A violent spasm jerked Kaycee awake.
Her eyes flew open to a dark bedroom — not her own. Her heart pummeled her ribs, each breath an uneven staccato. Heaviness pressed her into the bed, her skin slick with sweat.
Someone was there, watching Kaycee. She could
For a moment she couldn’t move.
With a small cry she threw back the bedcovers, rolled to her side, and fumbled for the switch on the nightstand lamp. Blessed golden light spilled into the room. She sat up, casting wild glances into all four corners. She saw beige walls, a framed print of mallards in flight. White dresser. Her overnight bag on the floor.
No one was there.
The small digital clock on the nightstand read ten minutes after three.
She flopped back down against her pillow, air whooshing from her mouth. Her pulse wouldn’t slow. That dream! It had been so real. Even now she could feel the darkness, hear the scream, see the two bullet holes in that dead man’s head. Smell the blood . . .
It was the same man she’d seen in the camera. But that picture had been a close-up. No view of the dark yellow floor, the spilled blood.
Through whose eyes had she seen these things in the dream? Whose scream did she feel in her own throat?
Kaycee gripped the bedcovers. No one, that’s who. Her mind had just gone wild in sleep, adding its own imaginings to the picture she thought she’d seen. That photo hadn’t even been real. Nor the camera.
And
Kaycee’s thoughts snagged on her still rapid heartbeat, then abruptly spun to Tricia’s windows. Were they all locked?
But the fear only grew.
She slid from bed onto shaky legs. Edging to the door, she opened it with caution. Stuck her head out. A nightlight tinted the hall in yellow-green. Kaycee glanced at the closed door on her left. She didn’t want to wake Tricia. Ghostlike, Kaycee stepped over her threshold and glided down the hall into the TV room. She turned on a lamp. Pulse skittering, she eyed the sliding door onto the backyard patio. Its lever was down in the locked position, but the curtains were pulled back, the night a sucking black void that would swallow her whole.
Kaycee could feel unseen eyes upon her, watching through the glass.
She hurried over and yanked the curtains closed.
The sensations of the dream shuddered anew over Kaycee’s skin. She pulled both arms across her chest. Her gaze fell upon a window near the corner of the room, and she hurried to it. With trembling hand she nudged back its curtains to check the lock, then let them fall shut. A thin crack of night pulsed between the two halves of fabric. Kaycee pulled one side firmly over the other.
As if chased, she fled into the kitchen and flicked on its overhead light. Checked its windows and rolled down the shades. Then she flung herself into the living room where she and Tricia had sat. Here the curtains were already closed. She’d insisted upon that as soon as she arrived. Kaycee felt the lock on every window and on the front door.
Done. Dry-mouthed, Kaycee hunched before the door, feet cold against the tile and fingers gripped beneath her chin.
So much for fighting the fear.
She wandered to the couch and sank upon it, drawing her pajamaclad knees to her chest.
Kaycee’s mouth twisted. Maybe, but her mother had given in to her fears in worse ways. What about all that moving they’d done? Even now Kaycee felt a stab of pain just thinking about it. Easy enough for Monica Raye to move, with no roots of her own. Her parents had died by the time Kaycee was two, and she, like Kaycee, had no siblings. But in town after town Kaycee would make friends just to be torn from them. No matter how she begged to stay put, her mother never listened. Monica Raye’s secretarial skills were highly portable. She refused to see that her daughter was not.
Kaycee pictured her mother on the Christmas Eve three years before her heart attack. Kaycee had graduated from college the previous year and was still struggling to get her fear of being watched under control. To that day they’d never spoken openly about their common paranoia.
“Kaycee, I’m so sorry,” her mom said. Blinking lights from the Christmas tree played across her face.
“Sorry for what?”
Her mom absently rubbed the ragged scar on her left forearm — the remnant of some childhood accident. “For passing it on to you. I wish . . .” Her voice tightened. “I wish I hadn’t.”
Kaycee stared at her. What made her broach this forbidden subject now? “It’s okay.”
But of course — it wasn’t. What it had cost Kaycee as a child. What it cost her even then.
“I tried to make a better life for you, Kaycee. I hope you’ll believe that.”
Kaycee’s chest constricted. Did her mother see through her that well? Did she see that as much as Kaycee loved her, the seed of blame had long ago taken root and grown in her daughter’s heart?
“Mom, really. It’s okay.”
Her mother started to say more, then turned away.
Kaycee leaned her head back against Tricia’s couch. So much left unsaid. You think you have plenty of time, then suddenly — you don’t. Three years later Monica Raye was dead. If only they’d fought their fear together over the years. Maybe they could have helped each other. Now, Kaycee thought, this paranoia would destroy her.
Kaycee shivered, suddenly cold. She pushed off the couch and hustled back into Tricia’s guest bedroom, leaving the lights on behind her. Unseen eyes seemed to follow her every move. She closed her door and locked it. Jumped into bed and pulled up the covers. She could not bring herself to turn off the lamp.
Her gaze roamed to the drawn curtains of the window to her right. They were out there. Watching.
Kaycee squeezed her eyes shut.
The dream washed over her once again. Darkness . . . screams. Running feet . . . the dead man’s face. Puddled blood on a dark yellow floor.
Kaycee buried her face in the pillow and prayed for morning.
