Sole Witness

by Jenn Black

  No way would she have wasted her bullets on a nothing like him. She had far better fish to fry.

  Annoying little fish named Lori Summers.

  The pungent smell of gasoline wafted from Amber’s hands as she turned the wheel. What did you get when you crossed three containers of gasoline and a fully loaded Glock?

  Independence Day, baby.

  She could hardly wait for the fireworks.

  * * *

  Lori sat on the living room floor.

  Her halter-topped back to the almost floor-to-ceiling window, she splayed her legs and sorted through Davis’s sketches.

  At first, she’d tried putting them in some semblance of order, but the erratic case numbers made no sense and about a third of the drawings were missing dates on the back.

  Now she just sifted through the portraits, lost in thought. She was trapped in a house she couldn’t leave, staring at the faces captured by a man she couldn’t help.

  But like he’d said, she couldn’t even help herself.

  Oh, he hadn’t put it into those exact words, but the implication was clear. Don’t throw rocks if you live in a glass house, and all that.

  Lori snuck a quick glance over one shoulder and shuddered. No more talk about glass houses. She was in a fish bowl on stilts. Of all the houses in Florida, why stilts?

  The faces swam before her and she sighed. If Davis were a tortured man, he wasn’t going to admit it. If he wanted to rocket himself toward burnout and an ulcer, then fine. Have at it.

  Maybe the sketch artist idea really was stupid. Probably didn’t pay much. And could be he needed the money.

  Take this house, for example.

  A bit suicidal, if you asked Lori, but she was pretty sure a realtor would call it a good investment. That said, two bedrooms and one bath didn’t exactly fit her expectation of a man who could live the rest of his life off the interest from his trust fund.

  Had his parents cut him off when he’d divorced Juliana? Could they do that?

  Jerks.

  Davis was a decent guy. He didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

  Case in point: hadn’t he been the only guy in recent memory to care more about her mind than her body? Matter of fact, had that particular scenario ever happened before?

  No. Or at least, not since high school. Not since… Davis.

  Everything seemed to start and end with Davis. Lori had surprised herself by forgiving him for preferring Juliana, but she couldn’t forget how much she’d hurt.

  How different would her life have been if he’d chosen her? If they’d married.

  Would they have had a family? Might she have been a soccer mom instead of a supermodel? Wouldn’t that life have been so much better?

  Stupid. No sense dwelling on questions with no answers.

  Lori stacked the sketches back into the portfolio and reached for her book. She’d nearly killed herself getting it—literally—so she might as well read the darn thing.

  The squeal of tires interrupted her before she made it through the first paragraph. Lori glanced at the window again, annoyed this time, but didn’t get up to look out.

  Beach. Spring Break. Add two and two together and you were bound to get lots of noise complaints. How did Davis stand this place?

  Shrugging, Lori returned to her book. She finished the first page and was flipping to the second when a loud shot rang out and the picture window exploded behind her.

  Shattered glass clattered across the floor. Floating fragments glittered in the sunlight like fairy dust. Tiny shards peppered the bare skin of her arms and legs.

  Screams. Hers.

  Lori wrapped her arms around her bent legs and lowered her face between her knees.

  What should she do? What could she do?

  The broken glass would shred her bare feet in seconds if she so much as moved from this spot. Great. Just great.

  New shots rang out.

  Tinkling glass flew into the hallway as mini-explosions destroyed each room’s windows in methodical succession.

  This was not good.

  When the round of explosions stopped, Lori held her breath and waited.

  Silence.

  A salty breeze stole through the suddenly drafty house and stung her skin with bits of glass caught in the current.

  She couldn’t move. Couldn’t run. Couldn’t escape.

  Lori grappled for her cell phone at her waistband. Davis would know what to do. Davis would help. Davis… wasn’t going to get this call.

  Dead battery. Damn.

  She knew she should’ve asked for her cell charger. What was she going to do now?

  Lori tossed the phone onto the couch. It landed with a crunch. An inch of glass coated every surface of the house. Why did Davis have to like windows so much?

  She glanced around for his cordless phone. Nowhere to be seen.

  Was it in the bedroom? Or the office? Think think think.

  Cripes, she couldn’t remember. But the office was right across the hallway, not twenty feet from her, and the bedroom seemed miles down the hall. She’d have to try the office, then. If she could somehow navigate this sea of broken glass.

  She needed a plan.

  “Lo-ri Sum-mers,” rang out a female voice from below. “I’m he-ere.”

  No kidding. Lori shot frantic glances around the living room and clutched her legs to her chest even more tightly.

  “I’m coming to get you,” sing-songed the voice, this time from a different angle.

  With all the windows gone and the wind whistling through her hair, Lori couldn’t get a bearing on which direction the voice was coming from. It seemed like the killer was moving from spot to spot, just to freak her out.

  It was working.

  “Little pig, little pig, let me IN!” came the gleeful shout.

  Glad one of them was enjoying her diabolical games.

  “Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin,” muttered Lori. She squeezed herself into a tighter ball.

  “Bet you finished the rhyme!” called the killer. “Well? Did you? Do I win?”

