be money he wants, she thought frantically. Let it just be money. If it was rape, she prayed she had the courage to fight, even knowing she couldn’t win.

If it was blood, she hoped it would be quick.

“I’ll give you the money,” she began, then gasped in shock as he tossed her aside like a bundle of rags.

She fell hard on her hands and knees on the gravel drive, felt the burn of small, nasty cuts on her palms. She could hear herself whimpering, hated the helpless, numbing fear that made it impossible to do more than stare at him out of blurred eyes.

To stare at the knife that glinted in the thin sunlight. Even as her mind screamed to run, to fight, she hunched into herself, paralyzed.

He picked up her purse, her briefcase, turned the blade so that the sun shot off a spear of light into her eyes. Then he leaned down and jammed the point into the rear tire. When he yanked it free, took a step in her direction, she began to crawl toward the house.

She waited for him to strike again, to tear at her clothes, to plunge the knife into her back with the same careless force he’d used to stab it into the tire, but she kept crawling over the brittle winter grass.

When she reached the steps, she looked back with her eyes wheeling in her head, with small, hunted sounds bubbling through her lips.

And saw she was alone.

Short, rusty breaths scraped at her throat, burned in her lungs as she dragged herself up the steps. She had to get inside, get away. Lock the door. Before he came back, before he came back and used that knife on her.

Her hand slid off the knob once, twice before she managed to close her fingers around it. Locked. Of course it was locked. No one was home. No one was there to help.

For a moment, she simply curled there, outside the door, shivering with shock and the wind that whipped over the hill.

Move, she ordered herself. You have to move. Get the key, get inside, call the police.

Her eyes darted left and right, like a rabbit watching for wolves, and her teeth started to chatter. Using the knob for support, she pulled herself to her feet. Her legs threatened to buckle, her left knee was screaming, but she darted off the porch in a kind of drunken lope, searched frantically for her purse before she remembered he’d taken it.

She babbled out words, prayers, curses, pleas as she yanked open the car door and fumbled with the glove compartment. Even as her fingers closed over her spare keys a sound had her whirling around wildly, her hands coming up defensively.

There was nothing there but the wind sweeping through the bare black branches of trees, through the thorny canes of the climbing roses, over the brittle grass.

---