"You zapped me with the destabilizer?" Jill repeated faintly.
John nodded, appearing amused by her stunned state, and then announced, "Once the project was shut down I started to watch Kyle. I saw the materials he brought into the house and realized he was rebuilding it. Some nights I even watched through one of the basement windows as he worked." He smiled with disdain. "Kyle really should have covered the windows. It was rather silly of him not to. I suppose he thought it was private enough with the high fence around the property, but anyone could climb the fence and look in… like I did."
Jill remained silent, her mind still reeling under the possibility that she'd been hit by the shape-shifter beam. She found herself suddenly doing a silent self-assessment, checking to see if she felt different. She didn't. She'd felt a little weak directly after waking up in the basement, but—Her thoughts stopped dead as she realized she'd woken up in the middle of the basement floor, nowhere near the destabilizer.
"You pulled me out from under the machine?" she asked uncertainly.
John nodded. "Once I'd estimated you'd been exposed long enough, I turned it off. You collapsed like a limp noodle." He shrugged. "I had to be sure I hadn't given you too much and accidentally killed you, but I couldn't take your pulse all crumpled under the machine as you were."
Jill stared at him with disbelief. He was standing there admitting that he hadn't been at all sure the beam wouldn't have killed her and he'd gone ahead and zapped her anyway. Why would he do such a thing?
"Now," John continued. "If you'll just come with me, we'll go to my house and I can start running tests on you."
"Tests?" she asked with surprise.
"Yes. Why else do you think I zapped you? You're going to be my guinea pig."
"Are you nuts?" Jill cried, tugging her arm free of the hard hold he suddenly had on her wrist. "Stay away from me or I'll tell my brother."
Okay, as threats went it was pretty lame, Jill thought as soon as the words left her mouth, but let it go and merely pushed past him to get to the driver's door of her car. Before she could get it unlocked, he was there, grabbing her by the arm again.
"I said you're coming with me!" he snarled, trying to pull her away.
Jill didn't think, she just reacted. Allowing her self-defense classes to kick in, she struck backward sharply with her elbow, driving it into his stomach. She then turned and drove her knee sharply into his groin. John collapsed on the street, groaning in agony, one hand clutching his stomach, the other cupping his groin.
Leaving him rolling around on the pavement, Jill unlocked the driver's door, threw her bags in, and leapt inside. She hit the button to lock the doors the moment the door closed, and then struggled briefly with her keys. Her hands were shaking and by the time she managed to turn on the engine, John was crawling to his feet beside the car.
"Hey!" He lunged for the driver's door even as she shifted into drive and hit the gas. He thumped furiously against the side window as she tore away up the street.
Eyes shifting between the street and the rearview mirror, Jill reached for her purse. She opened it one-handed, felt around until she found her phone and glanced in the rear-view mirror as she pulled it out, only to curse again as she spotted a black van rushing up the street behind her. She knew it was John.
Mouth tightening, Jill pushed her foot down harder on the gas and raised the phone in front of her eyes. She needed to call Kyle. She didn't know what else to do. Jill was afraid to call the police and bring them into the matter. She didn't know how much damage the man could do to Kyle if he blabbed about the machine in his basement. She should have just pulled into Kyle and Claire's driveway and made a run for the house. Unfortunately, the car had been pointing in the opposite direction. Also, unfortunately, she wouldn't be calling her brother for advice. She'd forgotten to recharge her phone again. The battery was dead.
Cursing, Jill tossed it aside and glanced in the rearview again. The van was gaining on her. She needed to lose the crazy idiot and either drive back to Claire and Kyle's, or find a phone. Calling seemed her safest bet. Jill didn't really want to lead trouble back to Claire and Kyle's door. She didn't know just how crazy John Heathcliffe was or what he'd do.
Where to call from was the problem. Jill suspected her house would be high on John Heathcliffe's list of places to look. Even if he didn't already know where she lived, all he had to do was look in a phone book to find her address.
He might overlook her shop though, she thought. In fact, he might not even know about it. He'd said he'd been watching her brother's house, not that he'd been following her around. Her store might be a safe place to go to call Kyle.
Mouth thinning with determination, Jill tightened her hold on the steering wheel and increased her speed. She then suddenly spun the wheel, taking a sharp and abrupt right that almost saw her car on two wheels. Managing to maintain control, she shot up the street, watching the rear-view mirror as much as the road ahead.
"Yes," she breathed with relief when she saw the van shoot past the end of the street, wheels squealing as he tried to bring the vehicle to a halt to follow her. Jill was already turning left down another street by the time he managed to bring his car around.
Jill lost sight of him as soon as she turned the corner and her attention was again divided between the rearview mirror and the road ahead, grateful it wasn't a busy area. The last thing she needed was to hit someone in her efforts to escape her pursuer.
When there was still no sign of the van behind her before she turned up the next street, Jill felt her shoulders relax the smallest bit. But she continued to drive a little faster than she should and continued to take turns right and left and right again to be sure she'd lost the man before heading for her store.
Due to the parade, the streets around her store were all blocked off. The closest Jill could park was in the lot at the end of the road from where the parade was to launch. It was blocked to the public today, open only for parade participants to park. There were several tents set up at one end for everyone to don costumes and do their makeup.
Jill bit her lip as she gazed over the floats and costumed people milling about as she parked her car. If she hurried to the store, called Kyle, and then changed into her costume, there was really no reason she couldn't come back and be a part of the parade as planned. Surely Kyle could handle John, she reasoned. It wasn't like there was anything she could do. Besides, she'd committed herself to the parade and had her costume in her knapsack. She could hardly just leave them without a Mrs. Claus. But she had to make that call first, Jill decided as she got out of the car.
Slipping past the tents without running across anyone she knew, Jill hurried up the street to her store. She unlocked the door, slid inside and headed straight for the phone.
A curse slipped from her lips when her call was answered by the answering machine. She listened to her brother's recorded voice, frowning as she tried to sort out where Kyle and Claire could be. Kyle had mentioned going to the hardware store, but surely Claire was still there feeding Beth?
Her gaze slid to the clock on the wall and she frowned as she realized that while the store was only fifteen minutes from Claire and Kyle's house, she'd wasted almost half an hour making sure she'd lost her pursuer. Claire could very well have finished feeding Beth and headed out for some last-minute Christmas shopping.