Page 16 of Scar

Tally shifted to face him. Her tongue was beating faster against the roof of her mouth than her heart was in her chest. She kept her breathing even, the exertion of fending off the two thugs minimal.

He continued to stand there, about ten feet from her. There was a lamppost to his right and a post office drop-off box beyond that. Tally walked these streets daily and she knew where everything stationary was. A broken beer bottle was next to the trash can behind her. A piece of paper crackled in the windshield wiper of the car to her left.

Her walking cane was weighted with lead, making her swings similar to a baseball bat. She knew how to use it in a single piece like a bow staff or separately like batons. She was so sick and tired of Gordon Tremont sending his thugs after her that she’d taken out some of her frustration on the two that had attacked.

This third one, though… She wasn’t sure.

He wasn’t moving, like he was studying her. While someone with sight would care about things like clothing style, hair and eye color, or facial features, Tally concentrated on more important things, like his height and build.

She was five-seven, lean with muscle. As her best friend, Simone, put it, she also had some junk in her trunk.

The man in front of her was six-two. He had muscle but was not overly bulky. She sensed he was dangerous, not simply a nuisance. Her father had trained her well, knowing the threats she would face out in the real world would be ten times more hazardous for her than the average woman. Yet there was no doubt in her mind that this man could cause her a lot of harm.

She tightened her grips on the halves of her cane. Time ticked on, and still the man did not advance.

Carefully, Tally took a step back. She was six and a half blocks, just over a thousand steps, to her apartment building. She could run that in a matter of minutes. It wouldn’t be running away, per se. At least, that’s what her pride tried to tell her.

She took another step backward. He remained where he was.

Tally did not lower her hands. “Unless you want to join your friends in the hospital, I suggest you stay away from me.”

Tally turned and bolted. It wasn’t the easiest feat in the world, running while using echolocation to keep herself from hitting anything, but it was a skillset her father had drilled into her since a very young age.

Her mind counted the steps precisely, so she knew the moment she needed to turn to reach the outer door to her apartment building. Switching both halves of her cane over to her left hand, Tally reached for the keypad at the side of the door with her right. Her fingers were off by a few centimeters. She adjusted, placing her pointer, middle, and ring fingers on the 4, 5, and 6 buttons. She did not need the braille on the pad to know which buttons were which. Using only those three fingers, she quickly typed in the code and then had to wait the agonizing second for the door to buzz open.

Tally burst inside, slamming the door closed behind her. She stood there for a second, breathing heavily. That man… He was so different from Gordon Tremont’s usual type. Who was he? What did he want? He hadn’t hurt her or even tried to hurt her. It had been like he waswatchingher.

Snapping the pieces of her cane back together, Tally journeyed up the stairs to her third story apartment.

She was exhausted, and it had nothing to do with the fight she’d just had. Though that certainly hadn’t helped. Tally loved finally having her own restaurant. It was herdream, but she was working seven days a week, fourteen hour days. The few times she’d taken days off, customers had complained that it wasn’t ‘the Blind Chef’ that had made their food, even though it was her unique menu.

Tally was behind on her office work because she was always in the kitchen. Shelovedher kitchen, but that didn’t get her employees paid as in physically processing their payroll. She really needed to look into getting an office manager. She’d had one, but he’d thought working for a blind woman meant she wouldn’t know when he started taking money from the safe. Tally hadn’t trusted anyone since to do the work and Simone wasn’t always available to help her.

Reaching into her left sleeve, she rolled the plastic wrist coil with her keys down her arm. She kept the key set, which only had three keys on it, around the crook of her elbow so she didn’t risk losing them.

Tally stepped inside her apartment—and froze. She was not alone.

CHAPTER5

[WiseWave620: It’s so quiet without the kids. I don’t think I like it.]

* * *

Tally’s back stiffened. He was here, the same man from the street. He wasinsideher apartment. How the hell was he inside her apartment? She lived in a secure building with a security system.

She gripped her walking cane tightly, deliberating for a moment what to do. If she let on that she knew he was in her apartment, it could be enough to warn him off, but it could also cause him to attack sooner. She was confident in her skills, but just as it had out on the sidewalk, her gut told her that the man standing in her apartment was dangerous. It was just a sense, the air around him, but it was enough to make her question if she’d be able to defend herself against him.

What scared her most was the fact that he’d beaten her into her apartment. Heknewwhere she lived and he was familiar enough with her building to have gotten past the security system without setting off any alarms.

She couldn’t fake not knowing he was there while sending out a text message to Simone to call the police, that way the police could catch him unawares. Ironically, ‘texting blind’ didn’t work for her. The Voiceover settings on her phone were not exactly stealthy. Tally wouldn’t be able to send out a message without speaking her message out loud either. Any emergency signal she sent would alert him, too.

But dammit, she was pissed! This was her home, her sanctuary. The one place where she didn’t have to be ‘on’ because it was modified exactly for her.

Maybe it was reckless and foolish, but she waspissed!Her home? Gordon Tremont had gone too far this time!

Tally slammed her door closed behind her. “I know you’re here, asshole.” Rather than hang her cane up on the wall hook next to her door, Tally kept it with her. She was pissed, not suicidal. Normally in her home, she didn’t need it. Everything had its place and she knew the exact steps to get to anywhere from anywhere. But who knew what this asshat had moved? “I’m calling the police.” She held up her smartwatch to show that she wasn’t bluffing. She hit the side button five times. When prompted by the voice command, Tally said loudly, “There’s an intruder in my home.” The responding beeps told her that emergency services were notified. “Whatever it is you’re here to do, I suggest you get on with it. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

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