It was the clicking sounds across the travertine floor that woke Macayla. They reminded her of little taps on a door with a key. Only she was alone.
Supposed to be alone.
Heart thumping loudly in her chest, she sat up, reaching for her phone with one hand and her pepper spray with the other. She debated whether or not to turn on a light. To do so would give away her position to an intruder.
Intruder. Her heart accelerated.
Be logical, her mind told her scaredy-cat heart. She hadn’t heard the alarm go off. And she was certain she’d set it because she’d checked three times.
Maybe one of the dogs had gotten out of its crate. Yes, that must be it. Mal or Zoe was wandering around, doggy nails clicking across the floor below. Might even be Ninja kitty. No, cats retracted their claws to walk. Dog. It was a dog.
Just as she was about to reach for the light, the clicking stopped.
She held her breath, straining for sound. She could hear the surf on the bay lashing the seawall. The rumble of thunder had abated. The storm was taking a time-out. The glow of the reflected city was too weak to penetrate far into the room, because the windows had become cloudy from condensation and streaked rain. But gradually things came into focus as her eyes adjusted.
If a loose dog chewed the furniture, or peed on a pillow, she could see her salary for this gig going back into cleaning fees. She should check on the dogs.
Click. Click. Click.
Her breath hitched in her throat. This time the sound was coming up the main stairs. And they weren’t doggy steps. This was the two-legged variety.
The hair on her body lifted as she slipped off the memory foam, no small accomplishment on a mattress that clung like a lover. As her feet hit the chill tile she actually thought about hiding. There were six bedrooms on the second floor. Five chances for an intruder to miss finding her before she could summon help.
She punched 911 and put her finger over the sound. Maybe it would be enough for an intrepid emergency person to check the location of a cell that couldn’t be answered.
A sudden gust of wind hit the house. And she ducked as if it were after her.
Click. Click. Click.
She could hear thunder again, a low rumbling like a distant train. They must be in the eye of the low. If lows had eyes, like hurricanes.
Click. Click. Click. An abrupt pause.
Mac held her breath, flipped the safety on her pepper spray, and stared at the open door to the bedroom she occupied.
“Ms. Burkett?”
The inquiry came through the dark in an impatient tone of voice. A man’s light tenor voice looking for someone he considered slightly inferior. Boss to underling. Homeowner to maid.
Macayla bit her lip until she tasted blood. Someone was inside this house. Who? Was the renter back despite the storm? No one else knew she was here. That absolutely wasn’t Oliver’s voice issuing from the hallway.
“Ms. Macayla Burkett!”
A tall figure stepped into the dimly lit doorway of the bedroom. And for the first time in her life, Macayla understood why a person might want to have a gun in her bedside table drawer. Not that she had the guts to use one. But the idea was oddly comforting in a dreadful sort of way. “Macayla Burkett?”
Macayla realized that just as her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, her intruder’s probably had as well. And in the glow from the night sky she could be seen standing by the bed. “Stop. I have pepper spray.”
“Cute.” Lightning flashed, outlining the figure. The silhouette was familiar. Too familiar. Even without the infrared enhancement, the tall figure with short hair and jacket clicked into place in her mind. Then a second bolt of brilliance slid briefly along an object clutched in the figure’s hand. Gun.
The lights came on.
Blinking against the sudden brightness, Macayla tried to pull the world together. A woman stood before her dressed in a buttoned-up anorak rain jacket shedding water on the floor. She glanced again at the gun the woman held, not expecting it to be there. This was a mistake. Her brain was overreacting to memory stimuli that had nothing to do with the moment. “Mrs. Henley?”
The woman nodded. “So you do remember me.” Not a man’s voice after all.
“What are you doing here?”
“This is one of the homes owned by Stinton Vacation Properties, my family’s business. We’ve been in real estate in Tampa for fifty years. I specialize in vacation rentals. The interior design is mine. Do you like the house?” She sounded honestly curious. As if she were holding a good bottle of wine for an invited guest—instead of a gun.
Macayla couldn’t take her eyes off it. The only sane thought that came to mind was, “Nice. Very nice.” Except that her adrenaline level was so over the top from the woman’s sudden appearance that she was close to wetting the floor.
Obviously, Mrs. Henley had access to all her properties. Maybe she was checking them for problems. In the middle of a stormy night? Okay, crazy person move, but not her problem to solve.
She made an effort to smile. “Why are you here?” Had she screwed up the alarm and sent a silent message to the property owners? “Is there a problem?”
“Yes. There’s a problem.” The woman wiped at her wet face with her free hand. “Why couldn’t you have found my dogs in time? That would have saved everyone so much trouble.”
