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Coming to a hard stop, she realized she’d turned into an alley with no exits. Brick walls surrounded her now, and the only way out was back the way she had come, toward the dark figure with his ever-ready gun.
A cat squalled out from beyond the alley entrance, the clatter of metal meeting cement brief, but assuring her she had only seconds. Whoever wanted to kill her was getting closer.
Looking around in terror, she moved quickly to the heavy Dumpster at her side and wedged in beside it, praying he didn’t think to look there. As she all but crawled behind it, her breath escaped in a muffled sob as she realized there was a deep indent at the base of the building.
It had likely been covered once, but the bricks had been chipped away and disposed of at some point. She squeezed herself into it, huddling as close to the boarded back as possible and holding her breath as the footsteps came closer.
“I know I saw that bitch turn in here,” someone hissed.
“I’m telling you, she backtracked to the garage,” another snapped.
“I saw her take that last turn coming this way,” the first argued furiously. “Check behind the Dumpster.”
Footsteps shuffled, moving closer
. There was the scrape of a shoe, of clothes against the Dumpster as someone breathed out harshly. The Dumpster shifted, but it didn’t move.
“There’s no one back there,” the second voice retorted in disgust. “I can see behind it and it’s clear. She’s not here.”
“Fuck!” The curse was filled with anger. “I can’t believe you didn’t see her come into the lobby.”
“She was supposed to be in her room, dammit. You didn’t see her leave it.”
“Fucking moron,” the other man growled. “Let’s go. She has to be close. She couldn’t have gotten far.”
Lyrica didn’t dare breathe. She couldn’t breathe. Terror was like a fever, weakening her, tearing through her senses, shredding her control. Her entire body shuddered, chilled, shock and fear racing the adrenaline tearing through her body.
How long she waited she didn’t know. She didn’t dare move from the precarious hiding place. They were waiting for her, watching for her.
Moving slowly and reaching into the purse she clasped desperately to her chest, she pulled her cell phone free. It hadn’t been working earlier. She’d tried to call her sister to let her know she’d arrived, but the automated message had told her to try again later.
Fingers shaking, she hit Alex Jansen’s number again. When it didn’t go through, she began calling every number in her contact list, one after the other.
None of them were going through.
“We’re sorry, but this number is no longer accepting calls. Please try again later.”
The message played again, the computer-generated voice completely unsympathetic to the small, barely muffled sob that escaped Lyrica’s lips.
Hands trembling, she pulled the phone from her ear, closed her eyes, and huddled deeper into the small crevice she’d found in the brick building behind the stinking Dumpster.
She was too terrified to move out from behind it, the stark, mind-numbing fear rising from the depths of her soul at the very thought of it.
She couldn’t make a call out. Her texts weren’t going through to any of her family. Not her brother or her cousins, not her sisters or her mother or even her mother’s lover, Timothy Cranston. She’d tried everyone and nothing worked. She stared at the muted display, fighting desperately to think, to figure out what to do.
Even Alex Jansen, her cousin Janey’s husband and chief of police of Somerset, Kentucky, was unreachable. And she needed help. Oh god, she needed help.
She had no idea how to navigate the alleys and backstreets of downtown London. She was trapped here with no idea how to identify who was after her or why.
Why?
What had she done?
She’d just driven into town to meet some friends for dinner, then to go shopping early the next morning. The party she’d been invited to at one of her brother’s friends’ home in a few weeks required a new outfit. She wanted to look good. She wanted to get new shoes, something girly and pretty. Something to draw attention . . .
She’d checked into the hotel just before dark then left for dinner at a nearby restaurant where her friends were waiting for her. She could have never anticipated that someone would be waiting to kill her when she returned.
She shuddered remembering the muted pop that the gun had made as she had quickly stepped back into the elevator. The bullet had missed her by inches. She could have been killed. She would have been killed if she hadn’t held that damned elevator door open.
