With his arms at his side the shadow with features said, “I don’t dare touch you.”
“You got that right!” she said, realizing if she turned on the light he would cease to be.
“But I’ve…brought you something. And I need you to listen.”
“Go away,” said Alred, tears still in her eyes from her dream. But the words had no force by the time they left her throat.
The ghost stepped forward. Or was it a slide more than a gait?
Shrinking in the mattress, Alred couldn’t move.
Clink.
She looked at the oak nightstand to the right of her bed. Was something there, by the clock where nothing had been before? It looked more like a stain…a mark…of the ghost.
She could feel the apparition behind her now, close to her ear. Spinning her head around, she saw the ghost near enough to kiss.
“Just…”
She saw his mouth moving, saying words that didn’t reach the mortal world. Petrified, she listened.
“…tell…my wife…I’m…okay… She’ll know what this is for.”
Closing her eyes tight, she bit the inside of her cheek and tasted salt. She knew the voice now. She knew what the face was supposed to look like.
“I have to go,” said the spirit.
She watched the shadow, staring at her from the wall hidden in the darkness.
“Keep looking over your shoulder, Alred, ” he said, passing into nowhere, but visibly going away. “You’re in danger…and so is your friend…”
Alred awoke with an ache to speak in her throat. She let the words out in a whisper. “He’s not my friend.” Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she sat up and looked around the room.
Just another dream.
Of course. How could someone who was such a stickler for scientific process have failed to see her experience for what it was while it was happening?
She felt her quick pulse running through every part of her body.
She heard a whisper.
From the dark, the phantom lashed at her.
Alred screamed.
She caught the beast and scolded it quickly.
Just Samantha. It rubbed against her and meowed as she caressed the soft fur. “Don’t do that again.”
The cat jumped from her bed and went after the ghost that hadn’t been there.
Flopping back to her pillow, Alred moaned and closed her eyes. The lids opened to peek once at the clock, though she didn’t want to know the fiendish hour.
What she saw made her sit up.
On the nightstand, a small key waited like a child squirming to be lifted.
She leaned forward and swiped the cold metal.
Her light went on, and she traced the markings with the tip of her fingernaiclass="underline" 0417–2105.
It was difficult getting back to sleep.
Porter’s fingers felt their way through the books like blind moles climbing through underground caves. The cricket inside him wanted to chirp for help, but he knew the cats would hear him first. And they would only need a moment to strike.
He couldn’t shake the thick fog of dream from his head. Porter knew he was awake, but still saw himself as a tiny insect running from Halloween cats with sleek fur and shining fangs. After all, this couldn’t be happening!
For once he was thankful for the labyrinth of bookcases making up the fourth floor of the Stratford University Library.
The hunters were perfectly quiet.
They did slide forward like cats.
Before running deeper into the shelves, Porter saw the shadows of two of them, but he worried there might be a third man.
He thought he heard whispers as rubber soles touched down on dark vanilla-colored carpet. The silence rang like a non-stop train whistle in his ears. He heard his breath as if amplified by a microphone and a thousand dollar stereo system. Trembling hands stroked the book shelves. Wide eyes stared through the holes in the stacks, trying with no success to see the newcomers.
He’d already spotted the guns. The barrels were too long. Silencers were illegal in the state of California. These weren’t university personnel, police, or even customs officials looking for the codex.
Maybe they’d tracked down the wrong man. But there couldn’t be anyone else in the library. Porter knew he was lucky they hadn’t shot him through the window.
It needed to be cleaner.
They probably had a car outside, a van. Three other men, dressed in the same expensive black attire, waiting for the body to be brought forth, prepared to haul it to an unmarked grave…
What am I thinking?!? Porter thought. He rubbed his face and told himself he had to see clearly. Drop the dream state and reevaluate this new reality.
In his mind, he saw Wilkinson face down on the floor of his office with the letter opener in his back. He watched Albright die. He imagined Ulman chased through the tall trees in the mid-highlands of Guatemala until they’d caught him.
No. Who can they be?
There was no they. These guys had the wrong man. Perhaps there was someone else hiding in the building. They’d climbed all four floors and already checked the basement levels. They had to be sure he wasn’t hiding among the books on the last story. If Porter didn’t watch out, he’d probably bump right into the man they hunted! Porter’d be taken hostage. They wouldn’t care. Bullets would zing. He’d fall…
Porter bit his lip until he tasted salt. He had to focus, or he was a dead man. It was instinct. These men were too quiet. If they communicated at all, they made no noise of it. They were good, and he didn’t want to know how well-trained in the art of killing they were.
Rethinking their entrance, he wondered if they’d really made any sound at all.
These weren’t lowly thugs. Their black suede shoes, their leather gloves of the same color-these men didn’t fear the act of killing. They didn’t do it for the rush an amateur might feel. And there were too many of them.
Two? Three?
Yes, too many…for one miserly bookworm, professor of ancient history wanna-be.
There would be more outside. He slid to the wall and looked through the window at the parking lot.
The kill would be silent. Unless they intended to leave the body, they had to carry him to another location.
To disguise the death? To make it look like natural causes?
Porter was sweating. He wiped it away and kept moving. He knew he was thinking irrationally, and his fear mixed with anger at himself.
Albright’s body had been found.
Wilkinson hadn’t been moved.
Ulman…
Turning a corner with caution and eyes large enough to roll out of their sockets, Porter thanked himself for putting on his leather Rockports, the black soles of which were comfortable and thick. He made no sound other than the involuntary snare drum of his heart and the growing thunder of his swelling lungs.
He was running out of places to hide.
They were moving.
He had to get to the stairs or the fire door, and if they expected he was here-if they’d been watching and already knew he was hiding among the bookshelves-they would be waiting for him to sprint.
The fire door would be covered at some point by another gunman, if they were as professional as they looked. And there was at least fifteen feet of open space from the main stairway to the nearest wall of bookshelves.
He tasted sweat in the corner of his mouth. The remaining bits of flavorful pistachios turned to gray moss in his teeth.
Holding his breath, he paced from one aisle to another, covering ground in the direction of the main stairs.
He had no idea where they crept now, bent like panthers ready to strike. He knew they’d sniff the air with their ears. They’d stand still, waiting for whatever slight murmur of sound Porter made as he rolled on the balls of his feet as best he could in his dress shoes.
He tightened his hands on the handle of his heavy briefcase and felt the wetness between his fingers, his palm, and the brown leather.