Night Watch

by Suzanne Brockmann

  The phone rang, and she braced herself before she picked it up. It would be just like Wes to call immediately upon receiving her message.

  “Hello?”

  Silence. Then, click.

  Annoyed, Brittany hung up. The phone company definitely had to troubleshoot their system. This was getting ridiculous.

  Brittany took a mug and a tea bag from the cabinet, aware of how quiet it was in this apartment without Andy.

  Without Wes.

  The answering machine light was flashing—there were three messages—and she pushed the play button as she unwrapped the tea bag and waited for the water to finish boiling. God, it still really smelled bad in here.

  The first message was from her sister, and it had come in on Sunday morning. It was uncharacteristically terse. “Britt, it’s Mel. Call me the minute you get home.”

  Oh, perfect. So much for her brother-in-law’s promise that Melody wouldn’t call her until Wes’s leave was up.

  At least Mel hadn’t called while she was at Wes’s.

  The second message had come in just an hour ago, while she was still on the road.

  “Britt, it’s Wes. We need to talk. Call me back, baby, as soon as you can, okay?”

  Oh, shoot. He sounded so serious, as if he needed to break some bad news.

  Like, “Gee, Britt, we had fun together, but now that Quinn’s dead, I’m moving in with Lana.”

  She made herself breathe slowly and evenly, calmly, as she poured her cup of tea. If Wes and Lana were meant to be together, so be it. If it meant that Wes would finally be happy, she could live with it.

  She could learn to live with it.

  The third message had been recorded just minutes before she got home. Maybe her luck would change and it would be George Clooney. Maybe he’d gotten her number from Amber, and…

  A stream of shocking obscenities came out of her innocent little answering machine.

  Who the heck…?

  The voice was male, but it sure wasn’t Andy or Wes or any other man she knew. The words were slurred together, but they ended with two that were quite clear. “Die, bitch.”

  Dear God, was it…?

  She pushed the repeat button and the words washed over her again. God, she’d need a shower after this. She listened hard, but the voice definitely wasn’t Andy’s sworn enemy, Dustin Melero, either.

  And she couldn’t think of anyone else in the entire world who would record any kind of a threat on her answering machine.

  It was probably a wrong number.

  Still it was creepy enough to make her want to call Wes.

  Of course, anything that happened was going to make her want to call Wes. She was going to have to stay strong, be tough, and keep her hands off her telephone.

  First thing she had to do was pack up his stuff and take it to the post office, so that when he called she could tell him that it was already taken care of. There was no reason for him to drive up to L.A. None at all.

  She went down the hall. Her bedroom door was closed. And it must have been her imagination, but it sure seemed as if that funky spoiled garbage smell was getting worse.

  She pushed open her bedroom door—and dropped her mug of tea.

  Someone or something had been slaughtered in her bed. The stench was hideous and she gagged, but—even though it seemed impossible that whatever was in there could still be alive—her nurse’s training kept her from backing away.

  But no, a closer look revealed that there was no body anywhere in the room—no animal carcass even. Just blood, everywhere. Some of it dark and drying, some of it still quite garishly red. It was on the sheets, on the floor, on the walls. And entrails—the kind you might buy from a butcher shop for your pet alligator—were part of the gory mess. It only looked as if someone had been murdered in her bed.

  But, God, this meant that someone had been in her apartment. Someone who might still be here.

  Someone who’d recorded a message on her answering machine that said, “Die, bitch.”

  Brittany bolted. Out of her bedroom, down the hall. She scooped up her purse and her car keys from the kitchen table and raced through the living room.

  She threw open the door and—

  There, standing on the other side of the screen, was the hulking shape of a man. He was smaller and wider than Andy, but bigger than Wes.

  She tried to slam the door shut, but he was too quick. He opened the screen and got a foot inside the door, pushing it open with his shoulder. The force threw her back, down onto the floor.

  Telephone.

  She scrambled for the kitchen, screaming at the top of her lungs. But her downstairs neighbors weren’t home. They were never home during the day.

  And what were the chances of anyone else hearing? All her windows were closed—the AC was on.

  This guy could slice her into tiny pieces while she screamed her throat raw, and no one would hear a sound.

  She grabbed the phone from the kitchen table, but he was right behind her and he hit her on the back of the head with something solid, something that made her ears ring.

  She dropped the telephone as she hit the kitchen floor. It skittered across the linoleum, out of reach.

  God, this couldn’t be happening. But it was. Oh, Wes…

  Die, bitch.

  Not if she could help it. Wes wouldn’t just lie back and wait for some psycho to snuff out his life. He’d fight like hell.

  Britt tried to clear her head as she braced herself for the next attack, turning and scrambling to face her attacker. Her wrist was on fire, but she ignored it as the least of her worries.

  She’d taken self-defense training as part of a program the hospital provided for nurses who worked the late shift, and she struggled to remember something—anything—that she’d learned in the course.

  Use words to defuse a situation.

  “Look, I don’t know what you want or why you’re here, but—”

  “Shut up!”

  She found herself staring up—oh, God—at the barrel of a gun.

