She then went to look up Sam’s number, but it wasn’t in her cell phone. Damn, she’d deleted it when he moved to L.A. To put him out of her mind, because every time she went to call her brother Skip, she had to scroll past Sam’s name.
Maybe that was for the best. Work with the lead detective, not Sam. Plus, she didn’t want to see him again so soon. She needed to harden her heart a bit more.
Maybe next year she could look at him without feeling an ounce of lust.
Right.
She looked around the apartment again and considered cleaning it up, but if she was right and someone had broken in, she shouldn’t touch anything else. She winced, thinking about the desk and the kitchen she’d gone through. Fortunately, she hadn’t touched the computer or anything in the bedroom, so if the police came in they could still dust for prints or do whatever they needed to do.
On the coffee table she noticed two beer bottles. They were different—same imported beer, but one had the label peeled off.
Shauna had drunk beer with Mack many times. He never peeled off the label. There were no other beer bottles around, and the brand was the same as the beer in the refrigerator—a brand Shauna didn’t think Mack would buy on his own. If he wasn’t drinking Harp from the tap at Dooley’s, he bought domestic.
She went back to the refrigerator and, using a dishcloth to prevent smudging any fingerprints, took out the remaining six-pack of imports. There were four left. Tucked in the case was a receipt. The beer had been bought after midnight on Saturday. Mack usually closed at one Friday and Saturday nights, so she doubted he’d bought it. Who was he visiting with?
It was probably nothing important, but no one who’d come into the bar today had said they’d been with Mack Saturday night. As far as Shauna knew, he didn’t have a girlfriend. And most of his friends were from Dooley’s.
“Stop being so damn suspicious,” Shauna said. She put the beer back in the refrigerator and pulled out her phone to call Detective Black. Again.
The front doorknob jiggled.
Shauna jumped, put her hand to her mouth to stop herself from calling out. If it was Detective Black, he would have knocked, right? Because she’d said she was here.
The knob jiggled again. It didn’t sound like a key. Why hadn’t she put on the security chain?
Because you didn’t think someone was going to break into a dead man’s apartment.
The lock clicked and Shauna realized that as soon as the door opened, the intruder would see her in the kitchen. She was trapped. The only place she could go was quickly around the corner and into the bedroom.
She took three large, silent steps from the kitchen into the hall, three more steps to the bedroom door and slowly pushed it open. She saw a swath of light cut through the apartment and she didn’t dare close the bedroom door for fear of being seen.
The front door closed so quietly she almost missed it. There was no place for her to go without being seen from the living room, except behind the half-open bedroom door. She stepped as silently as possible behind the door, held her breath, and peered through the crack. She couldn’t see anyone from the narrow angle, but heard someone moving through the apartment.
She clicked her phone to silent and sent Black a text message:
Someone is in Mack’s apartment. I’m trapped in the bedroom. Call Sam Garcia.
She dialed 911 and then the door slammed into her body, pushing her hard against the wall. The back of her head ached. She dropped her phone. A man she’d never seen before pulled her out from behind the door and threw her across the room. The back of her head hit the dresser and she froze, too stunned by the blow to move.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
Fear flooded her veins. Adrenaline kicked in and she got up on all fours and crawled across the floor.
He followed and kicked her. Her head hit the dresser and she fell on her side.
“I already called the police!” she shouted. Had the 911 call gone through? She didn’t know where her phone went.
Get up! Fight!
Dizzy and scared, she began to scream but he slapped her.
He wore a hoodie and gloves. She cataloged all the features she could remember. White. Clean-shaven. Taller than Mike, shorter than Sam.
“Shit,” he muttered. He grabbed the lamp off the nightstand and pulled her arms up behind her.
She screamed when her shoulder dislocated from its socket.
“Shut up!” he said and wound the cord tightly around her hands in a figure eight. Then he pulled a T-shirt from Mack’s drawer and shoved it so deep in her mouth she gagged.
She couldn’t hear anything through the ringing in her ears. The pain from her shoulder burned her entire body, making her nauseated. Her vision blurred, whether from the throbbing pulse in the back of her head or from the nearly unbearable pain in her shoulder. If she hadn’t had dislocated her shoulder twice before, she was certain she would have passed out. She focused on breathing through her nose as her pulse raced, bringing her to near panic.