Shiver

by Karen Robards

  “I have to go.” Freeing her hand, she turned her back on him and headed for the door.

  “Sam,” he said as she opened it, and she shook her head before she realized that he probably couldn’t see the gesture. So she said, “Shh,” over her shoulder at him and “Good night,” then walked out of his room with her head held high and her heart breaking, knowing that her first real, all-grown-up, God-I’m-crazy-about-him love affair had just officially ended.

  She should have known better. She should have stayed more on guard. But, oh, God, she had forgotten just how very much falling in love with the wrong man could hurt.

  The pain lasted until she walked into Tyler’s room and saw that he wasn’t there. Hurriedly she checked the second bathroom, and her bedroom and bathroom, calling him softly, turning the lights on in each room to make sure, then off again as she left so as not to draw Abramowitz to the second floor with a blaze of lights and commotion. Tyler wasn’t in any of them. Had he gone downstairs?

  Padding quickly down the once-again dark hall, Sam had almost made it to the top of the stairs when she saw her son. He was standing on the second step from the top, almost invisible in the gloom as he pressed himself flat against the wall on the far side of the staircase.

  Frowning, she was just about to say Tyler when his demeanor stopped her. From that alone, her heart was already slamming in her chest when she reached the top and looked down the stairs. At what she saw at the bottom, she stopped breathing: Abramowitz lay sprawled on his stomach at the entrance to the great room. By the faint glow that seemed to be emanating from the kitchen, where the light was apparently still on, she was able to see that there was a great gaping wound in his neck and that the dark stain soaking into the carpet around him was blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Inside her head, Sam screamed like a steam whistle, but she didn’t make so much as a sound out loud. Instead, as her son’s wide eyes swung around to her, she pressed her finger to her lips in the age-old gesture of hush, reached out, and caught his hand.

  His fingers were as cold as ice. They locked onto hers as if he were never going to let her go. Heart jackhammering, being as quiet as it was possible to be, she drew him back up the stairs toward her. As soon as he was off the stairs and in the hallway she whispered “Shh” in his ear and pulled him with her in a headlong run down the hall.

  Thank God for the carpet! It muffled their footsteps as they fled as one toward Marco’s room and burst through the doorway that she had left open just a few minutes before. His light was still off, but Sam could see him: he was on his feet by the closet. He’d gotten dressed while she’d been gone, in what, by the dark outline of his shape that was really all of him that she could make out through the shadows, looked like sweats and a T-shirt similar to what she was wearing. Clearly startled by their sudden eruption into the room, Marco swung around to face them.

  “Shh,” Sam warned him in a barely audible but urgent whisper before he could say anything. She was so scared that she could feel goose bumps racing over her skin.

  “They’re here! The bad men,” Tyler blurted, whispering, too, as he made a beeline for Marco.

  “They killed Abramowitz! He’s down there on the floor!” Sam only realized that she had rushed for Marco right along with Tyler when she found herself wrapping her arms around his chest while Tyler grabbed him somewhere around his hips. Marco was only using one crutch for support. Despite that he was apparently pretty steady on his feet because he didn’t so much as stagger as they latched onto him. Instead his arm came around Sam to pull her close even as he peered at them through the darkness.

  “Abramowitz is dead? How?” Marco’s whisper was sharp. She thanked God that he was astute enough not to waste time on the whole what? and are you sure? thing but instead cut right to the chase.

  “Just dead, okay?” She didn’t want to get too graphic with Tyler listening. “He’s lying at the bottom of the stairs. I think whoever killed him is in the house right now!” Striving for calm, Sam failed miserably. She was practically jumping out of her skin. At any second, she expected gunmen to come storming up to the second floor. At the thought, panic surged through her veins in an icy tide.

  “Trey, hurry! We’ve got to get out of here!” Tyler’s whisper sounded as terrified as Sam felt. He looked up at Sam with eyes the size of saucers. Still hanging onto Marco, he was jiggling from foot to foot in agitation. Sam wrapped an arm around him, which pretty much completed the circle for a big group hug.

