She considered not answering the phone or just turning it off, but Ben knew it wouldn’t work. If she didn’t answer, rocks started coming through her window, or worse. Ben didn’t think she could handle worse again. The door was locked and had the chair in front of it. Her bedroom was also bolted shut. The windows were locked, and all the shades were drawn. Her world was as small and protected as Ben could make it. All but the phone. The new number didn’t matter, and the fact that it was unlisted seemed like no deterrent at all against her stalker.
The phone rang again. Ben tasted blood on her lip and realized she’d bitten through the skin on her thumb. She wiped her abused nail with a tissue and lifted the receiver to her ear.
“Leave me alone, please, leave me alone.” She was begging. She needed peace and if begging was what her stalker wanted, she’d push aside her pride and do it. “I’d give you money if I had any. Please, just tell me what I can do to get this to stop.”
“I don’t want your money, Bennie. Don gave me plenty.” The voice. It wasn’t often that the woman actually spoke, but every time it gave Ben chills. There was something wrong with the woman. Something evil.
“Then what? Please. I want this over.”
“Oh. I don’t know, Bennie, there’s so much.” She laughed, a nearly sweet giggle that made her sound like she was flirting, and Ben cringed. Between the front door lock and the bolt on her bedroom door only feet away, she was safe. She knew that, but the knowledge didn’t stop her from shaking.
“What do you want from me?” she demanded again, checking the windows.
“I watched you at the funeral, and you cried and I liked that. I want you to cry while I watch. I want to taste your tears.”
“I’ve cried,” Ben confessed, the tears threatening again as helplessness filled her. “All the time.”
“Good, then you’re doing something right,” the stalker replied, the bubbling flirt so strong in her twisted words Ben felt dirty just listening. “Don’t worry, by the time I’m done with you those itty bitty tears will be the least of your worries. You just wait and see.”
The line went dead again, but Ben didn’t let go of the receiver for a long moment. She stared at the phone and at her bedroom door, straining to hear if there was movement in the rest of her apartment. She was going crazy.
But this time she wasn’t running. She had nowhere to run. She set her phone beside the cradle and pulled her cellphone from her nightstand. It was a pay-by-the-minute plan and wickedly expensive, but in Chicago the police had used her hanging up the phone as a reason not to pursue the threatening phone calls.
Ben turned on her cellphone. She’d made enough mistakes to know if she started making them again she’d be dead. As much as she didn’t want to bring anyone into her problems, she couldn’t handle them herself. Praying for patience and for the help she so desperately needed, she dialed nine-one-one.
* * * *
Ben didn’t know how she was going to stay awake. Her normally uncomfortable stool at her desk was worse than usual, but that still didn’t keep her eyes from drooping.
After calling the sheriff, she’d agreed to go down to the station to give the full details while an officer looked over her apartment. She’d gone over all the sordid details of her past with the sheriff and one of his deputies. The ugliness was all Don’s and, unlike in Chicago, the Flathead Falls police left the blame on him and let her be the victim.
In Chicago, superficial attempts had been made to catch Don’s killer, but in the police’s eyes, Victoria had done them a favor in gunning Don down. Ben shivered when she remembered one of the detectives telling her that word for word. They had never, and would never, waste manpower to chase down a woman who had done a public service.
Asleep on her feet, Ben finished her attendance papers and locked her classroom door at four o’clock. The sheriff had advised against walking alone after dark, but since it was still early fall, she had a few more weeks until she really needed to use her car. Ben waved to a deputy as he made a drive past her apartment complex just like the sheriff promised.
Hope filled her for the first time in months.
She was about to stop at home when she remembered her aunt had asked her to drop by the nursing home and say ‘hi’ to one of her old friends.
Ben never minded doing her aunt’s bidding, especially if it meant Whilemina Riggs would stay out of her everyday life a little longer. She smiled as she turned toward the nursing home. The good thing about small towns was the distance between places, and of course, the fact that her aunt had sworn never to live in one again.
She loved her aunt, she really did, but the elder Riggs was a pill and a half. Ben turned onto the path leading to the nursing home. She’d visited often with church groups throughout the years and mentally added it to places to escape to when the evenings in her little apartment got too long.
A honk came from behind her. She froze, but after she turned and saw who it was, she smiled. Deputy Teddy Williams, the one who answered her call the night before, had kept an eye on her. He waved as he passed. The hope that had started to bubble became something more and she felt safe. It was so foreign it made her feel a little giddy.
She walked to the front desk and smiled when the receptionist gave her a puzzled look. Ben toned down the wattage on her smile when the other woman showed no signs of warming up.
“Hi, I’m here to see Mable Hampton.”
“You must be Ben.” A nurse from behind the desk shuffled paperwork before she finally looked up. “Mable is already sleeping for the night. She had a tough day.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Ben replied.
“But I’ll let your aunt know you did indeed come by,” the nurse said with a smirk.
“She’s called?”
“Four times,” she answered, and Ben enjoyed the bit of camaraderie that she wasn’t the only one her aunt drove crazy. “I’ll let her know you stopped by, and if you would like to see Mable, and she’s a dear so you’ll both enjoy it, Thursdays are usually better.”
Ben swung her tote higher on her back and nodded. “Okay, I’ll try back on Thursday. Thanks.”
She had time she didn’t know what she was going to do with, but suddenly that didn’t seem like such a bad thing. With a lighter heart she headed back into the heat. The building was surrounded by gardens with paths, so she picked one and strolled through the flowers. If she came across one of the residents, well maybe she could visit with them for a while. Otherwise it was just nice to be in the quiet, surrounded by pretty things.
When she came to a fork in the path, she took a long moment to decide her next direction. Finally, she took a side path and was thrilled when it narrowed slightly and ended at a fountain. Unfortunately, the sweet trickling of water didn’t meet her ears as it should have. She stopped short when a denim-covered butt under one of the electrical panels caught her eye. It was a little naughty, but as she quietly ogled, she couldn’t help but think it was familiar.
The left pocket was torn, allowing a bit of white from beneath to show. The shoes were nondescript, but very white. So familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on who it was until she saw the baseball cap lying beside him with a few tools. Feeling freer than she had in months, she grinned.
“Wow, the scenery around here sure has improved since the last time I visited.”
He jerked hard and when the blunted sound of his head connecting with the metal box rang out she winced even as she bit back a giggle. She stepped into the landscape and offered Mark Dougstat a hand when he shimmied out, his palm pressed to his forehead.
“Are you okay?” she asked, checking for blood in case he’d really hurt himself.
He peeked from beneath