Unleashed

by Lois Greiman

  “Eddie?” Eddie Friar and I go back to my early days in L.A. In fact, we dated for a time, but that was before we realized that he and I had more commonalities than differences…namely, an attraction to men. “What are you doing here?”

  “Spending my life savings.”

  “What?”

  “Khan,” he said, nodding toward the animal that had wrestled Harlequin to the floor. They tussled joyfully, endless limbs paddling. “He eats enough to fuel a pack animal.”

  “Uh huh,” I agreed.

  “And he doesn’t sleep. Ever. He’s like a windup toy in hyperdrive.” His voice sounded haunted, and I noticed for the first time that his handsome face was haggard. “Sophie’s threatened to leave home.”

  I laughed. Sophie, believe it or not, is Eddie’s greyhound. She’s elegant and docile and, I’m quite certain, smarter than the vast majority of her two-legged counterparts. “You should have known the dangers of bringing a young male into your house by now.”

  “I’m a slow learner. Hey, tell you what,” he said, gaze still on the wrestling hounds. “I’ll feed him for a week if I can have him for a night.”

  “What?”

  “Harley.” He sounded desperate and a little crazy. “I’ll take good care of him. You know I will. His own bowl. His own bone. His own…You know what? He can have my bed. I’ll sack out on the couch.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Khan’s driving me out of my mind. I just need something to wear him down. And look at how happy they are.”

  Harley did look pretty thrilled, if his drunken expression and wriggly body language was any indication.

  “I’ll just give them a couple hours together, then separate them for the night. Tomorrow morning, they can play again…if Harley wants to. I’ll return him when you’re done with work.”

  “I don’t know. He’s pretty attached to me.” Or, more accurately, I was attached to him. “Maybe I’d better—”

  “T-bone steak. Organic and pasture fed.”

  I tilted my head at him. “For me or for him?”

  “Both. Both of you. And remember my potatoes au gratin.”

  I did. Favorably. “What about them?”

  “I’ll make a double batch.”

  “With ham?”

  He nodded. “Creamy in the middle and crunchy on the top. It’ll be ready at seven o’clock tomorrow night if you want to come by.”

  I felt myself weakening. “Harley does like a nice potato dish.”

  In the end, he muscled dog food into both of our vehicles, then let the dogs hop into his backseat. I felt embarrassingly maudlin as he slammed the door and drove into the sunset.

  In less than forty minutes, I was back home. Hoisting the dog-food bag out of the trunk was no small feat, but I am woman, watch me roar, and grunt, and—

  “Hello.”

  I jerked my attention toward the sidewalk. A man in a dark windbreaker stood not twenty feet away. He looked disturbing like the guy from the gym parking lot.

  “What are you doing here?” My tone was something between a snarl and a gasp.

  Windbreaker smiled and took a step toward me. Something gleamed in his hand. I backed away, bumping into the Saturn’s left taillight.

  “I know this probably seems strange,” he began, but that was the last I heard. Terror, powered by a dozen near-death experiences and my own possibly overactive imagination, fueled me. Dropping the dog food, I torpedoed toward the driver’s side. For a moment, my fingers scrambled futilely against the handle, but finally I tore the door open and shot inside. Engaging the locks, I jerked my gaze to the rearview mirror.

  He was coming! Stalking toward me.

  I squawked and shoved my key in the ignition.

  He had reached my bumper, but I was already yanking the Saturn into drive, leaving him behind.

  I drove like a maniac, screeching around the turns, hands shaking on the wheel. But as far as I could tell, no one followed me. By the time I could think, I was squealing onto Rosehaven.

  Jerking the Saturn into park, I raced toward Rivera’s front door. It was locked. I rang the bell, then glanced breathlessly behind me.

  No murdering thugs seemed to be lumbering up the walkway, but I wasn’t about to take any chances on that fortuitous trend. I raised my fist to pound on the door just as it opened.

  “McMullen!” I had a momentary impression of Rivera’s shocked face before half falling, half stumbling inside.

  He caught me. I pressed my face against the lieutenant’s chest, shamelessly hiding from the world.

  “What’s wrong? Chrissy…” He closed the door and wrapped his arms around me.

  I felt my eyes well up and my body shake like a battered piñata.

  “Chrissy.” He pushed me to arms’ length. “What the hell happened?”

  From the kitchen, his phone rang. I squawked and jerked away, knees buckling. He caught me before I hit the floor.

  I’m not proud of the fact that he had to carry me into the living room. My legs had turned to flan, my mind to Jell-O, both sugary snacks not high on my to-be-eaten list. But still viable when there was no pecan pie in sight.

  He set me carefully against the armrest of the couch, as if I were a ticking time bomb, then drew back. I clung to his hand, but he tugged away with a promise to return in a minute.

  I watched him lock the front door and check the windows. His scowl was dark, his glances toward me worried, before he disappeared into his kitchen.

  I drew my knees up to my chest and huddled against the cushions until he returned with a tumbler a quarter full of amber liquid.

  “Drink this,” he ordered, pressing it into my hand.

