She heard the click of the lock-at the same time she heard a plaintive meow from the far depth of the closet. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine what was happening. All too fast, though, her brain started processing the crisis.
Someone had already been inside the apartment when she got home. That someone had hit her with a hard, thin object-like a fireplace poker?-and locked her in the closet.
That someone was still in the apartment.
Okay, okay. The thing to do was not panic. Figure this out. What to do, what to do…
She sank down. The closet floor was a mess of shoes and purses. Something sharp poked her thigh. A hanger. Her back still stung, the banging pain refusing to ease, making it hard to concentrate. A cold draft seeped from the cracks; clothes brushed her face and neck, and before she could find a way to settle, Caviar leaped for her, not purring, just seeking her warm body to protect him.
She stroked the cat, knowing now why Caviar had been hiding. Minutes passed. Then more minutes.
She heard nothing from the other side of the door, but whether her assailant had left or was still there, she couldn’t know, couldn’t guess. She was afraid to make a sound, afraid not to.
It was a woman, she thought. There was a second there, where she’d felt hands, thin hands, nails. Woman’s nails. And there was a scent. Not perfume, but a familiar, woman scent, a shampoo or makeup product. Not hers. But the scent was familiar. Someone she knew used it.
Instead of reassuring her, the knowledge that the assailant could be a friend, someone she knew, seemed even more terrorizing.
Somehow, some way, the person had to be connected to Jon-why else would she be in her place, now or before? And what the assailant wanted was just as obvious. Whatever Jon had been blackmailing her for. Or whatever linked her to Jon’s murder.
It was like knowing the alphabet, yet somehow being unable to create a word. Sophie had clues but no answers. She had reasons but no means to stop herself from being prey.
Thinking slowed her heart rate, at least for a good two minutes. Maybe three. Her throat was so dry, she craved water. Her back hurt; she was cramped and chilled and miserably uncomfortable.
All that nonsense distracted her for a short stretch, too.
Slowly, though, it seeped in on her.
Panic.
Splashes from the past blurred in her mind, only the past wasn’t a haunted nightmare this time. It was an echo of what really happened. The fire. Her parents trapped, with nowhere to go, no way to save themselves.
If there were a fire, Sophie wouldn’t be able to escape. No one knew she was locked in here. No one even knew she was home this early.
She’d been to this exact same spot before-a place where panic was so big, so dark, so thick and oxygen-stealing, that there just was nothing else. Cord, she kept thinking desperately. Find me. Find me, please.
That was her last coherent thought before the fear sucked her in and took over completely.
Cord bounded up the stairs and thumped on Sophie’s door. When there was no answer, he knuckled the door again.
After a third time, he turned around in a grump and dug out the key to his brother’s place. They hadn’t arranged a specific time to get together that night, so it was pretty stupid to feel his heart clunk. He was worried, that was all. Worried about the acceleration of events; worried about the cops weeding out so many suspects, yet not enough to pin down the guilty party-or parties; worried about Sophie’s relationship with the two women on the cops’ list, Penelope and Jan; worried that no one seemed to recognize Sophie for what she was-not a villain, but an angel. Not a suspect, but an innocent, vulnerable, incredibly wonderful woman.
The woman he’d fallen in love with-in spite of Jon, in spite of Zoe, in spite of every damn thing that was crazy and going wrong right now. Cord pushed open the door to Jon’s apartment and stomped in. He dropped his jacket and aimed for the kitchen, to battle with his brother’s fancy coffeepot again.
It wouldn’t kill him to wait a while to see Soph. He just wanted her there. So he’d know she was okay. So he could tell her about seeing his father that afternoon. Almost unwillingly, he felt a smile coming back. His father was sore from the fall, but doing fine. Cord had dreaded telling him more of the bad news about Jon’s past, but out of the blue, their father-at least for the day-had forgotten Jon. So Cord told him about Sophie instead. How she looked, how she walked, who she was, what she did.
His dad, even in the brain fog that tore at Cord’s heart most days, had finally said that all this Sophie talk was getting silly. Did Cord even realize he was in love with the woman? When he was he going to bring her around? At the time…
Cord suddenly lifted his head, the coffeepot in one hand, a mug in the other. He thought he’d heard a strange sound. A muted thump.
But when he went completely still, the sound didn’t repeat. He forgot it, carted his coffee into the computer room and started switching on all the electronics. The sooner he dove into every file and floorboard in Jon’s place, the better. There was no talking about the future until this mess with his brother was resolved. Hopefully, when Sophie got here, she’d take on the books. He dreaded the accounting stuff.
He opened a desk drawer, scrounged for a scratch pad…then halted. He heard the same vague thump again. He stood up restlessly, listened again.
Nothing. Weirded out now, he unearthed his cell phone, punched in Sophie’s cell. Naturally, he only got her voice mail. If the cops hadn’t black-inked a worry about those two women friends of hers, Cord wouldn’t think anything of it. She didn’t have a time-clock sort of job. Stopping by the cleaners could have held her up. Anything could have slowed her down.
Still, he was edgy now, too antsy to concentrate. He hiked across the hall to rap on Sophie’s door again. No response. Damn cat hadn’t even shown his face. No light reflected under her door, either.
He’d barely crossed back into Jon’s apartment before hearing that faint thumping. It was real, not in his head. It was just so faint and sporadic. It made no…But it did make sense, he suddenly realized, and charged across the living room. Sophie and Jon’s apartments shared a common wall, the internal wall affecting both the living and computer rooms in Jon’s place. He thumped on his side.
Waited.
And there it was. An answering thump.
Then nothing. No further response. Nothing from the other side, no matter how hard he pounded from either the living room or computer walls. Frantic now, he realized he had no key to Sophie’s place, no way to get in. Calling the police was an obvious choice, but not fast enough. Something was wrong, he knew it. Something was really wrong.
He started toward her place again, then spun around, hustled into the kitchen to paw through his brother’s tray of spare keys. He’d forgotten. Sophie had said Jon took care of her stuff when she was gone, so her apartment key could well be in the mess of others.
He scooped up the three that looked like door keys, chased across the hall, tried the first, failed. Tried the second, got in, called, “Sophie?”
When she didn’t answer him this time, he put on steam, following the east inner wall of her place, checking the bathroom, then into the bedroom where they’d spent that extraordinarily unforgettable night…God, the memory of her wildly coming apart in his arms was sealed in his mind like a secret he’d never give up. Heart drumming hard now, he scanned the room, the wall…the closed closet door.