  “Don’t worry, bud. I got this.” From its tone, Marco’s whisper was meant to be reassuring. Tyler obviously trusted him implicitly, because the reassurance seemed to calm him. Despite the fact that Sam had a way clearer idea about whom and what they were facing than her son, it calmed her a little, too. Even with everything she knew about Marco, her heart persisted in identifying him as someone she and Tyler could rely on in a tight spot. In a deadly spot. Like this.

  “Tyler’s right. We’ve got to go now.” Fear, thick and cold and oily, rose up in her throat like bile. Swallowing hard, Sam remembered her little research project, the one where she’d checked out all possible exits from all possible areas of the house, and realized that she knew the perfect spot for their escape. “We can go out Tyler’s bedroom window. Come on.”

  She tugged at Marco’s arm.

  “Hang on a minute.” Instead of moving as both she and Tyler were now urging him to do, Marco let go of her and balanced on one leg while he did something with his crutch. Sam’s mouth dropped open as he flipped it into the air, twisted it, and the thing came apart in his hands. Seconds later, he extracted a gun—a gun!—from inside it.

  “Wow! I didn’t know that was in there.” The gun’s appearance seemed to fascinate Tyler. He watched with awe as Marco snapped the slide back on the small black pistol and then thrust the gun into the waistband of his sweats. Marco then dumped something out of the crutch’s shaft into his hand and thrust whatever it was into his pocket.

  Sam goggled.

  “You’ve had that this whole time?” She recovered the power of speech to hiss at him even as Marco grabbed his other, still-in-one-piece crutch and the three of them headed en masse for the door.

  “Shh. You two stay back.” Gun in hand now, Marco stepped into the hallway like a capable professional who knew his way around a dangerous situation. Sam remembered with a little spurt of thankfulness that not so long ago he had been a federal agent. A moment later, blocking them out from any threat that might emerge from the staircase with his body, he made a gesture for them to move out behind him and head for Tyler’s bedroom. Clutching Tyler’s hand, moving as quietly as possible, Sam ran down the hall with her son at her side. The whole second floor was dark except for the faint glow coming up the staircase. Now that she knew what lay down at the bottom of that staircase, just looking in that direction gave Sam the willies.

  What was even scarier was the thought that they couldn’t have much time. Whoever had killed Abramowitz had to be looking for Marco, and any minute now they would come up the stairs and . . .

  She couldn’t finish the thought.

  As she and Tyler darted into Tyler’s bedroom, Sam saw that Marco was headed for the stairs. Her stomach turned upside down. She wanted to call after him, to beg him to come with them, but anything she could say that he might be able to hear would be too loud. And her first priority had to be getting Tyler to safety.

  “Where’s Trey?” Tyler whispered, looking around as Sam rushed toward the window. Instead of staying beside her, he pulled free. Out of the corner of her eye, as she raised the shade as quietly as possible and then reached for the cool brass window latch, she watched as he grabbed Ted from his bed and, in a gesture that brought a lump to her throat because she knew that it meant he was aware of how expensive shoes were to replace, stuck his feet into the slip-on sneakers she’d just bought him.

  “Come on, Tyler.” She unlocked the window easily. The town house was new: nothing had as y
et been painted shut. The window was triple-glazed and designed to crank out. Sam cranked with all her might, wincing at the very slight creaking sounds that resulted as it slowly opened. The night air was cooler than she had expected, midsixties maybe, and heavy with the promise of rain. The moon and stars were hidden beneath a dense cloud cover. As a result, it was very dark. But down below, in the yard, the kitchen light shone out through the sliding glass doors so she could see as far away as the tree.

  At the thought that someone might be waiting for them down there, Sam shivered. Her heart pounded like a piston in her chest.