  I took a sip and wrinkled my nose.

  “All of it,” he said.

  “Are you trying to kill me, too?”

  Stormy emotion shone in his dusky eyes but he set his jaw and tipped the glass to my lips. “Drink it.”

  I did so in one long gulp, then shuddered and set the tumbler aside.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I swallowed again. It was bile this time but still tasted marginally better than the whiskey. “I think…I think…” Now that it came down to it, I wasn’t at all sure what I thought. Everything seemed sketchy.

  “Start at the beginning,” he ordered.

  I nodded disjointedly. “The rhythm method isn’t very reliable.”

  His scowl deepened. Had I not known the dark lieutenant on an intimate basis, I would have sworn that wasn’t possible.

  “They should have used an IUD or the pill or a diaphragm or maybe all of the above if they didn’t want another—”

  “Not that far back,” he said, and sat down beside me. Practical. He had always been a practical man.

  “You don’t want to hear about my parents’ failed contraception plans?” I fiddled with a pillow, glanced nervously toward the front door.

  “Chrissy…”

  “No. You’re right.” I shivered. “No one in his right mind would want to think about them copulating.”

  “You’re okay now,” he said. “Just tell me what happened.”

  I was willing to oblige but found it rather difficult to marshal a single coherent thought. I cleared my throat. “There was a man in a windbreaker by my garage.”

  Now that I said it, this didn’t sound like the groundbreaking news it had seemed a few minutes earlier. It wasn’t as if it was against city ordinances to have strangers pass by your house. Or to wear windbreakers, for that matter…although the fashion police frowned on such things.

  I watched Rivera’s face, waiting for a dismissive sneer, but his expression remained dour. Lieutenant Jack Rivera, I’ve long known, has the kind of paranoia generally attributed to prey animals…and cops. Inside his personal vehicle, he kept an anti-theft club for his anti-theft club.

  “I think…” I exhaled shakily. “I think he had a knife.” Not that I wanted to add to that paranoia.

  “Did he hurt you?�
��

  “No. I jumped in the car, locked the door. Came straight here.”

  He nodded his approval. “Was it someone you knew?”

  “No. Yes. I…” I nodded, belatedly remembering why I had been so freaked out. “I saw him. Outside the gym.”

  “When?”

  “An hour ago. There was another man.” I described him briefly. “But I don’t think they were together. He seemed happy to get out of there, but Windbreaker Guy offered to help me change my tire.”

  “You had a flat?”

  I nodded.

  “Was it slashed?”

  I caught my breath. Despite my own paranoia exhibited in the parking lot I had somehow never considered that possibility. “How would I know?”

  “You wouldn’t,” he said.

  I blinked at him. “Then I don’t know.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “I said I didn’t need help. So he left, or at least I think he did. I changed it myself.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Because we broke up.”

  He scowled but didn’t argue. “Did you go straight home?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he was there?”

  “Yes. No,” I corrected. “Harley was out of food, so we went to Tomcat.”

  His brows quirked. “The strip club or the—”

  “The pet-food store.”

  He watched, maybe not quite believing. Which was, perhaps, fair enough. I’ve been known to spend some time at the Strip Please, where male dancers like to strut their stuff, but only in a professional capacity, of course.

  “On Lowell,” I added, remembering to drag out my snooty voice just in time.

  He gave me a look but let it slide. “Did anything out of the ordinary happen while you were there?”

  “The cashier wasn’t rude to me.”

  He raised a brow.

  “And Eddie was there.”

  “Eddie?” A carnivorous growl of jealousy sweetened his tone, but I tried not to enjoy it too much.

  “Eddie Friar.”

  “Your gay ex?”

  “He wasn’t gay when we dated.”

  The left corner of his mouth twitched a little, but he refrained from laughing. It was a good choice on his part. Stress tends to make me a little unpredictable…and somewhat vicious.

  “He took Harley home for a play date with his puppy.”

  I could practically see his mind processing that information. “Anything else happen?”

  “Not really.”

  “You didn’t see the guy in the windbreaker?”

  “Not until I got home.” I shivered again, even though my story seemed a little less terrifying in the safety of Rivera’s cozy living room.

  “Where was he when you first saw him?”

  “In the parking lot. Not—”

  “When you got home. Where was he then?”

  “On the sidewalk.”

  “Did he have a vehicle?”

  Another question I had failed to consider. “I don’t know.”

  “Was he there when you arrived or did he follow you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Did he speak?”

  “He said hello.”

  “Hello or hi?”

  I paused a beat. “Are you serious?”

  His brows quirked with impatience. “What else did he say?”

  “Something about…” I matched him scowl for scowl, thinking hard, remembering things, little facts that hadn’t quite surfaced before. “Something about how I might think this was strange.”

  “What was strange?”

  “I don’t know.” I was starting to feel kind of silly, realizing, rather belatedly perhaps, that it might have been possible that the guy in the parking lot and the guy on the sidewalk were two entirely different individuals. Truth be told, my skittering mind hadn’t absorbed much more than the fact that they both wore dark windbreakers. But I wasn’t quite ready to explain that to the glowering lieutenant. “That he was there, maybe. After seeing him at the gym.”