“I don’t understand. And would you mind lowering that gun? It’s making me very nervous.”
Mrs. Henley didn’t bother to smile. “Put down your canister first.”
Mac sucked in a slow breath. Disarm. That’s what she meant. The reasons why that wasn’t a good idea didn’t even have to be thought through for Mac to come to the conclusion that giving up her only defense was a nonstarter. At least until she understood more.
Her hand tightened around her pepper spray can. “Is there a problem with the house that brought you out tonight?”
“I hired your agency to bring home my greyhounds. But you didn’t.”
Mac swallowed the inclination to scream, What the fuck’s wrong with you, lady? It’s two a.m. Call during business hours if you have a complaint!
But the gun kept drawing her eye. A gun has a way of shaping the conversation. The need to remain polite seemed suddenly to be very, very important.
Mac couldn’t find a smile, however. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Henley, but they were already dead when I found them.”
“I know.” She sniffed, but her expression remained calm. “Still, why don’t you tell me about that night?”
Macayla wondered how much the woman already knew. “Where is Mr. Henley?” Downstairs?
“Screw him. I’m divorcing that bastard. He told me he’d bring my babies back home but I was right not to trust him. Turns out he took them. That soul-sucking prick!”
Macayla froze. Nothing was making sense. Her mouth had gone dry, leaving her tongue feeling thick and useless.
Mrs. Henley seemed to need to fill in the silence. “I’d put a lot of money into growing my own bloodlines. Those dogs were the proof of my success. After winning a big race I was going use them as breeding stock. Start my own business and go up against Henley Kennels after I left him. That’s why Jarvis stole my beauties. He wanted to make sure I didn’t win the biggest race of the season and show him up. Because of him my perfect animals were destroyed.”
Stall for time. That’s all she could think of. And hope that the 911 call had gone through. She’d pushed the END CALL button in case the woman noticed her holding the phone. “That was pretty vindictive.”
“Oh, Jarvis is an accomplished liar. He brought me the note and tried to pretend he was willing to pay the ransom but said it would take time. By then it would be too late for me to get them back for the race. But I called in the police and his hands were tied.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”
Mac’s question refocused Mrs. Henley’s thoughts. “You were there the night they were found. You witnessed something. Tell me about that.”
How did she know about— “Nothing important. I mean nothing worth—”
The woman lifted the gun muzzle a fraction. “You told my husband there’s video proof of a shooting.”
The world stopped spinning.
Fuck.
Macayla’s mind hopscotched across her memories of that night. She’d been certain the infrared images had been of two men. One stocky in a hoodie. The other in a suit. Tall. Short hair. Suit. Click-clicking sounds of boot heels!
Clicks! They were part of the few sounds on the video. The police thought they were taps that some men wore to keep their heels from wearing down. But what if they weren’t made by men’s shoes?
Her gaze slipped down to Mrs. Henley’s feet. She wore Top-Siders, a unisex shoe. Her eyes flew up to the short wet hair plastered to the woman’s head. The footsteps coming toward her that night might have been made by a woman.
Macayla’s vision blurred. A sudden chill threatened to buckle her knees. She took an instinctive step back from the bed. No point in being coy about her fear.
“Stop.” Mrs. Henley leveled the barrel at Macayla’s midsection. “Don’t move again. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Macayla stopped in her tracks. “Maybe we should include your husband in this conversation.”
“No!” It was the wail of a woman in pain. One whose gun wobbled as she cut off a sob. “I didn’t go there to hurt him. I just wanted my dogs back.”
She really cared about her dogs. Macayla grabbed onto that slender lifeline. “I understand how you feel, Mrs. Henley. No, really. I lost my dog a year ago.”
She blinked. “How?”
Macayla shoved down sentiment. No time to indulge her emotions when her life was on the line. “A madman shot her. He shot my Katie.” And me. But now was not the time to give this person any ideas.
“Did you want to kill him?”
“No. Maybe. I only know I had to get Katie to the vet. The police took care of the shooter.”
Memory flashed clear as she spoke. Katie had leaped over her as she’d covered the girl with her own body. This was her first memory of that snippet of the event. Had Katie done it out of a sense of play, or for protection? She’d never know. But it helped to remember.
Mrs. Henley shut her eyes briefly, visibly pulling herself together. “It was an accident. After three days of searching the police gave up. That’s why I called you people in. I couldn’t just leave my dogs to waste away in the hands of the thieves. When I told Jarvis what I’d done, he went ballistic. He confessed that he’d arranged for my dogs to be taken. He promised me that they were in the best of care. Our head groomer, Nico, was looking after them. But I didn’t trust him. I demanded that he tell me where they were.”
