Carol Ericson - Circumstantial Memories

Ryder clicked his phone shut, the blood roaring in his ears. His gaze swept back and forth across the room. He hadn’t seen Julia for the past ten minutes.

“Something wrong, Ryder?” Gracie’s beady eyes studied his face.

“Have you seen Julia?”

“Not lately. Why?”

He dropped to his knees in front of Shelby and dabbed a drop of ice cream from her nose. “Where’s Mommy?”

She hunched her shoulders. “She told me to stay with Gamma Pam, but you had pie.”

Shoving up from the floor, he put his hand on Shelby ’s back.

“Let’s go back to…Gamma Pam.”

He tapped his stepmother on the shoulder and she swung around.

“There you are and with another piece of pie. I can see your daddy’s going to be a pushover…”

“Pam,” he interrupted her. “Have you seen Julia?”

“Not since she dropped Shelby off with me and asked me to watch her.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear her above this noise, especially with that music blaring outside.”

“Watch Shelby again and this time keep her with you.” He pushed through the crowd and stumbled out to the patio in the back.

A younger group mingled out here, drinking beer and listening to hip-hop. He spied Rafe, sitting on the deck’s railing, with his legs hooked around the new waitress from the Main Street Café.

“Have you seen Julia?”

Rafe’s ready grin faded. “About ten minutes ago. What’s wrong?”

“Where’d you see her?”

“She was eating at the table and then she went outside.”

“Outside the front door?” Ryder could barely squeeze the words past his tight throat.

“Yeah. She left about ten minutes ago.” Rafe repeated, “What’s wrong?”

But Ryder was already charging through the house toward the front door. He slammed it behind him and ran down the drive. “Julia?”

A few guests had driven their cars up the drive and parked in the circular driveway that fronted the house, but usually people parked on the street. He didn’t see Julia’s car, and she arrived too late to get a spot close to the house. Maybe she just went back to her car outside the gate.

Ryder rounded the last bend of the drive and froze. Complete darkness shrouded the end of the driveway at the gates where floodlights usually illuminated the entryway. He shouted, “Julia?”

He charged into the black night, adrenaline coursing through his body, all his instincts on high alert. He sensed the struggle in the row of cars to his right before he saw or heard anything.

Then a sob and a hiss disturbed the silence. Didn’t sound like two lovers. He spun around to confront the sounds. The strident blare of a car alarm pierced the night. In the flashing headlights, two figures peeled apart and one dark form plunged away from the car and shot across the road.

A woman screamed, almost drowning out the car alarm. Julia! The headlights outlined Julia, staggering to her feet.

He rushed to her side and she collapsed against his chest, sobbing. “H-he tried…”

“Shh. You’re safe now.” Hadn’t he just told her that two nights ago? “I suppose you didn’t get a good look at him?”

Releasing a shuddering breath, she whispered, “He had a ski mask on. I felt it on his face as we struggled.” She squirmed out of his arms and pointed across the road. “He took off that way. You have to catch him.”

“I’m not leaving you alone.” He smoothed his hands down her trembling back.

“Then stay here. I’ll go after him.” Rafe stepped from the shadows, his gun drawn.

Julia gestured toward the dense bushes. “He ran in there.”

“You’ll never find anything in this darkness and by the time I run back to the house to get a flashlight, he’ll be long gone.”

“I have this.” Rafe dangled his keychain, which had a small flashlight attached to it. “He’s probably long gone already, but if he dropped something or snagged something on a twig maybe I’ll find it before he has time to come back and retrieve it.”

As Rafe crossed the street and crashed through the foliage, Ryder pulled Julia back into his arms. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

“No.” She shivered, and he rubbed her bare arms. “He tried to kidnap me, Ryder. If he’d had a weapon, a knife or even a rope, he could’ve killed me. Instead, he tried to abduct me. When you arrived, he was fumbling for something in his pocket. I smelled alcohol or ether.”

His chest tightened. God, he almost lost her. Again.

She stifled a sob. “He was going to knock me out. When I heard your voice, I kicked out my legs at that car’s bumper, which set off the alarm. If you hadn’t come along…”

“But I did.” He rested his chin on top of her head and stroked her hair. “When I couldn’t find you at the house, I panicked.”

She lifted her head. “Why? We both thought Dr. Brody was the stalker and he’s dead.”

“While I was at the party, Sheriff Ballard called with the autopsy report. He told me Brody’s car went off the cliff the night before the attack on you. Brody couldn’t have been responsible for that.”

“But you found the card case with his cards.”

“Did Brody ever visit you here?”

“We had a couple of sessions at my house, and I took him on a hike once up to The Twirling Ballerinas, but that was over a year ago. The case you showed me hadn’t been lying in the dirt, exposed to the elements for a year.”

“Someone planted the case to set him up.” He massaged Julia’s knotted shoulders. Keeping her talking seemed to calm her down. Better to concentrate on logic right now than emotion.

“Where would someone get a hold of Dr. Brody’s cards?”

“A patient.” Why didn’t he think of that before? “Did you ever talk to any of Brody’s other patients? Does he work with any seriously disturbed people?”

She shook her head. “I usually left his office before the next patient showed up, and Dr. Brody never discussed his patients with me.”

“His behavior was hardly ethical. It wouldn’t surprise me.” Ryder choked back the rest of his words. Julia didn’t need him to remind her that she’d trusted the wrong guy…again.

He lifted a shoulder. “Whoever planted the case did it to lull us into a false sense of security. You never would’ve come out here on your own if you thought your stalker was still at large. Why did you come out here?”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “My cell phone. I got a text message from Zack telling me to meet him out here for information about Brody.”

Ryder snapped his fingers. “That message can be traced, but first I’m taking you back to the party.”

“Wait.” She pulled back from him and dug her feet into the ground. “I don’t want you to charge into the party and make some big announcement about this. We’ll tell Sheriff Ballard but no one else.”

“What if somebody saw this guy or something unusual before the party started?”

“Ballard can question them later. This is a small town. It’s all going to come out anyway, but I don’t want to slink back into that party with victim written all over me. I’m done with that role.”

Someone darted across the road. Julia jumped and Ryder shoved her behind his body.

A small light played across the ground and Rafe shouted, “It’s me.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Too damn dark. I’ll do a search tomorrow morning.” Rafe shook some leaves and twigs from his hair. “Can you describe anything about this guy, Julia? Height? Build? Smell? Did he say anything to you?”

“Let’s take this conversation into the light.” Putting his hand on Julia’s back, Ryder propelled her back up the drive under the lights.