Silence now. Whoever walked alone had gone some other way. Cool. She kept the phone in place, however, as she turned the corner that put her just six blocks from home. Then her hand slowly drifted down from her ear.
Someone was standing twenty yards up the street.
It wasn’t a very tall someone, but Rachel couldn’t determine much more than that because there was a streetlamp behind them.
She walked a little farther, slowing down, squinting.
The silhouette resolved into the shape of a little girl, standing neatly in the middle of the sidewalk.
“I’m lost,” the girl said.
“Where are you supposed to be?” Rachel asked.
“Somewhere else.”
“Okay, then. How…um, how come you’re out this late anyway?”
The girl ignored the question. Rachel didn’t blame her. She knew she was crap at relating to kids, with the exception of her baby sis. No children worked in her office or went to her gym. Or hung out in bars, much. So the only other shorties she encountered belonged to her older sister, who never left them alone with her but always hovered in the background, as if she suspected that Rachel might try to borrow money off her brood or try teaching them to smoke.
Nonetheless, she tried bending down, to seem more friendly. “Does your mom know where you are?”
“No.”
“Where do you live, honey?”
“I just want to be indoors. I don’t want to go home.”
Uh-oh, Rachel thought. Suddenly this was looking more complicated. A lost kid was one thing. Chance to be a good neighbor. A runaway was different. Problems at home. Weird Uncle Bob. The whole nine yards.
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s late. And cold. Be nicer to be home, don’t you think?”
The girl waited patiently for her to stop talking. “Where is your home?”
Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“Where is it?”
“It’s not far,” Rachel said. “But—”
“Take me to your home.”
“Look,” Rachel said firmly, “I’ll help you find your own house. Your folks must be flipping out. But—”
Suddenly the child flew at her.
Rachel wasn’t ready. She threw a hand out to break her fall but crashed awkwardly anyway, the momentum from the child’s attack causing her head to crack resoundingly against the concrete. The whole thing took about a second. Whiteness filled her head, as if light were splitting across the night sky.
Then she saw the bulbous shadow of the little girl’s face above hers. “Take me to your home.”
Rachel pushed herself back along the sidewalk, her wrist yelping in a bony way. “What’s wrong with you?”
The girl’s face had swum into focus. Her mouth was a thin line. “Take me to your home.”
“I’m not taking you anywhere, you fucking freak.”
The girl hesitated, kicked her in the stomach, and then ran off. Rachel caught a final glimpse of the child as she clambered quickly over a low fence into someone’s front yard, and then she disappeared.
Rachel was moving fast as soon as she was on her feet. Within a couple of blocks, she’d started shaking, as shock kicked in. She thought about calling the cops to tell them they should get the hell out here and to bring a big net, but decided she’d wait until she got home.
It started getting odd once more when she was only a couple of blocks away. At first she thought she could hear the footsteps again. This time they stopped her dead in her tracks. She heard only silence. She turned in a slow circle, expecting to see a small figure standing shadowed under a streetlamp, some distance away but not far enough.
Nobody.
She was just spooked. That was all.
She started walking even more quickly. Her ears felt like they were sticking six inches out from her head. Her shoulders felt strange, too, as if she’d banged them up a little bit. But she kept her feet moving regularly, in a marching rhythm. Click-click-click, as the heels came down again and again. She tried to keep her eyes looking straight forward. To just keep moving…
Then she snapped her head to the left.
She saw a pair of houses, almost identical, standard-issue ranch style with a little fence in between. Silent and motionless under thin moonlight. But hadn’t she seen someone slipping over the fence, way in back? Her brain wasn’t sure, but her heart was beating hard enough to sound confident. And very unhappy about it.
She hesitated. She’d turned quickly. There were five, six yards between the fence and the side of the next house. Could a little girl really have made the distance in that time? Probably it was just a cat, prowling its territory. Jumped the fence, catching her eye, melted back into darkness in time-honored feline fashion.
But…if it had been the kid, it meant she was now ahead of Rachel. She could be waiting a few houses along the street, hidden behind one of the fences.
No. It was just a cat.
And if not…what was Rachel going to do? Run Christ knows how many blocks back to the bar, ask the cool black guy to come help? Or call the cops? Right, ma’am, and how much did you have to drink tonight? Really— that much?
And besides, it was only a kid. She’d had the element of surprise. This time Rachel would just deck the little nutcase.
Nonetheless, she covered the last block and a half at a trot, keeping a close eye on each fence as she approached. Her neighborhood signaled a small drop in the size and value of the houses, and her yard was neither deep nor wide. It was obviously empty, thank God.
She ran up the path and unlocked the front door with the key already in her hand. Closed it fast behind her.
And started laughing. Jesus. What a shitty night.
She poured herself a big glass of wine right away, swallowing half of it in one gulp. So she’d lost count of the number of blocks. She had more than enough juice to make Lori’s mouth drop open. And maybe even, for once, apologize. She walked into the living room, stood aimlessly for a moment. The shock and spent adrenaline were losing their fizz and going flat. What was she thinking of doing now? Sitting in silence? Turning on the television? Lori wouldn’t be doing either of those things right now.
Rachel took another swig of wine. It refreshed the alcohol still in her system, and she felt a bit drunk. Drunk and bad-tempered. And freaked out. What was going on in the world that little girls were out in the middle of the night attacking innocent single women?
And what was going on in Rachel’s world that those last two words applied to her? She shouldn’t be walking late at night alone. She shouldn’t be standing here alone now either. It sucked.
She raised the wineglass defiantly, thinking she might just throw it back and have another—there was nobody here to judge, right?—but then she heard something.
The quiet shattering of glass.
She turned so fast that the mid range Merlot slopped out and splattered on the carpet.
The sound had come from upstairs.
She set the wineglass down quietly on the table and went quickly out to the hallway, heart beating hard. Stood with her hand on the banister, looking up. Thought again about calling the police but knew it would be too long before they got here. Thought about running out onto the street but then thought, No. This is my fucking house.
She climbed the stairs slowly, feet to either side of the treads to avoid the creaks, and got to the top without a sound. She waited a moment. No more noise. She took the two steps required to cross the hallway and pushed open the door to her bedroom.
She could immediately see that the lower pane of her bedroom window was broken, a jagged, glinting hole. Glass lay on the floor just underneath it. She looked carefully all around the room. She knew only too well that there was no space for another blouse in her closet, never mind a human being. Her bed went right down to the floor, so there couldn’t be anyone under that either.