Within the Shadows

by Brandon Massey

  “I hope it doesn’t get to that point, but I’ll take your advice.”

  Eric cocked his head. “Want some more advice? Switch up your routines.”

  “Why?”

  “I know, that’s the last thing you wanna hear, but you’ve gotta do some things differently. Stop going out for walks every evening and to Starbucks on Tuesday morning and all of that. Make it harder for her to keep track of you.”

  “Makes sense, I guess.”

  “Just watch your back, bro. At all times. You’re probably going to feel paranoid for a while, but that’s all right. It’s necessary until we get this under control and can cool this chick down or throw her in the joint.”

  “Thanks, Eric. I appreciate the tips.”

  Eric waved off his words. “Have you told Carmen the latest on this?”

  “We’re having dinner tonight. I plan to tell her then.”

  “Ah, you and Carmen are kicking it two nights in a row? Need to tell me something?”

  Andrew smiled for the first time in hours. “I’m taking her to dinner to thank her for helping at the cookout.”

  “Uh-huh. I was sweating like a pig at that grill. You ain’t offered to take me to dinner.”

  “Wanna go? I’ll take you to Waffle House.”

  “You’re planning to make a move on her. You ain’t slick.”

  “We’re just friends. Nothing’s changed yet.”

  “Not yet. But it will if you’ve got anything to do with it.”

  “I plead the fifth.”

  “Whatever, bro. All I can say is, it’s about damn time.”

  Andrew wanted to play it cool, but he couldn’t stop smiling.

  Eric grinned, too, but then his face drew into a taut expression.

  “Want another tip? Every stalker I’ve ever heard of is jealous as hell. You and Carmen both need to be careful now.”

  Chapter 24

  Later that evening, Carmen and Andrew went to dinner at Red Lobster.

  Over platters of fried shrimp and glasses of white zinfandel, he filled her in on everything that had happened. He’d had a whirlwind of a day, but her comforting presence anchored him on stable ground. He hoped that discussing the latest developments with her would give him more ideas on what he should do to regain control of his life.

  “Jeez, you’ve had a day out of a nightmare,” she said. “Psycho chick proved my theory.”

  “What theory?”

  “That’s she’s straight-up crazy, that’s what. I had a bad feeling about her the minute she showed up at my door. Call it female intuition.”

  “Has to be female intuition, ’cause I sure didn’t expect her to act like this when I met her.”

  “Of course not. No man would—he’d be too busy drooling over her.”

  He only nodded. He couldn’t disagree at all with her assessment.

  She dipped a shrimp in cocktail sauce. “But you’re holding up well. I’m kinda impressed.”

  “Impressed?”

  “To see Mr. Robotic rolling with the punches like this? Yeah, I’m impressed. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Being around you helps. If I didn’t have you and Eric, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “That’s what friends are for.” She popped a shrimp in her mouth. “I’m really curious about how Sammy plans to help you with Mika.”

  “Me, too. I wish he’d been more specific.”

  “Remember what I said last night? That there has to be a connection between him and psycho chick, because it seemed too coincidental that all of this would be happening at the same time?”

  “Maybe Sammy’s a dead relative of hers. Or how about a guy that she stalked and killed? Maybe he wants to help me so she doesn’t murder me, too.”

  “She’s not going to hurt you. We’ll get her crazy ass thrown in jail first.”

  “I’m only brainstorming. Sammy has to have some kind of history with her.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “Next time we talk to him, we’ve gotta get him to tell us more about his background, where he knows her from.”

  “It’s not gonna be easy. Sammy’s got the writing skills of an eight year old. It’s hard to get a clear answer out of him.”

  “What do you think of this sad place he mentioned? Any ideas at all on that?”

  “None,” he said. “I tried to get a detailed answer out of him, but he wouldn’t give me one. Frustrating.”

  “Something’ll break. We’ll do the best we can.”

  He noted her frequent use of the word “we.” He liked that; she wasn’t abandoning him to deal with this on his own. She was partnering with him. He had never been more grateful for her friendship.

  And what about taking their friendship to the next level? Although they were having a good conversation, the timing still felt wrong to him. He wanted to wait until he’d restored a semblance of order to his life. Then, with his mind at ease, he could talk to her about moving away from the platonic zone and into the realm of a relationship—and hope that she shared his feelings.

  He rose to visit the rest room. On the way across the restaurant, he spotted Mika, sitting at a corner booth. She watched him.

  He halted in mid-stride, nearly causing a waiter to crash into him with a tray of food.

  “Sorry.” He stepped aside.

  It wasn’t Mika. The woman in the booth, dining with a man, bore only a faint resemblance to her.

  He was getting paranoid. Eric had warned him that he would, had said it was a good thing because it would keep him on his toes. But it bothered him. With his vivid imagination, a touch of paranoia would go a long way. Too much of it would send him to the loony bin.

  Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he hurried the rest of the way to the washroom.

  After dinner, they went to Andrew’s house. One of the cats sat on the hood of Carmen’s Lexus. The other two cats lounged near the shrubbery, green eyes shining in the evening’s deepening twilight.

  “Damn cats,” Andrew said. “I don’t know where they came from.”

