Page 38 of Fatal Pattern

Maybe she wanted someone to come home to. Someone who’d notice if she didn’t make it through the front door.

She retrieved her Glock from the bathroom and placed it on the nightstand. At least she could read in peace. It was only seven thirty, but she crawled into bed and picked up her book. The words blurred after half a page. Her lids drifted shut.

Outside, a car door slammed, and she reached for the gun before recognizing her neighbor’s voice calling his dog.

She pulled the covers up over her head, alone in ways that felt heavier tonight.

Tori snapped awake. Her lungs screamed for air that wouldn’t come. A crushing weight pinned her to the mattress. A pillow pressed down like concrete, sealed off her nose and mouth. Her body understood before her mind caught up.

She was going to die.

Training kicked in. Not up. Sideways. Now.

She exploded into a BJJ shrimping escape, her hips bucking hard to the right as she twisted her torso and dragged her knees toward her chest. The attacker’s body shifted with her momentum, and she used his imbalance to roll them both off the bed in a tangle of sheets and limbs. They crashed to the hardwood floor with a bone-jarring impact that rattled her teeth.

Her Glock clattered off the nightstand and skittered across the floor into the darkness near the bedroom door.

“Did you miss me?”

The voice slapped her fully awake. The stalker. Here. In her bedroom.

The fear that had flooded her system incinerated. A surge of pure, cold fury sharpened her vision to laser focus.

He blocked the doorway. A dark silhouette between her and escape. The gun lay somewhere near his feet, lost in the shadows.

Create space. Use the environment.

She scrambled backward on her hands and knees, dragging herself toward the primary bathroom. Her bare feet found purchase on the cool tile as she backed against the vanity, the glass shower door to her left, the toilet to her right.

He followed, moving with predatory confidence into the confined space. Moonlight from the bedroom window caught the dark fabric covering everything but his eyes, then the blade in his hand. A hunting knife with a serrated edge.

“Nowhere to run now.”

He lunged forward, the knife arcing toward her ribs. She executed a Krav Maga block, her left forearm slamming into his wrist to deflect the strike. The blade’s edge sliced a burning line across her skin, and warm blood immediately soaked through her sports bra.

The searing pain only fed her rage.

He drew back for another strike, and she moved. As he lunged again, she dropped low and swept his legs, sending him stumbling forward. She grabbed the back of his head with both hands and drove his face down into the hard porcelain toilet bowl, using his own momentum against him.

The impact made a wet, crunching sound.

Tori bolted from the bathroom, her feet slipping on the hardwood as she dove for her Glock. Her fingers closed around the grip just as she heard him crashing through the bedroom doorway behind her.

She rolled onto her back and fired.

11

The Glock’s blast slammed against the walls. The sound ricocheted through Tori’s skull. Cordite burned her nostrils. The sharp, metallic scent she’d only encountered during target practice.

The bullet had gone wide. High and right. The framed botanical print above her dresser had exploded in a shower of glass, leaving a spiderweb of cracks radiating from the entry point.

Where was he?

She crouched, gun held close to her chest. She peeked over her mattress and saw the empty window frame. Window raised. Screen in shredded strips. The metal mesh twisted like surgical gauze after a messy procedure.

Gone. Whoever he was. Swallowed by the darkness beyond her bedroom wall.

She didn’t pursue. Her hands shook as she kept the gun trained on the empty window frame, finger still on the trigger. Blood dripped from her forearm onto the hardwood floor in steady drops that sounded like a metronome in the sudden silence.