  Lori grimaced. No. The killer hadn’t won yet. Lori stuck out a tentative toe and winced when a shard of glass sliced through the tender pad. She sucked in a shallow breath and started to hyperventilate.

  She was trapped.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Davis slumped in his office chair and drummed his fingers on the ink-stained desktop.

  Chewing the end of a pencil rather than a cough drop, Carver stared back at him without raising so much as an eyebrow. She knew how he felt without bothering with a verbal conversation.

  Amber Tompkins was still out there. Somewhere.

  If they didn’t get a bead on her soon…

  Every squad car they had was out there trolling for her. He’d even requested an unmarked to drive down the strip of beach by the convenience store near his house every hour.

  The call had come in not fifteen minutes ago—all was quiet. The officer planned to grab lunch before cruising by again.

  Too quiet, if you asked Davis.

  He flipped through his notebook, certain he’d missed something, anything, that could catch this psycho. He reread the notes with his initial impression and then flipped to the page where he’d interviewed the motel clerk.

  A face stared back at him. Almost the face of a killer.

  Now that he knew the perp was Amber Tompkins, the resemblance came clear. That was the problem with sketching someone else’s shaky memory. How close attention did people really pay?

  Even if the motel clerk would’ve had a photographic memory, would that have even helped? How accurately can the average person describe the shade of someone’s skin? The slope of a jaw? The slant of an eye?

  Davis slammed the spiral notebook shut.

  No way could he be a sketch artist. He drew someone he’d even met in person, for God’s sake, and he hadn’t even recognized her in his own portrait.

  “That was pretty close, you know,” Ca
rver said, mouth around her pencil.

  He frowned. “What was?”

  “Your picture. If it weren’t for the fact that all of Turner’s women were skinny blondes with creepy vibes, we’d have had a solid lead.”

  “Didn’t help much in this case, did it,” muttered Davis.

  “Maybe, but remember the Holloway kidnapping? I saw you doodling when the neighbor gave her description of the intruder. I recognized the maintenance guy right off. We totally nailed that case because of that. And the Rodriguez incident last month, ’member that? I love having you as a partner. It’s like having my own private—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “—sketch artist, standing right there next to me. Man, I wish I could draw. You should see the stick people I come up with. Most of the time, I forget to add noses.”

  Davis glared at the wall above her head.

  Carver shrugged and tossed her ruined pencil into the trash. “I’m just saying.”

  Yeah, yeah. Everybody was just saying.

  Maybe he’d been too harsh with Lori. A bit too defensive. No doubt she just wanted the best for him. Wanted him to be happy.

  Being a cop made him happy. He’d have to tell her that.

  To be honest, being with Lori also made him happy. He’d have to tell her that, too.

  Davis flipped through his notebook again, this time paying attention to the number of sketches rather than the outcome of the cases.

  Maybe Carver was right. Maybe he was a sketch artist and a cop, all rolled into one. Maybe he should stop fighting it.

  Lori’s face sprang to mind. Maybe he should stop fighting the attraction there, too.

  After all, he was a man in charge of himself now. Impervious to his parents’ dictates. Shouldn’t he go for happiness when the opportunity presented itself?

  Davis lifted his desk phone from the receiver. He poised his hand to dial.

  Wait a minute. What was he doing? Calling to declare his undying love from a telephone in the middle of the crowded police station? Cripes. Davis hung up the phone without dialing.

  With his hand still on the receiver, it rang.

  “That was creepy,” commented Carver. “What did you do, summon a ghost?”

  Davis made a face at her and lifted the phone to his ear.

  “Hamilton.”

  “Hi, Detective, this is Officer Bock. Hey, I’m sorry to bother you on such a stupid call, but it seemed kind of like the other case, but not the same, and I—”

  “Where are you?” Davis asked, hoping his calm tone would rub off on Bock.

  “I’m at a gas station on the southeast side of Isla Concha.”

  “What was the call?”

  “Cashier claims assault. Says a nutcase threw her cell phone at him and waved a gun around. I bagged stuff for prints. Lots of stuff.”

  “Her? A woman?”

  “Blonde. Red car. Pump number four.”

  Everyone’s favorite maniac, finally making an appearance. “What are your cross streets? I’ll be right there.”

  Davis slammed down the phone and leapt to his feet.

  “What do we got?” asked Carver, rising.

  “Our girl. Scaring gas station attendants across town. She could still be nearby.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Davis nodded. “Let’s go.”

  As the gas station loomed closer, an uneasy feeling bubbled in Davis’s gut. He pulled a U-turn in the intersection and doubled back toward the expressway.

  Carver popped an orange lozenge into her mouth without changing expression.

  “Where we going now?” she asked, gazing out the side window at the retreating service station.

  “My house.”

  She snapped her head toward his. “Normally I’d say I’m not that kind of girl, but I get the impression you’ve got a special someone there already.”

  Davis floored the accelerator.

  “She better be.”

  * * *

  Lori rocked back and forth on her bottom, shivering, her ear against one bent knee and her eyes shut tight.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” came the singsong voice from below.

