He turned to look over his shoulder, typical. She remembered thinking that was odd about him, always looking behind himself like that, careful to see if anyone was following him, looking at him, looking for him. She thought it was odd until he committed a crime, then she got it.
Before she could study the face more closely, she turned her face away, looking down, her brown hair making a canopy over her profile, concealing her. She waited a few long seconds. She slowly turned, peeking through the strands of her hair.
Gone.
She had to wait a bit before she could dare follow. Maybe it was him. Just in case it was him, he must not see her. He would come right to her, smiling as though they were friends, long-lost friends. He would talk fast, smile broadly, maneuver her away from help or escape, mesmerize her and manipulate her, try to make her think he’s okay, not just okay but good for her. By the time she got to the exit doors, there was no sign of them. She watched the parking lot from inside the glass doors. She didn’t recognize any people or vehicles.
“Maybe I’ve just lost my mind,” she said to herself.
That’s when she realized she’d dropped her packages somewhere. They were gone. She went back the way she’d come—no sign of them. A mall security guard directed her to the lost and found. There were no packages turned in, of course, but they took her name and cell number.
She decided to leave. She sat in the pumpkin for a while, devastated over the loss of a book, a pair of shorts and a onesie. Her throat burned.
Or maybe it was over almost seeing the most dangerous man she’d ever known...
* * *
It was the first thaw of spring in Michigan. It was fifty-five degrees that afternoon and she went to her favorite pub to enjoy drinks on the patio with her peeps. The new guy picked her out immediately and they were together all evening. He was so handsome, all the girls were interested, but he chose her. She wouldn’t let him come home with her but she did give him her number and she was pathetically thrilled when he called her the very next morning. He showed up at her office building where she worked in accounting for an independent insurance carrier. Her boss was annoyed but then her boss, a middle-aged woman with a stick up her butt, was never happy anyway. Derek wanted to know if he could take her to lunch. Of course he could!
It was much later that she wondered how he had found her. Picked her out like that. Had she told him where she worked? She must have. How else could he have found her? She brushed off the curiosity because who knew what she’d tell someone when she’d been a little lit up with mojitos. Mojitos, a spring drink.
He met her after work. He got sulky when she wouldn’t let him spend the night so she tried to make it up to him by being extra sweet and it worked—he went back into Prince Charming mode. Called and texted all the time.
He was fascinating—he dropped out of law school to enlist. Since one of her brothers was a lawyer and the other a captain in the Army, they had something to talk about. He told her how he went to Afghanistan and ended up being trained in special ops as an undercover officer. When he got out of the military, he worked under civilian contract as a...well...the civilian version of a spy, flying all over the world for special projects with a team of specialists. He had grown up in an interesting family—his father was a race car driver. Not one of the famous ones, but he’d made a good living and the family followed races all over. His mother sang backup in a country band—a pretty famous one. His grandfather, a chemist, actually invented the pregnancy test. He had trained malamutes for a while—bomb-sniffing malamutes.
At first she teased him about being Forrest Gump. Then she began to wonder how a guy barely thirty-five had time to accomplish all that. Then she stopped believing him. But it seemed like the other people in her crowd ate it up.
From that first night, he was never far away. He called, he dropped by her office, he took her to lunch, he took her out in the evening. It wasn’t long before he got into her panties and...it was awful. He had trouble getting and maintaining an erection and he grew angrier and angrier until she told him to leave. He refused and they fought until, miraculously, it rose. Then he was on a mission—he wanted to do it every which way. He wasn’t ejaculating. It wasn’t until she began to say enough is enough and pushed at him that he finally had success.
Then he wouldn’t leave. He left her to lie there beside him, wondering what the hell had happened. In the morning she kicked him out so she could get ready for work and decided she wasn’t going to be seeing him again.
Of course he pursued her immediately, so she told him over the phone. She wasn’t interested in a relationship, especially one that included fighting. He twisted that to make it sound like a guy had a little trouble and wasn’t a stud on their first night together and that was it? “No,” she insisted. “I don’t want a relationship right now, especially one with fighting.” She wanted space; no more surprise visits, no more calls, no more texting. She wanted him to move on. She stopped answering calls and texts but he was waiting in parking lots and outside work and he was everywhere. She told some of her friends he wouldn’t leave her alone, so he stood back six feet, put his palms up, smiled eerily and didn’t exactly do anything, but he was creepy and frightening. He always knew where she was. She’d make plans to go to a different bar or club and guess who would show up? She’d walk around a corner and he was there. A few times she actually bumped into him, splat!