  “Have you fed them?” she asked.

  “Never. They’ve been hanging around for days. They never meow, they just watch me.”

  “That’s kinda weird.” She unbuckled her seat belt as he nosed the car into the garage. He got out, carrying a take-home box from the restaurant.

  He headed for the door that led inside the house, but Carmen wandered outside the garage, approaching the cat that rested on her car.

  “How ya doin’, kitty?” she said in a coaxing voice. She loved cats. “My car make a warm little resting spot for ya?”

  The feline stared at her. It didn’t move.

  “He’s a Russian Blue,” she said.

  “Blue? I guess I can kinda see the blue in the fur, but I would’ve just called them gray cats.”

  “I know, but cat folks call them blue,” she said. “Gimme some food, please.”

  “If you feed it, then I’ll never get rid of it.”

  “Come on, Drew.” She snapped her fingers.

  He opened the Styrofoam carton. She plucked a shrimp from inside. Stepping forward, she waved the morsel in the air.

  The cat showed no interest in the food. Its watchful gaze shifted from Carmen to Andrew, back to Carmen.

  Who is this woman that you’ve brought home, Andrew? The ominous Vincent Price voice he’d given to the animals had kicked into his mind again.

  “Maybe it’s not hungry,” Carmen said. She placed the shrimp near the feline’s front paws. “Here’s some food, kitty. Nice, juicy shrimp. Want it?”

  The animal ignored the morsel and stared at them.

  “Since when does a cat not even sniff some food like that?” he asked.

  “What’s wrong, kitty?” she cooed. She reached to stroke the cat’s fur.

  The cat bared its teeth. It hissed.

  She drew back. “All righty, then.”

  He heard a rustling sound behind them. The other two cats had crept closer. Muscles te
nsed, they also glowered at Carmen.

  We don’t like this woman of yours, Andrew. She doesn’t belong here.

  He wondered if he was attributing overly human thoughts to the cats. Why would they dislike Carmen on sight? It was a ridiculous notion.

  But the creatures’ threatening body language was unmistakable.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go inside.”

  She didn’t argue. She came into the house with him.

  When he looked one last time at the cat sitting on the car, it swept its tail across the hood and batted the shrimp to the pavement.

  Chapter 25

  He had left the computer on, in case Sammy opted to type another message while he was away. He and Carmen gathered in front of the laptop. There were no new messages. Andrew’s last question—Why do you say I’m in big trouble now?— remained on the screen, unanswered.

  Carmen scanned through Sammy’s misspelled sentences. “Vocab of a kid is right. I wonder if he is a child.”

  “That’s another question we can ask him whenever he shows up again.”

  “He’ll be back soon, I bet,” she said. She yawned. “What time is it?”

  “Half-past ten.”

  “I need to run. Gotta work tomorrow.”

  “You have to leave so soon? Hang out for a while, watch a movie with me.”

  He kept his tone playful, but he seriously wanted her to stay longer—to spend the night, in fact. Romance wasn’t on his mind. Fear was on his mind. With Mika roaming in the night dwelling on her deranged, obsessive thoughts about him, he no longer felt secure in his own house.

  This isn’t over—and you can’t hide from me.

  His anxiety had a good basis. He recalled how, last night, Mika had prowled through Carmen’s place and left behind her thong, undetected by the security system or either of them, as if she were as elusive as a disembodied spirit.

  “You’ve talked me into it,” she said. “I’m not too keen on you being alone here anyway, with psycho chick running around. Not to say that you can’t take care of yourself, but you know what I mean. Strength in numbers and all that.”

  “Does that mean you’re gonna spend the night, too?”

  “We’ll see.” She smiled.

  He smiled, too—to conceal his relief. For Carmen, “we’ll see” meant “yes.” Although, like virtually all women, her language was as mysterious to him as ancient hieroglyphics, he’d managed, over time, to decipher the true meaning of a handful of her statements.

  In the entertainment area of the basement, he dimmed the lights and put a film on the projection screen: Love and Basketball. It was one of Carmen’s all-time favorites.

  He reclined on the sofa and rested his feet on the leather ottoman.

  “Wow, I can’t believe you put on this movie,” she said. Sitting next to him, she propped her feet on the ottoman, too. “What have I done to deserve this?”

  “Helped me cope. I really mean that. Thank you.”

  She patted his leg. “I got your back, honey. Anyway, you need me right now. I can tell you how psycho chick thinks.”

  “How’s that?”

  “ ’Cause I’m a woman. It takes a woman to understand a woman.”

  “But you said she’s crazy.”

  “She is crazy, but in a way that makes a twisted kinda sense.”

  He turned to face her. “Break that down for me.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You and her slept together—”

  “Carmen—”

  “Let me finish, there’s a reason why I’m telling you this. I’m not judging you, only stating a fact.”

  “All right.”

  “For most women, sex is the most intimate act in the world. When a woman has sex with a man, she naturally starts to feel attached to him, in more than a physical sense. She bonds with him emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It’s like a soul connection.”

  “Not all the time. Some women can hit and run like men.”