  “Here, Mom.” Tyler thrust her shoes and the bear mace at her as he rejoined her, and she took both with a quick spurt of surprise that he’d thought to gather them up and appreciation for the levelheadedness it indicated. She’d left her shoes under his bed when she’d read to him earlier, and the bear mace had found a permanent home in his nightstand because she had figured that if anyone broke into the house, the place where she was most likely to make a stand was at Tyler’s bedside. Dropping the bear mace into her pocket, grabbing Ted from Tyler—“I’ll hold him!”—and tucking him under her arm, she helped Tyler out onto the cedar shake overhang that ran along the back of the house and shaded the sliding glass door.

  “Be careful,” she warned, because the overhang, while not steep, had a definite slope to it. At the same time, she thrust her feet into her shoes, stuck Ted into her other pocket, and looked back over her shoulder one last time in hopes that she would see Marco coming toward her. She did not. The house was still and quiet. She couldn’t even hear Marco, much less anything else. But she knew that the quiet was an illusion, knew the most terrible danger could engulf them at any second, and the knowledge made her stomach knot and her pulse race.

  “Come on, Mom.”

  Sam was halfway out the window when Marco appeared in the doorway. Until she actually saw his tall dark shape swinging toward her, she hadn’t realized how terrified she had been that something might have prevented him from rejoining them. Some of the anxiety that had been constricting her throat eased.

  Oh, God, I’m crazy about him. There was absolutely no future in it, and she didn’t have time to dwell on the implications of it, but there it was: a fact.

  “I can’t figure out why nobody’s coming up here after us.” Reaching the window, thrusting his crutch and then his head and shoulders through the opening, Marco said it as if he were talking more to himself than to her.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have another gun in there, would you?” Sam whispered, gesturing at the crutch.

  “Fresh out,” Marco whispered back.

  Seeing her clinging to the shingles just outside the window looking back at him, he added, “Go. Don’t wait for me. Hurry.”

  If Marco was telling her to hurry, hurry was what she was going to do. Icy little curls of fear spiraled through Sam’s stomach as she scrambled carefully along the overhang. One thing she didn’t need to worry about was Tyler’s climbing ability, she saw with relief. He was clinging to the layered gray shingles like a monkey, moving in the direction she had indicated, toward the edge of the overhang nearest to the gate in the fence that surrounded the backyard, through which they would ultimately escape the property. Despite having both hands and feet planted flat against the shingles, she wasn’t quite as good at negotiating the shingles as Tyler seemed to be. The surface was uneven and slippery with moss in places, with no convenient handholds. Her boots were having trouble finding purchase, too. Twice she slid almost all the way down to the gutter, but she kept going. Between his bad leg and the need to hang onto his crutch, Marco seemed to be having some difficulty as well. Sam kept casting anxious glances back at him as he moved awkwardly in her wake, but there was nothing she could do to help him. All she could do was keep going.

  Tyler reached the edge of the roof, crouched, peered over. Sam felt her heart stutter as she watched his small body teeter in midnight-black silhouette against the charcoal black of the sky. Out in the open air as they were, with no way of telling if anyone was below them in the yard, or anywhere else within earshot, Sam was afraid to call out to him to wait for her, to warn him not to try to jump. But—smart boy!—he stayed where he was anyway, looking back at her.

  Reaching him, Sam clung precariously to the shingles and looked down, too. The drop wasn’t that far—maybe twelve feet. Far enough to hurt them? Maybe. Maybe not, if they were careful. What scared her more was wondering what might be waiting for them below. Although they had tried their best to cross the roof as silently as possible, inevitably there had been slithering footsteps and the slight dragging sound made by Marco’s crutch as he hauled it along with him. Had they been heard? Was Abramowitz’s killer tracking their progress across the roof even now? It was a chance Sam knew they were going to have to take. As far as she could tell, this corner of the yard was deserted. It was also thick with shadows; unless someone knew exactly where they were, they should be able to drop down unseen. The gate was nearby. Once they were off the roof, it would only take a couple of minutes to get through it. Then what? If Abramowitz was dead, what about the others? Realizing that she had absolutely no idea what was waiting for them sent a shiver racing down her spine.

