Stalk Me

by Richard Parker

“You coming out? Mh?” he asked, as if he were a father addressing a moody teenager.

  “And let you kill me.”

  “We can do it out here or in there. Your decision.”

  His casual pragmatism was terrifying. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I wish I had a few moments to explain. I tried earlier tonight, but you’ll understand time is something of an issue now.”

  The handle exploded and the door started juddering violently in its frame.

  Beth looked around for a weapon. Just plastic bottles and tubes unpacked from her bag on the sink. She swept a vase of dried flowers off the top of the toilet tank. She gripped the heavy lid of the cistern with both hands and lifted it off, just as the door burst open and slammed against the opposite wall.

  Beth swung the lid in the direction of the doorway and its impetus slid it through her fingers. Its brief ascent coincided with her attacker’s entrance, its edge striking him hard below his earlobe. As it thudded to the tiles, the man staggered against the wall and slid down it, hands at his neck and body shrinking into the pain.

  Beth stayed crouched where she was, momentarily alarmed by the injury she may have caused him. But the sight of the gun still clutched in his hand shook away any doubts he meant to take her life. A silencer was attached to the barrel. She considered trying to wrestle it from his grip while he was still stunned, but she didn’t want to touch it or him, and took advantage of the gap between his body and the doorframe.

  She angled herself past him, crossed the room and was out through the shattered doorway onto the landing. The receptionist was coming the other way, carrying a plastic tray containing a covered sandwich, her brief smile halting at Beth’s obvious alarm.

  “Run!” Beth shoved her back towards the elevator, the tray and food flying from her hand. “He’s got a gun!”

  The receptionist could see the panic in her eyes and didn’t argue. She turned and fled, already a few paces in front of Beth and running as fast as she could in her sarong and cork heels.

  Beth felt her bare foot connect with something soft and wet. The elevator doors had not yet closed but had started to. She anticipated a bullet in her spine as she pumped her legs towards the shrinking aperture. She didn’t dare turn back. Perhaps he was still stunned. Beth focused on the buttons beside the elevator, willing the receptionist to reach them in time. Then she heard the sound of movement behind them, the thud of heavier footfalls.

  “Help us!” Beth yelled at the other hotel room doors as they passed them. None of them opened.

  The receptionist reached the elevator doors as they closed, and slammed the heel of her hand at the button. The doors parted and Beth followed her inside. She turned and they both panted as they waited for the doors to finish opening, the sound of footsteps slapping nearer. The receptionist banged her fist at the shut button.

  The doors began their slow journey back to the middle, a barrier between them and harm gradually sealing itself. The receptionist flattened herself against the left buttons in an attempt to shield herself at the side of the doors from anyone who might appear at the shrinking gap. She turned and hissed, “Get on the floor.”

  Beth slid down the wall and pushed her body into the corner of the elevator. They both waited as the footsteps reached them. Beth closed her eyes and screamed, thinking only of the tiny life that would die inside her.

  Time, the elevator, and Beth’s stomach hovered uncertainly before they plunged.

  As they settled in reception a few seconds later, there was no time for relief. The gunman would be now taking the stairway down to intercept them. Beth opened her eyes and scrambled to her feet, waiting for the doors to part so they could sprint for the front entrance and raise the alarm on the street. As they began opening, she turned to the receptionist.

  She was leaning against the buttons, braided henna coil over one eye. Beth could see the extinguished light in the other eye before she noticed the bullet hole punched through the centre of the receptionist’s chest.

  Chapter 45

  The elevator had stopped but felt as if it were repeatedly lurching to a standstill. Beth reached out to the receptionist’s body where it leant against the buttons. Her fingers tentatively touched a tanned bare shoulder. It was warm but she knew there would be no response. As if to confirm this, the receptionist’s head slid sideways and thudded heavily against the cubicle wall.

  The doors had opened into an empty lobby but Beth couldn’t leave her like this.

