Cold Hearts(20)

He let out a roar of rage and ran toward the window just in time to see her running through her front yard toward the street. Through the downpour he saw something bright in her hand and realized it was her cell phone. She had already called the cops.

“Son of a holy bitch!” he shouted, and began grabbing stuff and throwing it against the walls, taking pleasure in the sound of breaking glass and destroying what was hers.

* * *



Mack turned the corner toward Lissa’s house just as a flash of lightning lit up the sky. The rain was really coming down, dimming the faint glow of the streetlights, so when he caught a glimpse of someone running through her yard, his first thought was of the stalker and he quickly accelerated. But it wasn’t until the runner passed in front of his headlights that he realized it was Lissa. He stopped the car, then jumped out in the rain, yelling her name.

Lissa was still in flight mode when she saw the headlights, and when she heard the squeal of brakes and someone shouting her name, she stumbled and fell. Her cell phone went flying, and her hands were already burning from abrasions when she recognized Mack’s voice, and then she was in his arms. The relief of knowing she was safe was overwhelming.

“Lissa! What’s wrong?” he asked.

“He’s in my house! I think he came in the backdoor. I heard breaking glass and then footsteps. I went out my bedroom window, and I’ve already called the police.”

Mack pushed her toward his car. “Get inside and lock the doors!” he shouted, and took off running.

“Mack, don’t! Wait for the police!” she screamed, but he wouldn’t stop.

She turned around to look for her phone then grabbed it and bolted toward his SUV. She leaped into the seat and quickly locked herself inside. The engine was still running, so the interior was warm, but she was dripping water everywhere and still shaking as the horror of what was happening sank in.

This was far more than phone calls and knocking at the window. He’d come into her house—come after her—to do God knew what. And now Mack was in there with him.

Lord, please keep him safe.

The faint sound of sirens was encouraging, but would they arrive in time?

* * *



Reece’s fit of rage ended abruptly when he heard the faint sound of sirens and realized how much time he’d wasted tearing up Melissa’s room. He turned, running blindly through the house toward the back door, so intent on escape that he didn’t hear any footsteps but his own until he went from the living room into the kitchen, and then it was too late.

* * *



Mack circled the house on the run, confident the stalker had gained entry through the back door. He saw the broken pane and leaped up the steps, pausing inside the kitchen in the darkness and listening to see if the stalker was still inside. When he heard running footsteps coming up the hall, he tensed, muscles tightening. The bastard was still here and in the act of escape.

He braced himself for impact.

* * *



Reece rounded the corner into the kitchen, caught a glimpse of movement and panicked. He’d indulged his disappointment a little too long and had only moments to pull his knife as the man came toward him.

Mack caught a flash of metal and threw up his arm just in time to deflect the thrust intended for his belly. It missed, but cut through the fabric of his jacket and caught his arm instead. The burn was instantaneous but it didn’t stop him. Mack took the intruder down in a flying tackle. They hit the floor hard, blood splattering from Mack’s wound as he rolled to escape the second knife slash; then he grabbed his attacker’s wrist and began slamming it against the floor in an attempt to make him drop the knife. Their life-and-death battle was eerily silent except for an occasional grunt of pain.

Mack landed two hard blows to the side of his opponent’s face, and the other man began pounding his fist against the wound on Mack’s arm in retaliation. The pain was intense, and in an effort to free his wounded arm, Mack inadvertently loosened his grasp.

Reece grinned in the dark when he felt the change in the other man’s grip. It was just enough to let him get his knife hand free.

In one last frantic move to escape, he jammed the knife deep into the back of his enemy’s shoulder. The man went down with a groan, and just like that, Reece was free!

He scrambled to his feet, pulling out the knife without care for the blood that gushed in its wake, then bolted out the back door, running into the rain as the sirens’ screaming grew closer.





