Hide (Detective D.D. Warren, #2)(84)

Back in the kitchen now. Bella barking. My heart thudding. Did I hear the creak of the downstairs door? Footsteps on the stairs?

I finally grabbed Bella by the collar and forced her onto the floor. "Shhhh, shhh, shhh," I murmured, but my own tense state kept her agitated. She growled low in her throat as I stared at the sliver of light beneath my apartment door, waiting for the dark shadows of footsteps to appear, the enemy to come into sight.

And…

Nothing.

Minute slid into minute. My breathing slowed. My composure transitioned from fight-or-flight to just plain bewildered. Belatedly I thought to move over to the bay windows, peer down at the street. No strange cars were parked below. No person loitered in the shadows.

I collapsed in the window seat, Taser still clutched to my chest. I was overreacting but couldn't give up my vigil. Bella was more practical about things. With a huff, she left her post in favor of the living room dog bed. In a matter of seconds, she was curled up and back asleep, doggy nose tucked on doggy paws. I remained an over-hyped sentinel, trying to talk myself down.

Buzzers go off in the middle of the night, I tried reminding myself. It had happened before. Would happen again. Drunks wander by or even invited guests of another tenant who get the unit numbers confused. My fellow renters were security-conscious. None of us randomly opened doors for unknown buzzers. Which probably only increased the odds that the outside person was going to keep punching buttons until he got results.

In other words, there were a million and a half logical explanations for a doorbell to sound in the middle of the night. And none of them were working for me.

I got off the window seat. Returned to my front door. Pressed my ear against its painted surface and listened for sounds coming from the stairs.

The problem is, there's no soundtrack for real life. In the movies, you know when something bad is going to happen, because the heavy bass tells you so. There isn't a person alive whose heart doesn't race upon hearing the theme song from Jaws, and frankly, that's a comforting thing. We like our markers. It gives the world a sense of order. Bad things may happen, but only after the background picks up with da-dah, da-dah, da-dah-da-dah-da-dah.

The real world isn't like that. A young girl comes home on a sunny afternoon, climbs the same old stairs, listens to the same old hum of ancient air conditioners, only to enter the apartment and find her mother dead on the sofa.

A man goes out for a walk in the city. Listens to the rush of cars, the honk of horns, the bustle of his fellow pedestrians chatting away on their cell phones. Steps off the curb an instant too soon, and next thing you know, his face is a pulpy mess, shattered against a lamppost.

One little girl goes out to play in her grandparents' yard. Birds chirping. Fall leaves crunching. Breeze rustling. And winds up screaming in the back of an unmarked van.

Life changes in an instant, with no soundtrack to be your guide.

Which leaves someone like me, jumping at all noises because I don't know how to tell the difference.

I wanted to be like the rest of my urban neighbors, who, when awakened in the middle of the night by their front buzzer, could heartily declare "Fuck off!" before rolling over and going back to sleep. Now, there was a way to live.

I trudged back to my bedroom, lit by three separate night-lights. I stretched out on my twin-size bed, dancing my fingers across the narrow width.

And I let myself imagine, for a moment, what it might be like if Bobby Dodge wasn't a detective and I wasn't a victim? suspect? witness? Maybe we were two ordinary people, meeting at a church social. I'd brought the three-bean salad. He'd brought that perennial bachelor favorite—a bag of tortilla chips. We could talk kickboxing, dogs, white picket fences. Afterwards, I'd let him walk me home. He would slide his arms around my waist. And instead of going rigid with distrust, I would let myself sink into him. The feel of a hard male body, the plane of his chest flattening out my breasts. The ticklish rasp of his whiskers in the instant before he kissed me.

We could have dinner, go out to the movies, spend entire weekends having sex. On the sofa, in the bedroom, on top of the kitchen counter. He was fit, athletic. I bet he'd be very good at sex.

We could even become boyfriend and girlfriend, the way other people did. And I would be normal and not search for his name or likeness in the sex offenders' database.

Except I wasn't normal. I lived with too many years of fear stamped into my psyche. And he lived with the weight of a man's death hanging around his neck. His job already had him lying and manipulating me. My past had me lying and manipulating him. Both of us thought we were right.

I wondered for the first time how well Bobby slept at night. And if we ever did get together, which one of us would be the first to wake up screaming. The thought should've sobered me. Instead, it made me smile. We were both twisted, he and I. Maybe, if given enough time, we could find out if our twistedness made us fit.

I sighed. Rolled over. Listened to the pitter-patter of Bella returning to the bedroom, taking up position next to my bed. I stroked her ears, told her I loved her. It made us both feel better.

Much to my surprise, I relaxed. My eyes drifted shut. I might have started to dream.

Then the buzzer came again. Loud, shrill, jolting. Again and again and again. A violent onslaught of sound, ricocheting through my tiny apartment.

I leapt from my bed, ran to the window. Streetlights bombarded the slick black space but gave up nothing. Into the kitchen now, skipping forward on the balls of my feet, muscles bunched, Taser ready, eyes glued to the strip beneath the door.