  She was dead, though, and there was nothing more the gunman could do to her. It was Beth he was after, and he was probably descending the last flight of steps.

  She scrambled to the sliding lobby doors and waited in front of them as they glided sluggishly open. Her bare feet sprinted across the small faux-cobbled courtyard until Beth found herself standing on the warm concrete of the boulevard. It was still dark, and sporadic traffic zipped by.

  Walking to the edge of the sidewalk, she was about to make a dash to the other side when she saw a line of three cabs, two yellow and one blue, moving in a group towards her. It was too good to be true. Beth waved her arms frantically, her robe lifting up her body with the action. She didn’t care what she was exposing.

  The front yellow transit slowed, so the others had to as well. Beth continued to wildly signal and heard her own cries for help as she discerned the bemused driver’s face through the glass.

  He seemed to have made his mind up about the manic spectre trying to hail his vehicle and accelerated away. The yellow taxi behind him followed suit, but the blue sedan slid over to her.

  Beth turned back to the hotel and saw the gunman appearing through the sliding doors. Her hand scrabbled and found the handle of the back seat door and quickly yanked it open. She backed herself into the smell of citrus air freshener and the sound of Johnny Tillotson singing “Poetry In Motion”.

  The gunman’s arm lifted like a lever from his side and trained the gun on Beth as he continued striding steadily towards her. Surely he wouldn’t try to shoot her out here, on a public street. She quickly slammed the car door shut behind her, and its glass evaporated.

  Beth was on her back, shards raining over her. She hadn’t even heard the shot. The cab was still motionless, and over the sound of the settling fragments she could hear his footsteps.

  “Drive. Fucking drive!”

  The engine gunned and the vehicle slid her hard against the back seat as it took off. She stayed where she was, spine flat to the leather and the soles of her feet against the door. Wind rushed over her, and she gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, urging the taxi to find an extra gear.

  But as a second shower of glass sprinkled her face, the engine suddenly slowed and the cab struck something solid. The impact rolled Beth off the seat, a family’s smiles enlarging as her face rammed an ad for Six Flags Magic Mountain on the back of the front seat.

  The vehicle settled, but over her jaw singing she could now hear police sirens. How much distance had they put between themselves and the gunman? It couldn’t even have been a hundred feet.

  Then she registered the side driver’s window was missing as well. The cabby’s head was no longer skull-shaped; one half of it had been blown out, flaps of his skin and bone opened like petals. His blood was sprayed over the front window. It was all over her as well.

  She clamped a hand over her mouth and turned away, her eye line just above the back seat and looking down the boulevard. Cars were surging quickly past and she could see why. He was walking down the sidewalk, his gun arm still rigid.

  Beth ducked just as the back windshield erupted over her.

  She shook the glass off her head and knew she couldn’t stay in the cab. Looking out of the space where the side window used to be, she saw the sedan was skewed against a concrete bench. If there had been any pedestrians nearby, there weren’t now.

  Beth was alone and had to get out of the car. Her fingers trembled against the handle, but the right door wouldn’t open. Maybe the
impact had warped the frame?

  She was at the roadside again. Would she make it out of a second wreck?

  Beth prayed there wasn’t some sort of lock mechanism that was controlled by the driver, and slid quickly over the prickles of broken glass to the other door. She yanked the handle and slammed her shoulder against it for good measure.

  The breath was forced from Beth as she dropped harshly onto the road, car tyres screeching as they swerved around her. Nobody was going to stop. Using the blue taxi to shield herself, she looked back towards the gunman. He was about twenty yards away and closing. Tillotson continued obliviously.

  She could either try and negotiate the moving traffic and risk him shooting her in the back, or attempt to cross the sidewalk in front of him and head through the double doors of Pageant Kids. There were lights on and she could see a squat man with his back to her vacuuming the dirty yellow aisle carpet between the rows of children’s wear.