  “What do you want from me?” Lori blurted, shouting her question to the gaping hole where the window once was.

  “Your life, of course.” The killer’s amused tone rankled.

  “Why?”

  “Because you screwed up mine,” chastised the killer. “Why else?”

  “But what did I do?” Lori cried. The wind sucked the plaintive question from her mouth.

  “What didn’t you do? Let’s see. First, you screwed up everything by whoring it up with Tommy and cutting off my future money supply.” The killer’s voice floated in from all directions. “Did you think he wouldn’t tell me you were stopping by for a booty call?”

  Lori stared blankly at the couch.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she muttered. Tommy’s big ego and bigger mouth were going to get both of them killed.

  “Pretty much every move you made following that day has pissed me off. Now, no more chitchat. The closest houses may be a quarter mile apart, but we haven’t been very quiet. Nosy neighbors will be calling the cops soon, if they haven’t already. Either come down now, or face the consequences.”

  With newfound determination, Lori rose on shaky legs. “Screw you,” she shouted.

  “Consequences it is, then. I was hoping you’d say that.”

  Wet, sloshing sounds splattered below.

  What on earth was the killer doing, watering the plants? Lori leaned forward and peeked through the open window.

  Without the glass protecting her from the ground below, instant vertigo swirled through her blood and Lori swayed on her feet. She turned away from the window, but not before she’d seen three things.

  The familiar red car, parked sideways on Davis’s grass.

  The killer herself, a lanky blonde in a black leather miniskirt.

  The killer’s idea of ‘consequences’. Death by fire.

  Lori gulped in horror as three gallons of gasoline drenched the wooden stilts that kept this stupid beach house in the air.

  If she didn’t get out of there fast, the walls were going to come crashing down on her head. Literally.

  Lori slowed her panicked breathing as best she could and tried to come up with an escape route. She was up here. The killer was down there.

  If she stayed up here, she would burn alive. If she went down the stairs, the killer would shoot her. Or worse.

  Neither seemed a fun choice.

  Frantic seagulls squawked on the beach below, destroying Lori’s concentration.

  They were obnoxious even with glass in the windows, but without anything left between her and the beach…

  The beach.

  If she could get to the beach, she might have a chance.

  Not for an afternoon jog along the sand, of course. She’d never outrun a bullet.

  With luck—a lot of luck—she might be able to out-swim one.

  If she were the first to the water, the killer would have two choices.

  One, stay on the beach and get nabbed by the cops who were no doubt on their way. Two, get in her car and leave Lori alone before choice number one happened.

  No way would the killer come in the water after her. Guns weren’t waterproof. Besides, Lori was a fast swimmer. Nobody could catch up to her in water.

  Unfortunately, the only way out was down.

  She’d already decided the stairs were out of the question, which left the windows.

  No way was she jumping from the living room window, right into the killer’s arms. She’d have to jump from the other side of the house, from the window closest to the beach.

  She’d have to jump from the office.

  Lori cast a baleful glare at the glass-littered floor. She wouldn’t be able to run far with feet full of bloody cuts.

  Okay, think.

  It’s not like she could pole vau
lt out the window. Nor was there a conveniently located clothesline to rappel down, like in the movies. Her flip-flops were in the bedroom and the only things within arm’s reach were the paperback thriller and Davis’s portfolio.

  Yeah, like either of those would help.

  Wait.

  Lori flipped open the portfolio and grabbed up the stack of canvas sketches.

  She placed one on the floor in front of her, atop a patch of jagged glass, and tested her weight with one foot. Glass crunched underneath, but didn’t slice through the thick paper.

  “Sorry, Davis,” she muttered. “Think of it this way. You’re helping.”

  After tucking the paperback under her left arm, Lori inched across the room, placing one beautiful drawing in front of the other.

  When she reached the hallway, she turned around just long enough to fling the novel out of the front window before she took the last few steps into the office.

  “What the hell? Did you just throw a book at me, you crazy bitch? A freaking Oprah’s choice? I’ll set it on fire!”

  Probably not what Oprah intended.

  But, while the killer was busy playing pyromaniac, Lori would simply jump from the office window, dash over to the ocean, and swim to safety. How hard could it be?

  She wiped off the window ledge with a sheaf of paper and stepped up with both feet. Her hands gripped the frame.

  The world shimmered on its axis and the ground retracted further and further away. She had to be at least ten stories high. Twenty.

  Great. She was going to be sick.

  Lori swayed backward, nearly losing her grip on the window frame. She grappled for a stronger hold and cried out when broken glass sliced into her palms.

  “If you don’t jump, you’ll die,” Lori repeated to herself. “If you don’t jump, you’ll die.”

  Another peek out the window confirmed the truth—she would die.

  “Come look at my book burning party, bitch!” screamed the voice from below.

  Lori couldn’t jump. She just couldn’t.

  But she would have to.

  She leaned forward.

  Her stomach roiled with vertigo. Blood swam in her ears.

  Lori let go of the window frame and fell forward from the ledge.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Amber slammed her car door shut and ripped open her new pack of Virginia Slims.