Macayla thought she was just about out of rungs on the fear ladder. But with that statement, Sara Henley had added a few more. Confessing to murder, that’s what she was doing. And that was a very bad sign.
Macayla backed up another step. “I’m sorry I didn’t find them in time.”
Sara Henley sucked in a breath. “By the time I found Nico it was too late. He didn’t even apologize for what he’d done. He was angry, demanded more money. He said the dogs were making too much noise and the neighbors were getting nosy. With the publicity in the papers, he was afraid to move them. Jarvis wasn’t answering his texts, so after three days he put them down. Can you imagine? Champion dogs put down like mangy curs?”
Macayla was imagining how once a person killed it might be easier to do it a second time. “I swear I didn’t know it was you who—” Maybe it was better not to finish that sentence.
“Don’t be cute. I knew you were there that night. At least I was suspicious. It was all over the papers the next day how you found my dogs. But there were no reports of a shooting. After a few days I decided you hadn’t seen enough to make you dangerous. But then you decided to talk to Jarvis about the video.” The gun moved erratically. “What do you want? Money?”
“No, I don’t—”
“You must have thought you could milk us.” She came closer, still blocking the only escape. “That’s a crime, you know. Extortion.”
Macayla digested this new information, and anger flushed through her. “But there is no body, so no crime.” She could have bitten her tongue off. But the fear was wearing off and a weird kind of exasperation was taking its place.
She nodded. “Jarvis is good for some things. I called him to meet me after the, ah, accident. He took care of things. But one never knows what might turn up here or there.”
Macayla shuddered. A man’s life reduced to here-or-there remains. Chilling.
“I don’t want money, Mrs. Henley. And I don’t care what you did. The police have no evidence. The video shows nothing clearly. It’s just a blurry infrared video. We all thought it was a man.”
“Don’t lie.”
“It’s the truth. But you should know that you can’t get rid of me as easily as you did Nico. People know I’m here tonight. You can’t explain away my disappearance.”
“You’d be surprised what I can do. My dad always said a smart person could get away with anything, as long as there are no eyewitnesses.”
The cell phone in her hand suddenly buzzed, a sound so unexpected that Macayla dropped it in surprise.
“Leave it. You don’t need it.”
“I take my phone everywhere.” The snappish answer was a sure sign to Macayla that she was about to lose it big time. “I want my phone.” She bent over to pick it up.
“Touch it and I’ll drop you here and worry about the rest later.”
Macayla froze, assaulted by a memory as clear as the reality before her. The shot. The sound. The burning pain.
She jerked upright. “What do you want?”
“Come downstairs with me.” The pistol indicated the doorway.
“Where are we going?”
“Downstairs.” She pointed the gun at Macayla’s middle.
A tremor began at her knees. Dammit. She could feel the old horror climbing up her spine as they descended the stairway. Did not want to be shot. Again.
Mac’s thoughts went into overdrive as they moved through the dark house. Not always delivering things to her advantage.
Never go anywhere isolated with your attacker. Better to stand your ground and fight.
That was the standard principle of every self-defense class. Except that fighting required having an equal chance. Gun versus body was not a fair fight. And she was already in an isolated location.
If I’m shot inside, the mess it would make would make it easier for the police to solve my murder, some insane part of Macayla’s brain delivered up.
The rest of her mind, the sane part, was weighing the odds of her getting away without being shot at all. A boat perhaps?
Run for it. The house was huge. She could hide long enough to make a call. If she had her phone. Or could reach the one in the kitchen. Or knew which doors in the house had locks on them.
Go on the offensive. She could try her luck at tackling her opponent. Being so much shorter, she might even be able to catch Sara low on her hips and knock her flat on her back. But then what? Grapple for the gun? She noticed that Sara held the gun with authority, as if she was accustomed to using it. Mac had never shot a handgun.
Shot. Yes.
“Open the back door. Move. Now.”
“Yes.” She was moving. Opening the back door.
“Outside.” Sara Henley had to shout the last word.
The wind enveloped Macayla in a cool mist as she stepped outside. The heat of the day had been sucked out of the night by the storm.
That’s when she saw it, the boat tied to the end of the pier. She spun around. “Where are we going?” Macayla planted her feet.
“Get. In. There.” With each word, Mrs. Henley prodded her in the middle with the gun muzzle.
Something came over Macayla, something dark and ugly, shrouding her thoughts in the most primitive urge to survive. She swung around and then back, grabbing the gun muzzle in both hands.
The gun went off.
She was falling.
She didn’t ever hit water.
She’d toppled over into the bottom of the boat. Her head connected with something hard.