check it out. I’m going to check the bus. The kid said Glenn changed his appearance in the bathroom.”
Will boarded the bus and went straight for the bathroom. Pulling on gloves, he went through the trash. He found a receipt and bag from a costume shop in Calexico. On the bag Theodore Glenn had written:
FORTY
Robin stared at the gun in her hands. She’d been holding it since the last time Mario checked in with her. He was outside her door, the only entrance and exit into her third-floor loft. One of his men had made sure all the fire escapes were secure and watched the doors into the building and underground parking garage.
Quiet. Too quiet.
Will hadn’t called, but she couldn’t expect him to from the field. He was working. How could she do this every day he went to work? Worry that he wouldn’t come home?
She turned her gun over and over in her hands. “I will kill you, Theodore Glenn. I promise, I will kill you.”
Pickles leapt onto her bed and made her jump. He purred loudly and massaged his paws on her lap.
She stared at the lamp in her room. Even if she turned it off, she still had the small light in the kitchen on. She hadn’t really tried to be in the dark since the last time she freaked out, and that was years ago.
She turned off the lamp.
Her apartment plunged into darkness. Pickles me-owed as her grasp on him tightened. She let go and he jumped down, running under her bed. Her breath came in quick gasps. She tried to focus on the dim light coming from the kitchen, but it seemed to be moving farther and farther away. Her heart raced and she frantically reached out for the lamp, fumbled, knocked it onto her carpet.
“No, no, no!”
On her hands and knees she found the lamp and turned on the switch. It flickered and came on. She righted the lamp on her nightstand and hated herself for her fear. Dammit, she was thirty-one years old! She’d faced belligerent customers, hurtful boyfriends, and Theodore Glenn in court. Back then she had testified against him with less palpable fear than she had right now when submerged in darkness.
Isabelle had suggested a psychiatrist would be able to help with her phobia, but Robin didn’t want to admit that it was a mental problem. How could she expect Will to sleep every night with the lights on? Last night she knew, even after his exhausting week, that he’d been awake half the night.
For Will, she would find a way to get over this. Maybe with him in her bed, she wouldn’t need a light to feel safe.
“Sorry, Pickles,” she said to the cat still hiding under her bed. She put the gun down on her nightstand so she could take a hot shower. Water always made her feel better. The ocean, the bath, the shower, didn’t matter what, water was soothing.
Halfway to her bathroom, the light went out. Damn, the bulb must have been loose when she knocked the lamp off the table. She felt her way toward the bathroom door to flick on that light. Her heart was beating rapidly, but she felt like she was in control. A start.
Until her hand reached the light switch, turned it on, and nothing happened.
No bathroom light.
No bedside light.
Not even the kitchen light above the stove glowed.
She breathed deeply, but couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She felt along the wall toward the partition that separated her bedroom from the rest of the apartment.
What was that?
She drew her breath in to scream, but it came out a croak. She couldn’t even scream! She didn’t care if Mario thought she was a fool, she just wanted light. Any light.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the distant glow of the streetlights below cast odd yellow shadows across her ceiling. A shadow moved outside her bedroom window.
Rain in San Diego was rare, but it had been drizzling for most of the evening. The clouds obscured any moon that might have been out. A mist hung above the streets.
“Mario!” Her voice couldn’t shout above a whisper, it was as if her throat had been sewed tight and she was trying to scream through a pillow.
Her alarm. Yes! Her alarm would alert her security company. Any time the power went out, a silent alarm went off and the security company would send someone if they couldn’t reach her by phone. Her phone didn’t work when the power went out.
She needed to hide.
She was at the edge of her partition. To the left was a wall, to the right open space, then her living area which contained two sofas facing each other. A large lamp was on the side closest to her bedroom. If she knocked it over, it would crash on the hardwood floor.
A sob escaped her lips. She was pathetic. Scared of a blackout. It was the first rain of the season, for all she knew the relay station had been flooded or something. San Diegans didn’t handle rain well.
Cold, damp air rushed into her loft.
Her bedroom window was open. Someone had opened it.
Everything happened so fast, she didn’t have time to scream. She felt like her lips were thick and she moved in slow motion.
She started for the door, sucking in air to scream, then stumbled over the end table, falling hard on the floor. The air rushed from her lungs, the wind knocked out of her.
For two seconds she couldn’t move. Then she got to her knees.
“Robin?”
It was Mario on the other side of her door.
She opened her mouth to call out to him, then someone slammed her back down to the floor, forcing the air from her lungs with a rush.
She kicked backward, made contact with hard flesh. Her attacker grunted, grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. Any farther and he would have broken her neck. She couldn’t swallow.
Cold metal touched her throat. A sliver of pain shot through her body, as if her neck had been burned. Warm blood slid down her skin.
“One word and I’ll kill you.”
“Robin!” A key turned in the lock. Mario had a set of keys, but she’d slid the security bolt. To make her feel safer. Instead, her own fear had trapped her inside with a killer.
Glenn yanked her up, his left arm tight around her waist, his right hand holding the knife to her throat. He