  But that wasn’t the only bad surprise. The man holding the gun was the same man she’d seen just yesterday, in San Diego. At the ice-cream parlor. The angry man. The mentally ill man who’d clearly gone off his meds.

  “You!” she said. My God, had he followed her here?

  But no. That mess in her bedroom had been there for a while.

  Unless he’d followed her to San Diego on Saturday night…

  He put the gun down on the counter, then picked up the telephone from the floor and held it out to Brittany. “Call him.”

  His words didn’t make any sense. Although once she got her hands on that phone, she was dialing 9-1-1. Be agreeable and compliant. Go down to zero. Don’t be aggressive. Wait for an opening….

  “Call who?” She pushed herself up into a sitting position and reached for the phone.

  But, oh, God, he pulled it back, out of her grasp, as if he knew what she was intending to do. “I’ll dial. Tell me the number.”

  “Whose number?” She tried to keep her voice even and calm, tried not to look at the gun on the counter even though internally she was trying to estimate how many seconds it would take her to reach it if she suddenly sprang to her feet. But her right wrist was definitely badly injured from her fall, possibly even broken. That put her at a serious disadvantage.

  “Amber’s boyfriend’s,” he told her.

  What?

  Amber. Holy God. This was about Amber Tierney. This guy was…

  Amber’s stalker. The meek little guy who—according to Amber—would never hurt anyone.

  “I only met Amber twice,” she said, her mind racing, trying to make sense of this. Why would Amber’s stalker start stalking her? “I don’t know Amber’s boyfriend.”

  “You were just with him in San Diego. You were…” He used some incredibly foul language that wasn’t quite technically accurate.

  But what he was saying didn’t matter, because she knew who he was talki
ng about. He was talking about Wes. Dear God. He thought Wes was…

  “Why do you want to talk to him?” she asked, trying not to sound hostile or aggressive, but rather simply curious.

  “I’m not going to,” he told her. “You are.” He called her a name that left no doubt about it. He’d left that foul message on her answering machine.

  “Why?” she persisted. “What do you want me to tell him? I don’t understand.”

  “Tell him to come here. Now.”

  Fear made her hands and feet tingle and she couldn’t keep herself from glancing at that gun on the counter.

  “Why?” she asked again with far more bravado than she felt. No way was she calling Wes and telling him to come here just so this crazy son of a bitch could shoot him. “What do you want with him?”

  “Just tell him to come. What’s his number?”

  “I don’t remember,” she lied.

  He picked up the gun and pointed it at her. “What’s his number?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BRITTANY DIDN’T WANT TO see him again.

  Wes listened to the message she’d left on his voice mail for a third time, even though he’d understood every word she’d said quite clearly the first time around.

  It was over.

  Just like that.

  She was done with him.

  It was fun.

  No way. No freaking way.

  It just didn’t sit right with everything he knew about this woman.

  Of course, maybe he didn’t know her that well.

  Bullshit. Even though it had only been a handful of days, Wes knew Brittany Evans better than he knew any other woman on earth. He knew her inside and out.

  She flipping loved him. He would bet his life’s savings on that.

  Well, okay, so his life savings weren’t all that much, making that a statement that didn’t hold all too much weight.

  But he would bet his pride on it.

  In fact, that’s what he was doing right now by driving up to Los Angeles, by forcing her to say that final-sounding goodbye to him again, face-to-face this time.

  It was going to be another half hour before he arrived, despite the fact that he was breaking the speed limit.

  But she sounded just a little too cheerful, a little too okay with the idea of never seeing him again.

  What if he was wrong? What if these past few days had been nothing more than a fling for her? Some laughs, some high intensity sex, some fun.

  Brittany was still looking for Mr. Right, for her personal Prince Charming. Sure, she wasn’t actively looking, but he knew that deep down, she still wanted the whole fairy tale package. A husband who loved her. A family. A baby.

  And they lived happily ever after.

  She’d told him that she wasn’t pregnant. That was too bad, but so what? He could get her pregnant easily enough.

  Wes smiled tightly. Sure, he would step up to that task with absolutely no arm twisting needed.

  Except he was no Prince Charming. He wasn’t even close.

  He was a guy who was fun to have around for a few days, sure, but he wouldn’t blame Britt one bit if she didn’t want him hanging out in her kitchen for an entire lifetime.

  Crap, now he was good and scared.

  And this flipping half hour before he got a chance to talk to her was lasting too freaking long.

  He dialed her number on his cell phone.

  It rang once. Twice.

  Come on, Britt. Be home.

  “Hello?”

  Okay, dumbass. Say something brilliant. “Hey, Britt. It’s me. Wes.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Andy’s not home.”

  Huh?

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know. He’s not going to be back until tomorrow—”

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. Beatrice,” she cut him off. “I didn’t recognize your voice. Do you have a cold? No, he went to Nevada with the baseball team.”

  What? Andy’s trip was to Phoenix, but that was besides the point since he was in San Diego right now with Dani. And who the hell was Mrs. Beatrice? “Brittany, what’s—”

  “I’ll tell him you called,” she said. Her voice sounded strained and odd. “And that his library book came in. What was that title? From Flintlocks to Uzis: A History of Modern Warfare? Yes, I’m writing it down.”

