Dark Pursuit

I’ ll show you, Malcolm. Maybe I’ ll even get a new agent.

“All right. Well, got to get back to my writing. See you, Malcolm.” Darell clicked off the line and stared at the phone in his hand.

Just three days ago he’d called?

With a loud sigh he hung up the receiver. He shifted his legs and focused on the half-empty page on his screen. An emptiness he used to love to fill. Now it mocked him. His killer was still on his feet, frozen. The psychiatrist watched from his chair.

What were they supposed to do next? Where had he been headed with this story?

What was the story?

Oh, to regain half the concentration he’d once had. A fourth. A tenth. The thought of s day after day in this mansion-turned-prison, in this office, unproductive and used up, filled him with an emptiness as deep as staring into the face of eternal hell …

Straightening, Darell dredged up his will.

He placed his fingers on the keyboard, straining to turn the gears of his mind. One more paragraph, just one. He’d give anything to finish this book. To gain back his reputation, his life. Anything.

The gears refused to move.

two

Pregnant. She was pregnant.

And her queasy stomach wouldn’t let her forget it.

Kaitlan Sering stopped her Toyota Corolla at the edge of the driveway she shared with the Jensons and reached out the open window to check her mailbox. The northern California September air was warm, sun heating her skin. She moved like some robot, her mind on her troubles. The infamous stick had turned pink just last night, and she was still trying to wrap her mind around it.

Would Craig be mad? Disappointed? They’d only been dating three months, but they were the best months of her life.

Kaitlan sifted through envelopes. Advertisements and bills. Bills she wouldn’t be able to pay if her customers kept canceling their hair appointments at the last minute. Two of them today, right in a row. One of them an expensive cut and highlight. Altogether, she was out almost two hundred dollars.

And now she needed the money more than ever.

How was she going to pay for having a baby without health insurance? How was she going to raise a child on her own?

Maybe Craig would marry her. He’d certainly shown his dedication to family. His father and sister meant the world to him.

Kaitlan tossed the small stack of mail on her passenger seat. Then—dumb, dumb—checked herself in the rearview mirror. She looked terrible. More like forty than twenty-two. Well, twenty-three next week, but the birthday wasn’t here yet. Her lips, usually curving up, were all drawn down. Dull brown eyes. Lids drooping, forehead wrinkled.

“Ugh.” She tore her eyes away.

For one crazy second she wanted to lower her head onto the steering wheel and cry. How long had it been since she’d done that?

She had no idea how to be a mother. But she wanted the baby more than anything in the world. Unlike her own mother, she would be warm and loving. Never abandon her child. Never.

Kaitlan took a shaky breath. What an overwhelming day. Sick stomach and now a throbbing head. Fact is, if her clients hadn’t canceled, she’d have been a basket case at those appointments. Three o’clock in the afternoon and all she wanted was some aspirin and a bed.

Wait, can you take aspirin when you’re pregnant?

She drove down the long driveway, past the Jensons’ large two-story house and to her renovated garage-turned-apartment at the back of their five-acre lot. The Jensons’ property lay on the outskirts of Gayner in a rural area, the closest neighbor about a half-mile away. Kaitlan loved the quiet, the woods surrounding the place.

Beat the streets of L.A. any day.

She parked in the carport and slid out of the Corolla, toting her purse and the mail. Her footsteps dragged across the hard cement toward the door leading into the kitchen.

She pulled the key from her purse and slid it into the lock.

A noise.

Kaitlan’s head came up, her hands stilling. Ears cocked, she listened. Her gaze roved beyond the carport, over the trees in the back of the lot, the large stump with raised and tangled roots.

A gray and white cat pranced into sight, proudly carrying a mouse in its jaws.

Kaitlan let out her breath. Boomer, a neighbor’s pet who wandered far and wide.

He veered in her direction.

“No! Go on, shoo!” She stomped her foot, and he ran away.

“Oh.” Kaitlan pressed a hand to her forehead. That jarring hadn’t helped at all. With a sigh, she opened the door. She stepped inside and set her purse, mail, and keys on the table.

She looked around the kitchen. Pale yellow appliances. White sink with a chip in the left corner. Brown-flecked Formica countertops. The place wasn’t fancy, but plenty big enough. Its high ceilings added to the feeling of space. Most of all, the apartment was hers.