  She knew she stood more chance there than dodging cars and bullets. Beth ducked and circled around to the front of the cab, concealing herself at the side of the concrete bench. The closer he got, the easier it would be to catch her at the doors. She took one breath and then sprinted across the sidewalk and started banging on the entrance with her fists.

  Now she could see the vacuuming man clearly through the glass, she realised he had a pair of earphones on. She beat it harder; feeling her bones bashing the pane and hoping it would break.

  She didn’t dare turn around. The gunman knew she was here. He was closing on her, could be running by now. She had a matter of seconds.

  Beth could hear her voice shredding in her throat as she screamed at the man inside. “Turn around! Turn around!”

  Chapter 46

  Either her yells or the vibrations of her pounding the doors alerted the man in the store. When he turned, Beth could see he was Japanese and in his sixties – deep brown tanned baldness, beer pot and drooping grey moustache. It didn’t look as if he was going to reach her in a hurry.

  “Let me in!”

  He shed his earphones and frowned, a request for her to repeat it.

  “Open up!” She could hear the gunman’s steady footfalls on the sidewalk.

  He didn’t move but did make a small gesture. At first Beth didn’t understand, but then realised what it meant. He was aping a pulling action with his hand.

  She’d assumed the doors were locked. She yanked on one handle. It was solid. She tried the other and it swung towards her.

  “Hide! He’s got a gun!”

  The man with the vacuum took Beth at her word and had scurried between some racks of clothes to her right before she reached him. She looked down his escape route. The polythene-covered miniature dresses and dungarees had already closed up behind him. Beth took a similar exit to her left, ducking down but padding quickly forward over carpet, until she reached the end of the rack and was looking across another aisle.

  She stopped, turned and listened. A muted radio ad whispered indiscernibly over the speakers in the store, and she tried to zone it out and distinguish any other sounds. The sirens suddenly seemed miles away. The door must have closed. Had the gunman followed her in before it had?

  Her pulse thudded at the base of her neck, and as she knelt down to look under the rows of clothes, it worked its way up her throat to the top of her skull. Beth held her breath, put her cheek against the coarse carpet and craned to see back to the entrance.

  His feet were standing just inside the doorway, motionless. Beth froze in her uncomfortable position; eyelids peeled back and mouth closed to seal the sound of her heart in her head. Had he seen her hide as he’d reached the entrance?

  The shoes started moving quickly down the aisle. Even if he didn’t already know where she was, he only had to crouch down to locate her. Beth examined the rack she was cowering behind. It had a crossbar between its legs. If she could climb up onto it so she was clear of the carpet, he might not be able to spot her. But would she give her position away when she did?

  She could hear the swish of his sleeves as he moved closer. Beth put the palms of her hands against the floor, hardly registering the fine spray of blood over the backs of them, and crawled to the rack. She blinked then and could feel her eyelids were sticky.

  “Mrs Jordan?” a tiny voice said from nearby.

  Startled, she looked around her.

  “Mrs Jordan, are you still there?”

  The iPhone in her pocket. The officer she’d been talking to in the hotel was still on the line. He was about to give away her hiding place. She clamped her hand tight against her robe in an attempt to stifle him.

  Polythene crinkled and parted above her.

  “Ma’am?” A female uniformed police officer was looking down.

  *

  As Beth was led out of Pageant Kids, her insides quaked and she clasped her bloody hands at her chest as if she were holding a fragile butterfly.

  “This way,” the female officer who had found her said, like the straight aisle leading to the door wasn’t an obvious route.

  She was glad of the firm hand on her elbow and the smoky-voiced reassurance, though. She’d given Beth some time to compose herself before helping her gently to her feet.

  As Beth reached the door, she could see the man with the vacuum stood with another officer outside. He turned to look at her as she stopped there. Did he think she’d saved him or led the gunman straight into his shift? Looked like the latter.