  His gaze felt hot.

  “How’d he look?”

  “Windbreaker Guy?” Maybe I was stalling. “See, that’s the thing…” I tried an ingratiating smile. It might have looked more like a frenzied snarl.

  “What’s the thing?”

  “I may have been mistaken.”

  “What?”

  “I may have…” I shook my head a little, as if disavowing the possibility I was about to share. “When one is sufficiently inundated with adrenaline, one can sometimes misinterpret the situation.” And if one is really fucked up, sometimes she’ll manufacture a crisis so as to have a reason to seek out the one person she desires above all others. But of course that wasn’t the case here; I’m a licensed psychologist. “Even go so far as to manifest a miscreant when—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I panicked! Okay? I panicked.”

  His expression suggested this might not be the startling news I thought it to be. “And?”

  I took a deep breath. “Maybe they weren’t the same guy.”

  He didn’t even bother to look peeved. His patience was beginning to worry me almost as much as the probable…possible…actually not very likely…attempt on my life. “You think there were two different men wearing windbreakers?”

  “Could be.”

  “What color were they?”

  “The windbreakers or the men?”

  “Let’s start with the men.”

  I fidgeted. “He…they…wore baseball caps. I couldn’t tell much about their features.”

  “Describe the gym guy. Start at his cap and work your way down.”

  “Red. I think it was red. Or—”

  “Or?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Exhaustion was setting in.

  “What about his hair? Was it—”

  “Blond,” I said, excited now that I had an actual memory. “And long enough to see past his cap.”

  “Light blond?”

  “About the same as Tony’s.”

  “Your boy-toy at The Blvd?”

  I ignored the jibe. “Yes.”

  “Was it him?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It was dark. His face was obscured. How can you be sure?”

  I gave him a look. “Because I’m not completely psychotic.”

  He neither denied nor confirmed.

  “Tony’s taller,” I explained. “Windbreaker Guy was only medium height.”

  “Windbreaker could have been slouching.”

  “Tony’s younger.”

  “How old was Windbreaker?”

  “At least thirty.”

  He didn’t grit his teeth, but it kind of looked like he wanted to.

  “And Tony wouldn’t wear a windbreaker if his—”

  “Chrissy—”

  I didn’t give him time to tell me that was the most asinine reasoning he had ever heard. “It wasn’t him,” I said.

  He scowled but continued on as if he believed me. “What about the other guy at the gym?”

  “He wasn’t Tony either.”

  He returned the look I had given him earlier. “Describe him.”

  “Short, handsome.” I don’t know why I added that. Not just to watch him bristle, I’m sure. Although no one has ever accused me of being overly mature. “Hispanic, I think.”

  “You think or you know?”

  I considered that for a moment. “I know.”

  He nodded, moving on. “You never saw him again after he left?”

  “No.”

  “And he and Windbreaker didn’t seem to know each other?”

  “I have no reason to think they did.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  I explained the entire incident from the time I exited the gym, seeing no reason to recap my embarrassing fantasy about the guy with the glutes and the imagined invitation to fun.

&nb
sp; No, I assured him. Neither of the men in the parking lot had accosted me or made any indication that he meant to. One was short and dark. The other was medium height and blond. The short one wore a green T-shirt and black sweatpants. The other wore the windbreaker. I was beginning to believe that the LAPD probably wasn’t going to run out to apprehend men on the basis of poor fashion sense alone.

  I moved through the story like a robot on sedatives. It was beginning to sound more boring than scary.

  “All right, let’s talk about your arrival at your house. Did you notice anything suspicious when you first got there?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you entered by the front door.”

  “Correct.”

  “Where was Harley?”

  “He, um…he met me at the door.”

  “Does he usually?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he seem agitated?”

  “No.”

  “He wasn’t pacing or fidgeting or biting his nails?”

  “No, no, and what the hell?” I was beginning to wish Windbreaker Guy had pulled out a gun and shot me in the head.

  Rivera’s frustration matched mine. “I can’t help you if you don’t answer my questions.”

  “I’ve answered them all forty-seven times.”

  “You have not answered—” He stopped himself, held up a palm. “So you didn’t see Windbreaker Guy again until you returned from the store?”

  “Correct,” I said, calming my tone in concert with his.

  “Did he have the knife when you first saw him or did he draw it later?”

  I pursed my lips, trying to figure out how to phrase my thoughts. “About that…”

  He flattened his lips into a thin line.

  “I’ve been thinking…” I paused, wobbled my head at the unlikeliness of that scenario.

  “What about him?”

  “I realize I may have given you the impression that after my arrival at home, the gentleman—”

  “Just spit it the hell out, McMullen.”

  “He wasn’t threatening me!”

  His brows shot up. He tilted his head as if an askew position might help him make sense of me.

  I cleared my throat. “My bedroom window’s been sticking.”

  “And you think the gentleman with the knife intended to scare it into opening?”