The Detective's Dilemma. Karen McCullough

in,” she told him. “Thanks for checking. Don’t let me keep you.”

      He nodded and took off again, jogging toward a classroom building.

      Sarah sighed and shook her head. She liked Rob but hated to encourage him.

      As she drove home from classes, she glanced in the rearview mirror and spotted a dark blue car. The next time she checked the mirror, that same car had dropped a couple of lengths back, but then it made several of the same turns she did. Half a mile or so from the apartment, it faded farther back, and she lost track of it. When she swung into the apartment complex parking lot, she watched for it, but no one turned in after her. She wanted to see if the car would go by, but the dip and curve at the entrance hid the traffic on the street from view.

      She debated calling Detective Christianson, but she didn’t feel sure enough of the facts. And even if it had happened, what could he do about it?

      She hadn’t cooked for herself in a while, but she hadn’t forgotten what little she knew, especially when supper involved opening a package and putting the tray and its contents into the oven. She needed to get a microwave, but that would have to wait. She wanted her television, too. How soon would they let her get her things from her old room?

      The knock on the door came later, as she worked on homework again, lying on the air mattress, propped up against a pillow.

      She needed to get a peephole. Most likely the neighbor she’d met earlier was bringing the things she’d mentioned.

      Wrong. The figures in her doorway were familiar--sort of--but not people she’d ever wanted to see again.

      The three men clustered in the hall wore jeans, jackets, and ski masks concealing their faces. Sarah’s heart skipped a beat, and then jolted into a higher gear. She pushed the door closed again, leaning into it, but one man put a foot in the opening, while another shot out an arm and caught the door, forcing it back toward her. It almost knocked her over when they shoved their way into the room. She scrambled to stay upright. The last one slammed the door behind him.

      Sarah backed up to the far wall. Terror had her pulse racing. She couldn’t drag enough air into her lungs and barely got out the words, “Who are you? What do you want?”

      “Where is it?” The man in the center asked. He had a deep, gravelly smoker’s voice. “Where’d he put it?”

      “Where-- Where is what?”

      “Insurance. Where’s the insurance?”

      “What insurance? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      The man with the smoker’s voice grabbed her arm and pulled her close. He reeked of tobacco and beer. “You know what we’re talking about. Capelli said you had the key to it.”

      “I know he said so, but he forgot to tell me about it!” She tried to wrench herself free of his hold. “I don’t know where it is. I don’t even know what it is. I told the cops that, too.” Her vision misted and stars floated on the periphery.

      Tobacco-breath released her and nodded to his cohorts. One of them went into her bedroom. The other rummaged through her purse and pulled out her keys.

      “What are these?” her captor asked.

      “The one with the dark casing is my car key. This one next to it is for the apartment. The rest of them go to the house. Vince’s.” This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening to her again.

      The guy fumbled with them, taking all the house keys off the ring and dropping them in his pocket. The ring, with its now lonely pen fob and car and apartment keys, he tossed onto the floor before he pawed through her purse. He unpacked her book bag. The thug stared at the laptop for a couple of minutes before he set it aside and tackled the side pockets of the bag. He looked around but found nothing else in the room to search.

      He went to the kitchen and opened each of the four cabinets. “Geez,” he said, after glancing in them and the two drawers. “She ain’t got much of nothing.”

      The men returned to the living room shortly, shaking their heads.

      “Okay, lady,” Tobacco-breath said. “Let’s get serious. We want that key.”

      They crowded in on her. Sarah’s heart pounded so hard she feared it would burst right out of her chest. Pressure made her head feel like it might explode and her breath refused to work right. “What key? I don’t have it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      The man who’d searched her purse pushed her back against the wall. Her shoulder connected with a thud, and a flare of pain arced down her arm.

      “You better think about it, girl, and come up with something.” Tobacco-breath gripped her wrist and twisted to make his point.

      She gasped as abused muscles protested.

      “You think hard. We’ll be back. You better have something for us.”

      The three left as quickly as they’d arrived. Sarah’s head whirled with shock. Her knees wobbled, but she forced herself to go to the door and peek out. No one was in the hallway, so she crept along to the front of the building, hoping to get a glimpse of the license plate on their vehicle as they left. The men ran across the parking lot and jumped into a late model Chevy blazer, but the plate had some kind of reflective plastic over it. She couldn’t read the numbers.

      She went back to the apartment and locked the door behind her. Her hands shook so badly it took three tries to push in Christianson’s number on her cell phone.