What was worse than an intruder who had you trapped in the bathroom? Two intruders.
She heard them whispering. They were plotting together, and it wouldn’t take them long to determine that she was going out a window. She had to move fast.
She threw the oversize towel with an orange-and-yellow sun out the window, and then she followed, slipping through the bathroom window and down the bricks to the slanted roof over the front porch. The angle wasn’t steep, but her footing felt precarious. As she wrapped the sunny-colored towel around her shoulders, she realized that she’d brought the hairbrush with her. A weapon?
The bedroom window to her right lifted. The head and shoulders of a man wearing a black ski mask emerged. He was coming for her. The synapses in her brain fired like a pinball machine. She screamed.
His buddy might already be downstairs on the porch, waiting for her to drop into his lap. She glanced up at the narrow bathroom window. No way could she climb back in there.
He spoke in his whispery voice through the mask, “Be careful, Doctor. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“How do you know I’m a doctor?”
“I’d be happy to explain.”
He held out his arm, beckoning her toward him. In the moonlight, she saw what he held in his hand. “You’ve got a stun gun.”
He didn’t bother with a denial. “I don’t want to use it.”
He sure did. His plan was to zap her into a state of helplessness and carry her away. Anger cut through her fear. Using all her strength, she pulled back her arm and fired her hairbrush at him.
She was surprised that she actually hit him. And so was he. The intruder dropped his stun gun.
In the moonlight, she could barely see the outline of his weapon against the dark gray shingles. She scampered forward, grabbed the gun and brandished it. “Don’t come near me.”
He swung his leg over the windowsill.
She went to the edge of the roof. Climbing over the gutter attached to the eaves looked more difficult than she had anticipated. “Help, somebody help me!”
Brian had been on his back porch only a moment ago. She continued to yell. Where was the barking dog when you needed him? “Please help me!”
Her shouts had an effect on the intruder. Instead of climbing out the window, he pulled back inside. Taking advantage of his retreat, she crept across the roof until she was right above Brian’s porch, screeching like an emergency-alert siren.
His front door opened. Dumbfounded, Brian squinted up at her. In his left hand, he held his cell phone. From inside his house, Cocoa was barking.
“Nine-one-one,” she yelled.
“Your house is dark,” he yelled back.
“I have an intruder.”
“A burglar?”
Now was not the time for a discussion. “Call the police. Please, please, call.”
He gave her the thumbs-up signal and made the call while she perched above the eaves with her knees pulled up. Her long hair fell forward and curtained her face. Though she could have climbed back into one of the windows without too much difficulty, Jayne didn’t trust herself to move another inch, not even to grab the towel she’d dropped. Her throat tightened as she gasped for breath. Adrenaline flooded her system.
In her subconscious mind, she must have known something was coming. Tick-tick-tick. But she never expected this. Shivering and sweating at the same time, she held her left hand in front of her eyes. Her fingers trembled. A sob exploded through her pinched lips.
Suffice it to say, she would not be getting a restful sleep tonight.
* * *
AN HOUR AND ten minutes later, Jayne was still scared. Her hands had stopped trembling enough to type, but her nerves were still strung tight. Wrapped in Brian’s green velour bathrobe that smelled like pizza, she sat at the desk in his home office with Cocoa at her side. His house was smaller than hers, only one story, but he worked from home three days a week. The intruders should have come here. Brian’s computer equipment was worth more than anything she had at her house.
From the front room and kitchen, she could hear people coming and going, voices rising and falling. It was time for her to rejoin them, but she wasn’t ready. All she really wanted was to hide until the danger had passed.
She’d behaved badly when the police officers first arrived to rescue her from the roof. She and Cocoa had both been problematic. The chocolate Lab had been barking and baring his teeth, which seemed like threatening behavior but was, more likely, an adrenal fear response. The dog was scared of all these strangers. Jayne’s issues weren’t that different.
Frightened, she hadn’t known who to trust and didn’t like taking orders from anybody. Not the police. Not the paramedic who wanted her to get into an ambulance. She was disoriented. Her neat-and-tidy world had gone spinning madly out of control, and she was so damn scared that she could hardly move.
In Brian’s kitchen, a uniformed officer had pulled out a small spiral notebook and started asking questions. Jayne snapped. “Why should I give you a statement? I’ll just have to repeat myself when the detective in charge of the investigation arrives.”
“Calm down.” The officer—a thickset woman with short blond hair—gestured to a chair at the kitchen table. “Have a seat, Ms. Shackleford. May I call you Jayne?”
“It’s Dr. Shackleford,” she said through tight lips.
“Any relation to Peter Shackleford?”
“My father.”
The officer literally took a step backward. When hearing the name, a lot of people kowtowed. Although her father hadn’t lived in Denver for ten years, he’d left an impressive legacy including a twenty-seven-story office building downtown and a small airport, both named after the man the newspapers called “Peter the Great.”
Jayne hated using her parentage for leverage. She’d left home when she was really young to attend college and hadn’t moved back to Colorado until her father was settled in Dallas. Trying not to sound like a brat, she confronted the policewoman.
“Here’s what I’d like to do,” Jayne had said. “I’d like to take some time alone to calm my nerves and to use my neighbor’s computer to type up every detail I remember.”
“That’s not usually how we do things.”
“I have a rational basis for my suggestion.” She had explained that much of her work in neurosurgery focused on memory. According to some theories, it was best to write things down while adrenaline levels were high. She had colleagues who would disagree, and her words were taking on the tone of a lecture. “Without the sharp focus engendered by panic, the brain may sort details and bury those that are too terrifying to recall.”
The policewoman had patted Jayne’s shoulder. “Tell you what, Doc. You can take all the time you need.”
Hiding out in Brian’s office had given her a chance to catch her breath. She’d finished her statement for the police, printed it and sent a copy to her email. She should have emerged, but fear held her back. The tech-savvy intruders had chosen her house for a reason. She had no idea why, but she felt the pressure of danger coiling around her.
Cocoa rested his chin on her thigh and looked up at her. He truly was a handsome animal. She gazed into his gentle, empathetic brown eyes. He’d tried to warn her.
“I misjudged you,” she murmured as she stroked the silky fur on the top of his head. “I thought you were a pest with all that running around and barking.”
Not a good sign...she was talking to