Secretive Stranger

It was like knowing the alphabet, yet somehow being unable to create a word. Sophie had clues but no answers. She had reasons but no means to stop herself from being prey.

Thinking slowed her heart rate, at least for a good two minutes. Maybe three. Her throat was so dry, she craved water. Her back hurt; she was cramped and chilled and miserably uncomfortable.

All that nonsense distracted her for a short stretch, too.

Slowly, though, it seeped in on her.

Panic.

Splashes from the past blurred in her mind, only the past wasn’t a haunted nightmare this time. It was an echo of what really happened. The fire. Her parents trapped, with nowhere to go, no way to save themselves.

If there were a fire, Sophie wouldn’t be able to escape. No one knew she was locked in here. No one even knew she was home this early.

She’d been to this exact same spot before-a place where panic was so big, so dark, so thick and oxygen- stealing, that there just was nothing else. Cord, she kept thinking desperately. Find me. Find me, please.

That was her last coherent thought before the fear sucked her in and took over completely.

Cord bounded up the stairs and thumped on Sophie’s door. When there was no answer, he knuckled the door again.

After a third time, he turned around in a grump and dug out the key to his brother’s place. They hadn’t arranged a specific time to get together that night, so it was pretty stupid to feel his heart clunk. He was worried, that was all. Worried about the acceleration of events; worried about the cops weeding out so many suspects, yet not enough to pin down the guilty party-or parties; worried about Sophie’s relationship with the two women on the cops’ list, Penelope and Jan; worried that no one seemed to recognize Sophie for what she was-not a villain, but an angel. Not a suspect, but an innocent, vulnerable, incredibly wonderful woman.

The woman he’d fallen in love with-in spite of Jon, in spite of Zoe, in spite of every damn thing that was crazy and going wrong right now. Cord pushed open the door to Jon’s apartment and stomped in. He dropped his jacket and aimed for the kitchen, to battle with his brother’s fancy coffeepot again.

It wouldn’t kill him to wait a while to see Soph. He just wanted her there. So he’d know she was okay. So he could tell her about seeing his father that afternoon. Almost unwillingly, he felt a smile coming back. His father was sore from the fall, but doing fine. Cord had dreaded telling him more of the bad news about Jon’s past, but out of the blue, their father-at least for the day-had forgotten Jon. So Cord told him about Sophie instead. How she looked, how she walked, who she was, what she did.

His dad, even in the brain fog that tore at Cord’s heart most days, had finally said that all this Sophie talk was getting silly. Did Cord even realize he was in love with the woman? When he was he going to bring her around? At the time…

Cord suddenly lifted his head, the coffeepot in one hand, a mug in the other. He thought he’d heard a strange sound. A muted thump.

But when he went completely still, the sound didn’t repeat. He forgot it, carted his coffee into the computer room and started switching on all the electronics. The sooner he dove into every file and floorboard in Jon’s place, the better. There was no talking about the future until this mess with his brother was resolved. Hopefully, when Sophie got here, she’d take on the books. He dreaded the accounting stuff.

He opened a desk drawer, scrounged for a scratch pad…then halted. He heard the same vague thump again. He stood up restlessly, listened again.

Nothing. Weirded out now, he unearthed his cell phone, punched in Sophie’s cell. Naturally, he only got her voice mail. If the cops hadn’t black-inked a worry about those two women friends of hers, Cord wouldn’t think anything of it. She didn’t have a time-clock sort of job. Stopping by the cleaners could have held her up. Anything could have slowed her down.

Still, he was edgy now, too antsy to concentrate. He hiked across the hall to rap on Sophie’s door again. No response. Damn cat hadn’t even shown his face. No light reflected under her door, either.

He’d barely crossed back into Jon’s apartment before hearing that faint thumping. It was real, not in his head. It was just so faint and sporadic. It made no…But it did make sense, he suddenly realized, and charged across the living room. Sophie and Jon’s apartments shared a common wall, the internal wall affecting both the living and computer rooms in Jon’s place. He thumped on his side.

Waited.

And there it was. An answering thump.

Then nothing. No further response. Nothing from the other side, no matter how hard he pounded from either the living room or computer walls. Frantic now, he realized he had no key to Sophie’s place, no way to get in. Calling the police was an obvious choice, but not fast enough. Something was wrong, he knew it. Something was really wrong.

He started toward her place again, then spun around, hustled into the kitchen to paw through his brother’s tray of spare keys. He’d forgotten. Sophie had said Jon took care of her stuff when she was gone, so her apartment key could well be in the mess of others.

He scooped up the three that looked like door keys, chased across the hall, tried the first, failed. Tried the second, got in, called, “Sophie?”

When she didn’t answer him this time, he put on steam, following the east inner wall of her place, checking the bathroom, then into the bedroom where they’d spent that extraordinarily unforgettable night…God, the memory of her wildly coming apart in his arms was sealed in his mind like a secret he’d never give up. Heart drumming hard now, he scanned the room, the wall…the closed closet door.

The mental click was instantaneous. Sophie, being Sophie, would never have tidily closed her closet door. He tried the knob, readily discovered the lock had been pushed in, and turned it.

The damn cat flew from the darkness, pausing only long enough to brush against him. “Soph…” He didn’t see her, wasn’t sure if it was just the cat who’d been locked in the closet who’d made those thumping sounds, but a patchwork splash of color on the closet floor snagged his gaze.

He crouched down.

She was all curled up, motionless, her arms wrapped tighter around her knees than a taped-up package. Her face had no more color than a doll, and although her eyes were open, they were haunted dark, glazed with shock.

Her lips parted once, then twice. “I didn’t think anyone would find me,” she said hoarsely.

“I’d always find you,” he said quickly, correcting her. “Come here, baby.”

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Really. I’m okay.”

She was okay, all right. Like someone who’d been hit by a bus was okay. Her eyes met his-her gaze hooked on his and wouldn’t let go-but she was so frozen in that fetal position that she might as well have been painted there. In his head, Cord started swearing, every four-letter word he knew, strung together like magnets. But that was just in his head.

“We’ll just go at this slow,” he murmured.

Since she seemed to be having trouble moving, he did the obvious, crawled in there with her. He ducked through the clothes, through the shoes and bags and girl debris on the closet floor, and then just pulled her into him, onto him. Her skin was colder than ice. He sat there in the stupid closet, with her clothes dancing around his head and her shoes kicking him in the spine-but it wasn’t as if he cared about that crap.

Her skin started warming up the minute he had her wrapped up on his lap. Her cheek crashed into his shoulder. She didn’t unlock her arms, her knees, but she burrowed into him as if he were a nest. Her nest. Her one safe place in an unbearably dangerous world.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, into his shoulder. “I just need another couple seconds.”

“Hey, we can stay here all night if you want. We can order in. I’ll bet Chinese delivers to closets.” He kissed the top of her head, her temple. Not come-on kisses. Not even kisses for her. He knew damn well they were kisses for him, selfish kisses, self-centered kisses-his need to be able to kiss her, his need to be the one who was there for her whenever the monsters showed up. Any monsters. Anytime, anywhere.