  “Brittany, Jesus, what is going on? Is there someone in your house with you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Of course. He was an idiot. “Is there someone there with you?” Someone she couldn’t speak openly in front of.

  “Yes,” she said.

  From Flintlocks to… “Someone with a weapon?” he asked, dreading her answer.

  “Yes.”

  Oh, Christ. Wes slammed his foot to the floor. This car could do 120 mph without hesitation and neither he nor the car were hesitating now.

  “Oh, there’s another book, too?” she said.

  “How many? Who are they?”

  “Just one. Okay. Gemstones of North America. Yes, I’ve got it. Thank you, Mrs. Beatrice.”

  Jesus, she was trying to tell him something with that second title, but what?

  “Brittany, I don’t get it. What are you telling me? Gemstones…?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Andy was particularly interested in the stones which actually have prehistoric insects trapped inside of the rock. What is it called…?”

  “That’s amber,” he told her, then realized what he’d said. “Damn! This has to do with Amber Tierney?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she there, too?”

  “No, he’s been a rock collecting fan for a long time.”

  Fan. Amber’s stalker. Jesus God.

  “Has he hurt you?” he asked.

  “Not really—Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Beatrice,” she said. “I have to go. Someone’s at the…at the door.”

  “I’m on my way, baby,” Wes said. “I’m already about thirty minutes from you.”

  “No,” she said, talking fast. “I’m…I’m glad to hear Andy’s been using your reference desk at the library. I’ve often encouraged him to get help.”

  “I will,” he said. “And I’ll be there as soon as I can. God, baby, I love you. Be careful.”

  But she’d already cut the connection.

  As he damn near flew down the freeway, Wes dialed 9-1-1.

  BRITTANY'S WRITST WAS ON FIRE, and it hurt even more as the phone was wrenched out of her hands.

  Wes was on his way.

  Damn it, she didn’t want him to be on his way. She wanted him to call the police from San Diego, where he was safe and well out of range of the crazy man’s deadly looking little handgun.

  “You talked for too long.” His eyes were flat, almost dead looking. How on earth could Amber have thought this guy was harmless with eyes like that?

  “It was Mrs. Beatrice from the library,” she told him. “She likes to talk to me—we’re friends. If I’d just hung up on her, she would’ve thought it was weird, and might’ve even stopped by after work.”

  It was Tuesday afternoon and the tiny local library was closed. She prayed Crazy Man was just crazy enough not to be familiar with the schedule for the local public library—and to know that a Mrs. Beatrice didn’t work there.

  He pointed his nasty little gun at her again. “What’s his phone number?”

  He was talking about Wes again.

  She had to stall for time, because—please God—Wes was on the phone right now with the L.A. emergency operator.

  “I honestly don’t know it by heart,” she told him. “I have it written down. It’s in my purse.” She pointed to her bag, over on one of the kitchen chairs.

  He was over there in two strides, dumping the contents out onto the table.

  He hadn’t walked like that in San Diego. Apparently, the shuffling gait was just an act. Part of his harmless weirdo impersonation, no doubt.

  It was all starting to make sense. The repeated hang-up phone calls at both her apartment and We
s’s—Amber had gotten similar calls.

  The accusation at the ice-cream parlor. You made her cry.

  He’d been talking about Amber.

  “When did I make Amber cry?” she asked him now as he stepped back and gestured for her to approach the kitchen table.

  Darnit, this wrist made it hard even to pull herself to her feet.

  “She called her boyfriend, and he brought you with him,” he informed her. “She went to stay at that hotel, but after she drove out of her garage, she pulled over to the side of the road and cried.”

  And Mr. Crazy here thought that had something to do with Wes and Brittany. He’d created some kind of twisted love triangle between the three of them.

  “Didn’t it occur to you that she might’ve been crying because she was scared?” she asked him. “Of you?”

  Oh, so not the right thing to say. He was not a happy camper hearing that.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Of course not.”

  “Find his number,” he said.

  “I’m looking,” she told him, sifting through all the little bits of candy wrappers and other papers that she’d jammed into her purse over the past few months. “Give me a minute.”

  Or thirty…

  Please God, don’t let Wes come charging in here all by himself.

  “I’M UNARMED,” WES REPORTED to Bobby, who was already on board the helicopter. “I’ve got dive gear—a knife—and a combat vest in the trunk. But as far as weapons go, I’ve got nothing on me except my hands and feet.” Which, with the diving knife would be enough, provided he could get into the house and close enough to the guy. His hands and feet and that knife could do some serious damage.

  Even though the son of a bitch had a gun.

  “Mike Lee located a field a block and a half from the address you gave us for Brittany’s house,” Bobby reported. “We’ll be there about five minutes behind your ETA.”

  The L.A. emergency operator had actually put Wes on hold. So he’d called Lt. Jones at the naval base. Luck was with him, because part of Alpha Squad was already in the air, heading out via helo to the firing range to get in a little practice with some nontraditional weaponry.

  Jones had patched Wes through to Bobby in the helo, and put through an order directing them to head to the Los Angeles area—to practice a different type of maneuver.