One of her friends said she’d had a creep like that once and you had to be firm and direct. She was as clear as she could be when she said, “Go away and leave me alone! I don’t want to date you or anything!”
So he worked the crowd she hung out with, she was always aware of him and she started needing an escort home. She went to the police to talk to someone about him. He was stalking her; she feared he meant her harm.
He didn’t have a record. “Stay out of bars,” the officer told her.
She asked if she could have a restraining order.
“Has he done anything?” the officer asked.
“Besides bother me constantly, watch me, follow me, creep me out? Does he have to do something to hurt me?”
“Yes, or at least threaten you,” the officer said. “Ignore him. Call the police if he does anything harmful or threatening.”
He began to ingratiate himself to other people in the bars, making them laugh, doing favors, buying drinks, giving them things—he had everything, money, drugs, whatever. People thought he was a little strange but harmless.
She didn’t know why he wanted her. She thought maybe he only wanted to hurt her. If she didn’t go to her usual haunts, he would still find her wherever she went, try to talk to her, ask her if she wanted a ride, could he take her out for a decent dinner. “I’m a little concerned about you, Sierra,” he said. “You’re living dangerously.”
That’s when she became stupider. When she should have stayed away from alcohol to remain vigilant and safe, for some reason she just drank more. But she tried to stay around people. She had a roommate, Bobbie Jo, but they weren’t really friends, just two women who needed a roommate to share costs. They got along fine, though Bobbie Jo wasn’t around much, off doing her own thing. She had a boyfriend and they were either in bed together or out or at his place.
One night she had a little too much to drink. Not exactly a red-letter day—that happened to her now and then. That night she wasn’t sure what had done it—it seemed like it had only been a glass or maybe a glass and a half of wine but man, she was having trouble staying on her feet. Next thing she knew, she was in the car, her car, a six-year-old Honda sedan. And she was dizzy and felt sick. Her head was spinning, her stomach flipping, her vision blurred.
And the car was moving. She struggled to focus, to see what was happening and, oh God, it was him! Driving her car. Derek was laughing and talking to her and telling her they were going to have some fun. He was speeding, she thought. She didn’t know why they were in her car. He was turning to look at her while he was driving, saying things that made no sense, like “It’s your turn now,” and “Let’s see if you can get out of this one.”
She couldn’t understand what was happening. There was a thump and the car skidded to a stop. He got out of the car, got back in and just started driving again. She knew something bad had happened. “You hit something. Did you hit something?” she asked. And he laughed and said, “No, you hit something. Someone. But don’t worry—he won’t last long.”
She started to scream. His hand came out and struck her in the face so hard her neck snapped and everything went black. She was just coming to again when he pulled her car into the small detached garage beside the sixty-year-old two-bedroom house she shared with Bobbie Jo. And when she struggled against her seat belt she saw that her roommate’s car was gone...and Derek was pulling down the garage door. She was trapped. With a madman.
“You’ll never forget me now,” he said.
* * *
She couldn’t keep doing this.
Most of the way back to Timberlake, she tried out Moody’s prayer, promising to pedal if God would steer. Seeping through the murky mess of her brain, through the fear and paranoia, she found herself driving toward Cal. It was approaching dinnertime and she realized Maggie was in Denver. She made a deal with herself—if Cal wasn’t home or if there were people around, she would take that as a sign that she shouldn’t talk to him about this.
But if he was alone, she would tell him now. She had run from Michigan to get away from Derek, she had run from Iowa when she thought she saw him near where she was living. Where was she going to run next if that really was him in Colorado Springs? She had to find a better plan. She had to tell someone.
She pulled up to the barn and saw that only Cal’s truck was parked outside. The front door of the barn stood open and she could hear the Shop-Vac at work. She sat in the pumpkin for a little while, contemplating. If it was Derek Cox in Colorado Springs, she was at risk and would need help. If there was anything she’d learned in the last ten months it was that it was dangerous to try to handle serious problems alone. There was no one she trusted more than Cal.