  Marco had caught up to them. Tyler scooted close to him as Sam looked around at him wide-eyed.

  “Should we just jump?” Tyler’s whisper, directed at Marco, was full of fear.

  “Hang tight a minute.” Marco looked at Sam. “I’m going to lower you down.” His instructions were low and rapid. “Then I’ll hand Tyler down to you. Then the two of you run like hell. Don’t wait for me.”

  “You’re coming with us, right?”

  He nodded. “Count on it.”

  “Are we going to the other town house? Or—”

  Shaking his head, he broke in before she could finish. “I’d like to hook up with Sanders if we could. We may need the firepower. But we’re going to get away from here and see what’s what before we decide.” Passing Tyler the crutch to hold, Marco stretched out on his stomach on the shingles and looked over the edge, then a moment later beckoned to Sam to come closer. “When you get through the gate, run around the outside of the fence toward the street behind us. In case somebody’s watching from out front.” The prospect made Sam’s blood run cold. She nodded wordlessly, and he held out his hands to her. Scooting into position, she put her hands into his. “Okay, go.”

  Sam slid over the edge. Briefly she dangled in space, suspended from Marco’s strong hands. When he let go, she dropped the few remaining feet to the ground, landing softly on the balls of her feet. Nobody attacked her. Nothing bad happened. Glancing fearfully all around, she saw nothing beyond the rectangle of fuzzy light thrown by the sliding glass window, and the tree and the basketball goal and the chairs and the grill, along with the ghoulish shadows they cast. Everything looked absolutely as it should, everything was absolutely still. And something about that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

  The killer could be anywhere.

  “Mom.”

  Looking up, she caught Tyler as Marco lowered him down to her. He weighed practically nothing at all, and she gave him a quick hug as she set him on the ground. Then she grabbed his hand and together they ran for the gate, staying low, hugging the shadows near the fence as they went. A slight thump made her look back: the crutch lay on the ground. Marco had dropped it. Out of the corner of her eye, as she fumbled with the latch, she watched Marco swing over the side. Landing lightly on his good leg, he hopped once or twice before he got his balance. Then he grabbed his crutch and came after them.

  Finally the latch opened. She and Tyler made it through the gate and around the corner and were running through the even more absolute darkness of the strip of empty land on the other side of the fence when she glanced back to make sure Marco was following.

  He was. Her gaze had just found him, coming around the corner of the fence, moving fast for a man using a crutch, when the town house
exploded behind them with a sound like a sonic boom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The force of the blast slammed Sam face first into the ground. Debris flew past her, pelting the grass around her like some hellish rain. Behind her, the night was suddenly as bright as day as flames engulfed the town house with a roar. The acrid scent of the fire reached her nostrils on a whoosh of blistering air. Stunned, she lay there for a moment, ears ringing, cheek pressed into the thick grass, and then she thought Tyler, and lifted her head.

  He was a few feet in front of her, lying flat in the grass, facedown just like she was. Even as Sam’s heart skipped a beat he rolled into a sitting position and looked back at her, and then past her, at the blazing town house. Blinking dazedly, he watched the conflagration shooting through the roof. The fire painted his small face, and indeed everything around them, a flickering red. Sam looked back, too, and saw Marco sprawled on the ground behind them. He was unmoving; if he were hurt, she couldn’t tell. Beyond him, she watched flames reaching like bright orange fingers toward the sky. The roar of the fire had a fierce crackling quality to it now, and she could feel its intense heat.

  If the explosion had occurred only a few minutes earlier, they would have been dead now. The certainty made her insides clench.

  “Tyler, are you hurt?” Her voice was high-pitched, wobbly.

  “No—” He broke off, his head turning sharply to the left. “Mom, look out.” Fear infused his voice.

  In the process of pushing herself into a sitting position, Sam jerked a glance in the direction in which he was looking just in time to see someone racing at her from the shadows. Her heart leaped into her throat. Every instinct she possessed screamed danger.