  Her guide had requested a blanket from one of her colleagues, and it was draped around her shoulders as they walked back onto the boulevard. Beth looked nervously up and down the sidewalk.

  “You’re perfectly safe now, ma’am.”

  She didn’t believe her.

  “We’re going to get you checked out before we take you to the station. Are your clothes at the hotel? Can we get you some stuff brought down? Which room were you in?”

  Beth just nodded.

  “I’m just going to sit you in the car until the paramedic arrives.”

  The only bystander was a grubby-faced old woman wearing a balaclava and an orange day-glo jacket. She stood to Beth’s right, another uniformed officer blocking her with his arm as if she were a crowd. It was hard to tell if she was a street cleaner or a hobo. The old woman stared expectantly at Beth as she passed, disappointment registering as if she’d hoped her to be famous... or more injured.

  Chapter 47

  Holding the flimsy brown plastic cup of black coffee seemed to take all of Beth’s concentration as she sat numbed in the small aseptic station office of Detective Sal Cabrini. She’d been loaned some loose-fitting grey sweats and sneakers and had just relayed her ordeal to him for the second time.

  Beth absorbed him more than she had at the Oyster Shack, distracting herself from the memory of the receptionist’s dead expression. She hadn’t even seen the cab driver’s face, but couldn’t shift the spectacle of his collapsed head. They’d made her wait almost an hour before she’d been allowed to shower off the blood. Cabrini’s mop of matte black hair looked like it had been given a helping hand to hide the grey hairs, and she wondered if the same dye had been applied to his thick, dark eyebrows.

  She analysed the few props scattered around the sparse office. A squash racquet leaned against the wall and grubby-soled white socks protruded from a sports bag shoved in the corner. There were no framed family photographs in evidence. He was probably mid-thirties, and she could see how everything in his life orbited his job. Glancing briefly through the blinds, she was surprised to see the daylight outside. The night had felt like it would never end.

  He looked up at her from his notes like he was disappointed to find she’d stopped talking. “Nothing else to add?”

  “I just want to know when I can get out of here.”

  “Back to the UK?”

  She nodded.

  “Not right away,” he said categorically. “Once I’ve digested this, I’ll probably need to interview you again. You’re
sure you haven’t had any prior dealings with this man before your encounter at the Oyster Shack?”

  “No.” He’d asked her this three times already. Did he know she was lying?

  The gunman wanted her dead and had gone to great lengths to finish the job. There was every chance he would try again. The police were Beth’s best recourse, to locate him and protect her. Why then, if she was still in such obvious danger, was she withholding?

  But Beth had made her mind up. Allowing the police to know her visit to the Oyster Shack had been far from casual was something she wasn’t prepared to impart yet. She was aware this made any eventual revelation more incriminating, but knew her real motive for concealing it was because of Luc.

  How could the gunman possibly be connected to him? Had the man she loved and trusted been involved with something that completely contradicted who she thought he was? And would an admission to the police be the beginning of an investigation that would reveal more about him than she wanted them to know?

  Did the gunman know why Luc had said what he had at the roadside? She was sure he’d been about to tell her something significant in the alleyway, before Lauren had interrupted him at the fire exit.

  She found it impossible to displace the night’s events and think clearly. It was Rae who had told her about Allegro. The gunman hadn’t planted the word, but if he’d used it to draw her to the US, why? Were the other people who had witnessed the crash part of what was happening, or was it just coincidence? Why had smilingassassin’s clip also vanished? She was still waiting to hear from Sauveterre’s secretary.

  Since she’d woken in hospital, she’d been a helpless victim of circumstances. Beth had to feebly accept that Luc and her previous existence were gone. Now one word was the only key to her old life, and she wasn’t prepared to give it up.

  Why should she trust it in the hands of the police? If she offered the information, told them why she’d made the trip to the US, it became their official property and her own journey had ended. She’d have to stop running. Would she be able to return to the UK, put her trust in an investigation happening on the other side of the Atlantic?