P. Alderman - A Killing Tide

He needed to know she was all right.

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Kaz awoke with a jolt. Even before she was even fully alert, she was reaching for the baseball bat she'd put next to her bed an hour ago. What had awakened her? She lay still and listened, her heart pounding.

There. A rustle, a floorboard creaking—the one in the living room that they'd never been able to fix.

Someone was in the house.

She slipped out of bed and pulled on her sweats, trying to make as little noise as possible. Then she picked up the bat and crept into the hallway. The moon had come out, its bright light streaming in the window high over the stairs.

She crept forward. At the top of the stairs, she stopped to listen again. The sounds were louder now—intermittent thumps, then the slight screech of a piece of furniture as it was shoved across the hardwood floor. Whoever it was, they were opening drawers, pulling books off the built-in shelves…the shelves that her grandfather had built. The shelves that she and Gary had sanded and varnished last week—one of the few projects that she and Gary had worked on together, in harmony, since she'd come back. The bastard had better not be putting any scratches on those shelves.

She gripped the bat tightly and started down the stairs. He'd be able to see her in the moonlight, but who cared? He'd come into their house, was going through their belongings.

Halfway down the stairs, she paused on the triangular landing where the stairway took a ninety-degree turn. The front door was standing wide open. On top of everything else, the jerk was running up her heating bill.

"Hey!" she yelled.

~~~~

Chapter 13

The intruder exploded out of the living room, running for the front door. Kaz leaped, clearing the last several steps and landing on the area rug in the entry. She swung the bat at his midsection, but her aim was off. It glanced off his shoulder and hit the wall. Plaster rained down.

The intruder rounded on her. A black ski mask covered his face, and he was huge—outweighing her by as much as seventy-five pounds.

She swung the bat again, but he stepped inside the arc and used both hands to shove her, hard. She went flying backwards.

The stair railing broke her fall, but the weight of the bat overbalanced her. She crashed down hard on the risers, her hands flying up to keep the bat from falling in her face. Pain lanced through her, stealing her breath.

Scrambling to her feet, she retrieved the bat, but he was gone—out the door and off the front porch in a single leap. By the time she ran down the porch steps, he'd vanished.

She came to a halt on the front sidewalk, swearing and gulping in the cool night air. Then she made a quick trip around the house, her bare feet turning numb from contact with the cold, damp ground.

He was gone.

Back on the front sidewalk, she searched up and down the street, hopping from one foot to the other. Then she saw him, slouched against the pole of a burned-out streetlight on the opposite side of the street, smoking a cigarette.

She stalked across the pavement, barely feeling the odd bit of gravel digging into the souls of her feet, the bat tightly clenched in both hands. But as she neared, she realized he wasn't who she'd expected.

"Careful with that thing," Chuck said as she reached him. If he thought her state of undress was odd, he didn't comment.

Glancing beyond him, she searched the alley between two of her neighbors' houses. Empty. She lowered the bat. Her hair hung in disheveled ropes over her eyes, making it hard to see. She shoved it back with an impatient hand. "Why didn't you stop him?" she asked.

"Stop who?"

"The man who came running out my front door. Black clothes, ski mask?"

Chuck's gaze sharpened, his expression becoming less remote. "Someone was in your house just now?"

"I woke up, he was in the house, and I chased him out." She glared at him. "I can't believe you didn't see anything. What good is all that Super Spy training if you don't even notice a bad guy right under your nose?"

"I just got here," he replied. Grasping her elbow, he half-dragged her back across the street to her own front yard. She had to jog to keep up. "Stay here while I check things out."

"I've already done that…" her voice trailed off as he disappeared around the corner of the house.

He was back in less time than it took for her to complete a few yoga deep-breathing exercises. "No one there."

"I could've told you that." A suspicion formed in her mind. "What are you doing here?"

"Figured I'd keep an eye out, in case there was any trouble."

"Gee, now why would you think there'd be trouble?"

"There's trouble just about everywhere these days. Read the paper."

She narrowed her eyes. "I could do without any of your cryptic remarks right now."

He glanced down at the bat and raised one eyebrow. "Going after him with that was stupid—he could've had a gun."

"Funny, but I didn't seem to have a gun handy—Gary has it with him."

Chuck didn't even blink. "Can you call Lucy, get her over here to stay with you?"

"I'm doing just fine by myself." Kaz folded her arms. "And you still haven't answered my question about what you were doing here. For all I know, you're the person I chased." Although, she admitted silently, he would've had to pull off the world's fastest change of clothes.

Chuck shook his head.

"Your timing is awfully coincidental."

"Leave it alone."

"Where's Gary?"

At the sound of an approaching car, he whipped his head around. "Cavalry," he said, then melted into the night.

Kaz muttered several choice words and then turned toward the vehicle that pulled up at her curb. Michael Chapman. Her heart rate sped back up. Just great.

Chapman got out of his car, walked around to the passenger side, and unbuckled the seat belt around Zeke. They both strolled over to where she stood, their pace unhurried. Chapman's sharp gaze took in the baseball bat, the sweats she'd pulled on with Gary's Seahawks jersey, her bare feet. She could only imagine the impression she made. "Interesting getup for a late-night stroll."

"I had an intruder, and I took care of him." Her tone was short. "What are you doing here this late at night?"

"Checking up on you, which appears to have been a good idea." He frowned. "You used a baseball bat? That was stupid."

Kaz's temper slipped another notch. "Contrary to what people seem to think about us Jorgensens, we don't go around with guns strapped to our bodies or hidden under our pillows. And I haven't spent a lot of time in my life contemplating how I'll handle midnight intruders. This used to be a safe town."

He closed the distance between them and grasped her chin, turning her face so that he could see it better. Something cold flashed in his eyes. "Is that your only injury?"

Kaz edged away, unnerved by the effect of his touch. She raised a hand to her head. As if on cue, a lump at her temple started throbbing. "I fell on the stairs when he pushed me. I'll have a few bruises, but nothing serious."

He rocked back on his heels, shoving his hands in his pockets, almost as if he didn't trust himself not to touch her again. "What was he after?"

"How the hell should I know?" She stomped up the front porch steps and through the open door, leaving them to follow. "The break-in probably has to do with the weird phone calls I got today." She started stuffing books back onto the shelves. "Hang-ups."

"Christ." Chapman dumped a pile of paperback thrillers on the shelf and turned to face her, his face grim. "You know they were checking to see if the house was empty."

"Well, it wasn't." She went into the kitchen and filled the teakettle with water, then located some herbal tea bags. He followed her in, and she could feel his pale eyes on her, probably assessing how hysterical she might be. Okay, maybe she was acting a little over the top, but it had been an extremely stressful twenty-four hours.