“Yes.”
“How old are they now?”
She had to bite her lip to not curse at the man. It was important to keep up appearances, though. Besides, she never knew when she might have to call on him again.
“Oh, they’re all grown now—twenty, twenty-three, and twenty-seven.”
“A beautiful bunch of kids for sure,” he replied. He then went quiet. She heard him moving around in the den, including the occasional bit of low-drone humming. It took Karen a moment to realize that he was humming along to the music from her office, which had transitioned into another piece by Satie. She rolled her eyes, really wishing he would stay quiet. Sure, she had called him over to perform a service but he was already irritating her. Didn’t most workmen just come over, work in silence, and then leave happily paid? What was this guy’s problem?
“Thank you,” she managed to say, really not liking the idea of him looking at pictures of her kids.
She lowered her head and got back to the email. Of course, it was no use. Apparently, her visitor was bent on having a conversation through the wall.
“They live around here?” he asked.
“No,” she said. She was rather short and blunt this time, going so far as to turn her head all the way to the right so he could perhaps hear the irritation in her voice. She did not intend to give him the locations of each of her children. God only knew what kind of questions he could make out of that.
“I see,” he said.
If she had not been so preoccupied with the email in front of her, she might have recognized an eerie chill in the silence that followed this question. It was a pregnant silence, the type that promises something else to follow.
“You expecting any other visitors today?”
She wasn’t sure why, but something about this question sparked fear in her. It was an odd question for a stranger to ask, particularly one she had hired for a service. And had she heard something different in his tone with that question?
Concerned now, she turned away from her laptop. There seemed to be something going on with him. And now she was no longer just irritated by his questions, she was growing scared as well.
“I have a few friends coming over for coffee later,” she lied. “Not sure when, though. Most of the time, they usually just swing by whenever they feel like it.”
To this, she got no response and that was scarier than anything else. Slowly, Karen rolled her chair back and stood up. She walked to the doorway that connected her office to the den. She peeked inside to see what he was doing.
He was not there. The tools of his trade were still there, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Call the police…
The thought raced through her mind and she knew it was good advice. But she also knew she was prone to overexaggerating. Maybe he had gone back out to his truck or something.
No way, she thought. Did you hear the door open and close? Besides, he’s been chatty from the get-go. He would have told you he was heading back outside…
She froze, a few steps into the den. “Hey,” she said, her voice wavering a bit. “Where’d you go?”
No response.
Something is wrong, that voice in her head screamed. Call the police now!
With terror blooming in her gut, Karen slowly backed out of the den. She started to turn back toward her office, where her cell phone sat on her desk.
As she turned, she collided with something hard. She could smell sweat for just a moment but barely had time to register it.
That’s when something went around her neck, pulling tight.
Karen Hopkins struggled, fighting against whatever was around her neck. But the harder she fought, the tighter the thing on her neck became. It was rough, cutting and digging in deeper as she struggled. She felt a thin stream of blood trailing down over her chest at the same time she realized she found it difficult to breathe.
She fought regardless, doing what she could to pull the attacker into the office so she could grab her cell phone. She felt more blood running down her neck, nothing major, still just a trickle. The thing around her neck grew even tighter. She slowly sagged as she came within several feet of her desk. As she did, all her eyes could see was the laptop screen in front of her. That white screen, with an incomplete email that she would never send.
She watched the cursor blinking insistently, waiting for her next word.
But it would never come.
CHAPTER ONE
One of the many things that surprised Kate Wise in this, her fifty-fifth year of life (with the fifty-sixth just a few weeks away), was how getting ready for a date never failed to make her feel like an insecure teenager again. Was her makeup right? Was it too much? Should she start coloring her hair darker to combat the grays that seemed to be slowly winning the battle for her hair? Should she wear a sensible bra that was all about comfort or one that would be easy for Alan to remove when the date came to its end?
It was a nice sort of anxiousness, one that reminded her she had been through this before. When she had been married, she’d felt the same way in getting ready for a date all the way up through the first year. But now with Alan, the first man she had dated since Michael died, she had been forced to learn how to date all over again.
It was getting easier quite fast with Alan. They were both in their mid-fifties, so there was a sense of urgency to each date—an unspoken knowledge that if this relationship was going to come to something other than dating, they needed to fully invest in it. So far, through a few obstacles here and there, they had done exactly that. And to this point, it had been pretty incredible.
Tonight’s date was to be dinner, a movie, and then back to her place, where they’d spend the night together. That was another thing their age allowed them to do in dating: to skip the will-we-won’t-we when it came to the bedroom. The answer for the last few months had been an unequivocal yes—a yes that carried over after nearly every date (something else that surprised Kate about dating at the age of fifty-five).
As she applied her lipstick—just a bit, like she knew Alan liked—a knock at her front door startled her. She checked her watch and saw that it was only 6:35, a full twenty-five minutes earlier than she had been expecting Alan.
She smiled, assuming he had come by early. Maybe he wanted to swap the order of the date and go ahead and do the bedroom part first. It would be a pain to get undressed moments after she’d gotten dressed, but it would be worth it. With a smile on her face, she left her bedroom, walked through the house, and answered the door.
When she saw that it was Melissa on the other side, she went through several emotions quite quickly: surprise, disappointment, and then worry. Melissa was carrying the car seat in her right hand as little Michelle stared out. When Michelle’s eyes found her grandmother, she beamed and started reaching out, making clutching motions with her little hands.
“Melissa, hi,” Kate said. “Come in, come in.”
Melissa did as asked, frowning as she looked her mother over. “Crap. Are you going out? A date with Alan?”
“Yeah. He’s coming over in about twenty minutes. Why? What’s up?”
It was then, as they settled down on the couch, that Kate noticed something seemed to be troubling Melissa. “I was hoping you could watch Michelle tonight.”
“Melissa…I’d love to any other time. You know that. But as you can see, I already have plans. Is…is everything okay?”
Melissa shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. Terry has been weird lately. Honestly, he’s been weird ever since Michelle’s health scare. He’s just not there sometimes, you know? It’s been worse the last few days, and I don’t quite know why.”
“So