Without my cell phone I didn’t have his number to call and warn him. Does anyone remember phone numbers anymore?
I made good time. The pre-rush hour traffic stayed light across town. At every stop light I closed my eyes and tried to see what she saw, to listen in across the miles. Nothing. Not a good sign. The darkness was her waiting. I knew it somehow.
Half way there and something in my chest caught. I sucked in a breath against my will, like being woken from a bad dream. I saw bursts of light against the windshield. Her eyes were open. She wanted me to see. I concentrated and listened.
Blake’s voice.
“Samantha? Are you here?”
I heard suspicion there. Good. I wove through traffic, three miles to go. Distant images played, sun-bleached through my open eyes. Her walking down a hall. Her glancing down at the gun in her hand.
I let out an involuntary, “Yes!” when the street sign announced I’d moved from a 35 zone to a 45 zone.
Only half watching traffic I kept the overexposed images playing on the back of my eyeballs. Scratchy Victrola sounds of Blake’s voice came through. I wanted to scream, to warn him. To tell him to run. Why couldn’t I tap into his mind with these new found powers? What fucking good were they?
She used every technique in her arsenal. She’d been the terminator, the massacre artist, the spy games poisoner, the face to face assassin. Now the cat burglar. The silent killer sneaking in for the kill. Maybe she knew the tight wire she ran through my throat as I sat in traffic, helpless. She would enjoy that as much as pulling the trigger on Blake.
She moved with slow precision. I could tell by the way she walked she tried to be as quiet as possible. Blake’s small house offered little cover.
I passed a mini-mall. A boarded up Blockbuster Video, a smoke shop, Chinese food and a pay phone. Good God, a pay phone.
I dodged the tiny car into the lot, parked, and ran to the phone. I called the police. 9-1-1. Even I can remember that number. I told them about a home invasion and gave the address. I didn’t wait or stay on the line.
Back in the car I reconnected to the bleached images and tinny sounds. I saw the back of Blake’s head. He moved slow through the kitchen. I knew his training would be alerting him that something wasn’t right. He’d know she was in the house. Would he know it wasn’t me though?
He turned. He raised his own gun. She didn’t raise hers.
“Samantha? Jesus Christ.” He exhaled and lowered his gun.
“No!” I shouted to no one.
She ran into his arms, wrapping herself around him. I braced for a tackle to the ground, but instead felt an embrace. I felt a warm sensation around my middle. She hugged him and said how glad she was to see him.
She looked up, her face behind his, her chin resting on his shoulder. She caught her reflection in the glass of the oven. She started into her eyes, through them—into mine. She knew I was watching.
What she said—about sleeping with Blake—all part of her game. Even evil can be playful. Watch a cat toy with a mouse before biting its head off if you want proof. She wanted Blake as her plaything.
I slammed on the brakes coming an inch from the car in front of me stopped at a stop sign.
They broke their embrace and I could see Blake. Look into her eyes, I thought. It’s not me. See that it’s not me.
“What happened?” he asked.
“She went after Lucas,” she said. “Did you find him?”
“Not yet. How did she find him?”
“I don’t know. I’m so scared.”
I saw it. The spark of doubt came out in her overacting, her emoting. She overcompensated for the hardness of her heart. Blake knew something was wrong.
He studied her face, her eyes. They’re blacker, I thought. Blacker than mine. See it. Notice it!
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Hold me.”
Too much. She blew it.
I swerved back into my own lane as a horn blast broke me from the five-star movie playing in my head. Three more turns. Half a mile, maybe. Hold it together until I get there Blake.
But as with everything, if I saw it, she saw it.
Their guns raised simultaneously, hers in our periphery and his aiming at me. The blasts were buried in the wires under bales of cotton, barely making a noise when they reached my brain. The pain came hot and sharp like a bee sting.
Her vision skittered left, the image breaking and dividing into lines—TV in a windstorm. My arm sizzled under my shirt. I jerked the wheel and pressed down, expecting to come back with blood. There was none, only the ghostly pain of the shot, branding-iron hot across my forearm. I hated to think what level of pain she felt.
My view of her world went all Blair Witch Project sloppy, wavering, dipping and slightly out of focus.
For God’s sake Blake, don’t kill us. I couldn’t remember if I’d told him about the fear we had. The bloodless pain I felt from his bullet didn’t calm the uneasy sense that if she died—I died.
Now I needed to get there to save him from her and her from him. One more turn and I’d be there. Off on a side street, quiet and residential. I closed one eye, trying to get a better look.
She ducked her head out from behind a doorway, then advanced. Gun out ahead, tactical lines of a well-trained agent. Blake’s house looked so bachelor sad. She traveled quickly down a hallway as I angled the car into his driveway.
I left the car at a slant as I got out, keeping one eye on her. She stepped up to a closed door. I saw her reach out and grab the handle slowly. It began to turn. I waited for either her to burst in and shoot Blake or for a shot to ring out and Blake to get two for one with a practiced trio of shots clustered around the heart. He’d done the same to a hundred paper targets.
His front door hung open from when he rushed in. My one-eyed vision overlapped as I pushed open the front door and she pushed open the bedroom door. I paused just inside, not knowing where to find his bedroom. In that bedroom Blake turned and dropped a phone. This time the gunshot cam through much louder.
I followed the sound. No flaming arrows of pain pierced me so I knew the shot had been hers. I strained to focus on my own eyes to avoid running into walls. I reached the door to the bedroom, the smell of the last gunshot hanging in the air like a bad scented candle.
The door slammed in my face. She must have kicked it shut. I pounded, tried the knob. Locked.
“Blake! It’s not me!” I think he’d figured it out, but still.
I whipped my eyelids shut, saw what she saw. She stepped forward to a closed door. Closet or bathroom? Either way, Blake was inside. She shot twice at the knob.
“Blake, if you kill her you kill me. Do you hear me?” I pounded some more, then kept on with the crazy talk. Even while pleading for my life I knew it was crazy talk. “If she dies, I die.” I had no idea if he could hear me.
She kicked at the door and the ruined knob popped off and the door flew inward. A bath towel shot out from nowhere, wrapping around the gun in her outstretched hand and subduing the beast. Maybe he heard me, maybe he didn’t, but Blake decided to attempt disarming an assailant without using deadly force. Training week three.