  “True, but women who do that are only looking for fun, a little tune-up. If the woman is in a frame of mind of wanting to have a serious relationship with you, and then she sleeps with you—she’s gonna feel that soul connection, Drew.”

  “I knew I was going to regret it,” he said. “Before we got to that point, I was having second thoughts. But I ignored that little voice in my head telling me to slow down.”

  She touched his arm. “That was your intuition. Part of you knew that you were walking into a bad thing.”

  “She called me her soul mate, too. How could she say that after knowing me for one day?”

  “You said yourself that she was needy. You know how it feels to want something so bad that it hurts?” Her gaze searched him.

  “I’ve felt that way sometimes, yeah.”

  “We all have,” she said. “When you give someone hungry for that certain thing a little taste of it, well, they can lose control—especially if it seems that they might lose that thing after waiting for it for so long.”

  “So I give her a taste, and she decides that I’m her soul mate.”

  “It’s like love at first sight. Think about your last serious girlfriend. I remember you told me that after your first date with her, you knew you wanted to have a relationship with her. You knew.”

  “Good point. But I don’t feel the same way about Mika that she feels about me. She said she knows I love her.”

  She frowned. “The knowing you love her part—that’s a touch of her craziness there, something I don’t understand. But I know why she keeps chasing you. Did your ex-girlfriend know after the first date that she wanted you to be her man?”

  “It took a couple of months. I had to pursue her, convince her.”

  “In Mika’s warped mind, she sees it the same way. She thinks she has to pursue you, and that you’ll finally come around one day, let your guard down, and be her man. The big problem—and it’s our problem—is her way of going about winning you over.”

  “Yeah, following me around, throwing temper tantrums and flipping over furniture—definitely a big problem for us.”

  “ ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ ” she said. “But I bet she’ll be super-sweet the next time you see her, apologizing for how she behaved. The classic nice-and-nasty pattern.”

  “Doesn’t matter how sweet she acts. Nothing’s gonna make me change my mind about her.”

  “Yup, you gotta stand firm. I hope I’m wrong, but I think this is a long way from being over. Psycho chick ain’t gonna give up easily.”

  Her words evoked his worries again. Bands of tension squeezed his chest. The projection TV was the only light source in the basement; the shadows in the room appeared darker than before, as if hiding something malevolent.

  He edged closer to Carmen.

  Barefoot, she wore shorts and a halter top. Delicious warmth radiated from her body.

  Nonchalantly, he placed his hand close to her leg.

  Desire bolted through him. He didn’t know whether the lust came from a reflex reaction—his seeking a calm oasis of intimacy in the midst of his fear—or was a natural expression of his growing feelings for her. He’d felt attracted to her countless times before, but not usually as strongly as he did now.

  She crossed her legs on the ottoman. He looked at her pedicured feet, slender ankles, toned calves, firm thighs.

  He’d never forget how it had felt, the one time they’d crossed the platonic line, to hold her close and kiss her.

  Nope, man. Forget it. You can’t go there with her again. Not now.

  It was the same voice that had warned him about going to Mika’s hotel suite. The whisper of intuition. He knew he had to listen to it. He couldn’t touch Carmen until he was prepared to come clean about his feelings. It wouldn’t be fair to her, and she probably wouldn’t tolerate another just-friends-kissing episode without demanding a serious talk about the direction of their relationship.

  He clasped his hands in his lap and watched the movie with he
r in friendly silence.

  As Andrew had assumed, Carmen decided to spend the night. By the time the movie concluded, it was after midnight. She said she was too weary to make the thirty-minute drive home to Marietta. She would sleep in the guest room.

  While she prepared for bed, he checked to ensure that all of the doors and windows were locked. It was a nightly habit for him, but in light of Mika’s invasion of his life, the task had taken on greater importance.

  In the living room, he peeled back a curtain.

  Outside, a pair of small, glowing green eyes watched him from the bushes.

  Those damned cats. They were getting on his last nerve.

  And they’d threatened Carmen, too. That pissed him off—and concerned him.

  Something about these animals wasn’t normal. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, but they made him uneasy.

  Tomorrow morning, he would call the city’s animal control unit. Maybe they would pick up the cats and take them to a shelter. The felines had to be strays.

  Upon finishing his circuit of the house, he returned upstairs and activated the security system from the control panel in his bedroom. Then he checked the laptop in his office.

  Still no message from Sammy. But he left the computer on.

  In the guest room, Carmen was pulling back the sheets on the twin-size bed. Her back was to him. She wore one of his Atlanta Braves T-shirts, the fabric ending just beneath her hips.

  It was impossible to ignore how well the shirt displayed her lovely figure.

  She looked over her shoulder, smiled. “Caught ya.”

  If he’d had a lighter complexion his skin would have turned as red as a tomato.

  “I wanted to ask if you needed anything,” he said in a low voice.

  She slid onto the mattress, one leg tucked underneath the other. She wore a faint smile.

  Although she wasn’t wearing lingerie, she looked as sexy to him as a model in a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

  Before he knew what he was doing, he crossed the room. He rested his hands on her shoulders and leaned closer to her.

  She stopped him with a hand on his chest.

  “No friends with benefits, Drew,” she said.