Nine



Lissa was wet and scared and couldn’t stop shaking. Once she’d heard the police sirens she’d had the good sense to pull Mack’s car out of the middle of the street where he’d stopped, and now she was parked beside the curb. She was staring out the window, watching the dim glow of her neighbor’s outdoor security light, when she saw a faint figure of a man come from her backyard, cross the space between her house and the empty one next door and disappear into the night.

She scooted forward on the seat, waiting and waiting for Mack to run into view as he gave chase, but saw nothing. Her heart dropped. Something was horribly wrong.

The police were close. She could clearly hear the sirens now, but she couldn’t wait. Without thinking about her own safety, she did exactly what he’d told her not to do. She grabbed the keys from the ignition and got out of the SUV on the run, clearing the distance from Mack’s car to her house in record time.

The back door was open, and she turned on the light as she ran in, then froze. Mack was belly down on the floor in a pool of blood, and he wasn’t moving. It was a moment of déjà vu, seeing him as motionless as she’d found his father. A lifetime of loving him and hating him shot through her so fast she couldn’t think, and then a gust of wind broke the silence, banging the door shut behind her. She screamed Mack’s name as she tossed the keys onto the countertop and dropped to her knees beside him, praying as she felt for a pulse in his neck that he wasn’t dead.

There was so much blood she couldn’t find one, but she wasn’t about to quit on him and bolted toward the cabinets for clean towels. She grabbed a handful, ran back to Mack’s side and began applying pressure to his wounds in a desperate effort to stop the bleeding.

When he suddenly groaned she began to cry. He wasn’t dead! God had given them a second chance.

* * *



Mack was regaining consciousness just as the police cars pulled up at her house, but by then Lissa was almost as bloody as he was.

When Trey and Earl came running into the kitchen with their weapons drawn, they were shocked by the sight of so much blood.

“Call an ambulance!” Lissa cried. “Mack has been stabbed.”

Earl made the call as Trey rushed to her side.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, this is all his,” she said.

“Did you see him?”

“No, I heard him coming through the house and went out my bedroom window. I was running across the street when Mack drove up. He put me in his car and ran into the house. I caught a glimpse of the intruder leaving my house. When Mack didn’t come out, I got scared. I came in and found him like this.”

Mack groaned and tried to roll over.

Trey dropped to his knees to help Lissa restrain him. “Mack!” he ordered. “Don’t move. An ambulance is on the way.”

“Had a knife...would have killed her,” Mack whispered.

Lissa looked up at Trey in disbelief. “Why is this happening?”

“I don’t know,” he said, helpless to explain.

Mack was about to pass out again, but when he heard Lissa’s voice, he reached for her.

Lissa grabbed his hand, wanting him to know she was still there, but he was unconscious again.

Trey stood up and began issuing orders. “Earl, I need you to call the precinct and tell the dispatcher to get all deputies to this location and start a house-by-house search. He could be hiding out. He might be injured. We won’t find a blood trail thanks to this rain, but we might find him.”

Earl ran out, relaying the chief’s orders to Dispatch as he pulled his flashlight and took off toward the house next door.

“Can I go with him in the ambulance?” Lissa asked.

“No, but you can be with him in the ER,” Trey said.

It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she would take it.

She grabbed another clean towel to use as a compress because the first two were blood soaked.

“He’s losing so much blood,” she said. Then she heard a siren whoop twice outside her house before it stopped.

“The ambulance is here,” Trey said.

“Thank God,” Lissa said. Then she bent down and whispered in Mack’s ear, “Help is here. Hang on. I need you to be okay.”

Seconds later a pair of EMTs came up the steps ahead of a team of firefighters. Trey began filling them in on what had happened as Lissa moved away to allow them full access.

She stood for a few seconds watching them work before one of them saw the blood on her.

“Ma’am, are you hurt?” he asked.

“No, it’s all his,” she said, and ran to the kitchen sink and began scrubbing the blood off her hands and arms as the EMTs quickly inserted an IV into Mack’s arm.

When Lissa heard them talking about the possibility of a blood transfusion, she quickly interrupted.

“His blood type is O negative.”