She checked the front door again to make sure it was locked. She checked the living-room window, too. Then she started down the hall to Guy’s room.
He was sitting up in bed, using a crayon to connect the dots in a kids’ game book. He was biting down on his lip in deep concentration. His chicken pox looked a little worse today.
“I ought to connect the dots on you,” Hannah said, mussing his hair. “Do they itch a lot, honey?”
“Kinda,” he murmured, not looking up at her.
“Sorry I couldn’t stay home with you today,” Hannah said. She felt like the worst mother in the world, leaving her son with a sitter while he was ill. He adored Joyce. But he was sick, and he needed his mom there with him.
“Honey, did you hear me?” she asked, glancing down at the top of his head. “I said I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you company today. They needed me at the store.”
“It’s okay,” he said quietly, still not looking up at her.
She stroked his hair. “What do you think that picture is going to be?” she asked.
He studied his rendering. “A nellophant,” he muttered.
The telephone rang. Hannah gently patted his shoulder. “Can I see when you’re done?”
“Uh-huh,” he replied, focused on his work.
With a defeated sigh, Hannah headed for the kitchen. She grabbed the phone on the third ring. “Hello?”
There was silence on the other end.
“Hello?” she repeated.
More silence. Then a click. They’d hung up.
Hannah replaced the receiver on the cradle. She stopped to stare again at the unopened envelope on the kitchen counter.
The phone rang once more, and gave her a start. She snatched up the receiver. “Yes, hello?” she said.
Silence.
“Hello…” she said, angrily this time.
“Hannah? Hannah, how’s it going?”
She hesitated. His tone was warm and friendly, but she didn’t recognize the voice at all. “Fine…”
“Great to hear it. How’s Guy?”
“He’s all right,” she answered. “Um, I’m sorry. I—”
“You sound a little strange,” he said. “Is everything okay?”
“Um, yeah. I just don’t—”
“Well, you probably haven’t opened up my present yet,” he said. “Because then you’d know things aren’t okay at all. Why don’t you open it, Hannah?”
A chill swept through her. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered.
“Take a look at the video, Hannah. It’s going to happen tonight.”
There was a click on the other end of the line.
Hannah hung up the phone, then quickly picked it up again and pressed *-6-9. A recorded voice told her that the number dialed was blocked and could not be reached.
She hung up the phone again, then grabbed the envelope and tore it open. The video fell out on the counter. She remembered Scott reporting a couple of days ago that the store’s copy of
Her hand shaking, Hannah switched on the TV, then inserted the tape into the VCR. As with the other videos, this was cued to a specific scene.
On the TV screen, Warren Beatty, with his hair slicked back and looking dapper in a thirties-style suit and tie, stood in a darkened room in front of a sofa and a large picture window. He was watching a black-and-white movie of himself on a home projector. He picked up a newspaper and glanced at it.
Hannah flinched at the loud pop and shattering of glass. Beatty’s newspaper was suddenly punctured with a bullet hole. Dazed, he looked down at the blood on his chest, and he seemed to realize that he’d been shot. Another shot pierced through that picture window, then another. Beatty recoiled and twisted as he took each bullet.
Hannah quickly grabbed the remote and turned down the volume so Guy wouldn’t hear.
The bullets hailed through the splintered front window now, hitting Beatty and several art deco items in the room. He finally sank back on the sofa, bleeding and stunned.
Hannah gasped as a final, fatal shot hit him from behind and passed through his forehead. He lurched forward, then flopped back.
Numb, Hannah switched off the set.
Someone she knew would be executed like that.
Breathless, Hannah went to the window and peered outside. She didn’t see anyone below. She pulled the drapes shut, then hurried back to Guy’s room.
He’d fallen asleep with the crayon still in his little hand and the game book in his lap. Hannah padded to his window and quickly closed the blinds. She pried the crayon out of Guy’s grasp, then set aside the game book. She switched off the nightstand lamp.
Hannah glanced toward his window again. On the third floor, they were probably too far up for anyone to shoot at them from the street. Someone else had been targeted for tonight, someone who had a first-floor apartment or a house with big windows.
She remembered his place in that tenement, the bars on the large picture window just slightly above street level. This time of night, if he had the lights on, anyone could see him from outside. He was an easy mark.
She rushed down the hallway to the phone. She hunted through her purse for his number. “Please, God,” she whispered, unable to find the scrap of paper upon which it was written. Finally, she dumped the entire contents of her purse on the counter. She saw the piece of paper and snatched it up.
Grabbing the phone, Hannah dialed Ben’s number. It rang only once; then his recorded voice came on the line:
“Shit,” Hannah muttered. She could tell from the way it picked up so fast that he was on another line. She waited for the tone. “Ben?” she said. “As soon as you get this, go to your window and close the drapes. I think someone outside your window might try to shoot you. I’ll explain later. This is Hannah. I’ll keep trying you.”
She hung up.
She couldn’t think of anyone except Ben. Joyce’s apartment was on the third floor. Seth lived above a garage. Tish’s house had bushes all around the first floor, and it was impossible to see inside. Scott’s hospital room was on the second floor and had small, narrow windows.
It was Ben. She’d been with him most of yesterday and part of today. They’d been seen together. And as much as she fought it, she had feelings for him. Perhaps her stalker could see that as well. So Ben had to die.
She would wait another couple of minutes, count to one hundred and twenty, then call again. Maybe she’d get the operator to interrupt.
She wondered whom he might be talking to, and if he was standing in front of that window right now.
“I can’t come back, at least not for a while,” Ben said into the cordless phone. “Don’t ask me to.”
He sat on the edge of the old, beat-up desk, his back to the big picture window. From the streetlight outside, the vertical burglar bars cast shadows on his living-room wall.
He heard the call-waiting tone, and chose to ignore it. If it was important, they’d leave a message.
“Well, do you have any idea when you’ll return home?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“In other words, you’re not finished punishing me yet,” she said. “Is that it? You know, I go to bed crying every night.”
“You were doing that before I left. You were crying for
