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Fifth, then fourth, then third. Perfect. She had to concentrate on the stairs, not on the sound of her footsteps, the hiss of her breath or the thud of her pulse. She’d left the silly heroine of a thousand and one overdone horror films way back on the ninth floor.
Besides, in real life, there were no Freddy Kruegers.
But there were Jeffrey Dahmers and Ted Bundys. There were men like her former patient, but he was in treatment. Wasn’t he? And if he was, why would he have made those recent so-called hang-ups? If he’d made them. But really, wasn’t it a logical assumption that he had?
“Stop it,” she said briskly.
Another set of stairs completed. Only one more to go. And then, hurray! The lobby floor. All she had to do was grasp the doorknob, like this, pull the door open, like this. Dammit. The door was heavy. She’d have to tug hard to open it fully. The best she could do at first was to crack it an inch at a time…
A long, ululating scream burst from Bianca’s throat. Or it would have if she had not gone mute with terror.
Quickly, she shut the door. Swung the phone down towards the floor. The light from it had barely reached the shadows in the lobby, but she’d seen something.
Someone.
A man was standing in the corner next to the main
entrance. Tucked into the corner, hiding. A man who was tall and thin and ohGodohGodohGod…
Bianca drew back. Plastered her shoulders against the wall. A dozen urban myths, a dozen newspaper headlines sprang to full blood-soaked life in her mind. All those, plus an image of her former patient, a man who was tall and thin…
The man in the corner hadn’t seen her yet, or surely he’d have been on her by now. Grazie a Dio that she’d only been able to open the heavy door a couple of inches.
What now? The door had no lock. If he hadn’t seen her, she could get away. Race up the stairs. But if he had seen her, if he was waiting her out…
She was trembling.
What if she opened the door again, no wider than before, and said—and said, Hello? Is someone there?
Brilliant, Absolutely brilliant. Someone was there, that was the point, hiding in the corner, and someone hiding in a dark and empty building wasn’t about to say, Why, yes. There’s someone here.
Bianca took a steadying breath.
She could do better than this. She had years of training. She’d read dozens of textbooks and scholarly articles. She’d sat through endless lectures given by the best people in her field. What she had to do was figure out, fast, the best way to approach a criminal or someone criminally insane.
And then Chay was in her head again. Chay, repeating what he’d said when she’d balked at riding his Harley.
The best way to deal with fear is to face it.
Yes. That was the only way—but it wouldn’t hurt to have some kind of weapon.
Carefully, never taking her eyes from the man in the corner, Bianca switched her cellphone to her left hand and dipped her right hand into the tote. The keys. The keys… She had them! There was a pocketknife on the keychain. Calling it a knife was pretty much a joke. It was a tiny thing that folded up into nothing. Scissors. Nail file. Knife. No blade was more than an inch and a half, two inches long, but the guy in the corner didn’t know that.
She just had to make the first move. Make it count.
Whoever was waiting for her had his own agenda.
Now, she had hers.
Dio. If her heart beat any faster, it would leap out of her chest.
The best way to deal with fear is to face it.
She moved forward, her steps purposeful. Phone in one hand. Joker of a knife in the other. Fumbled with the doorknob with the hand that held the phone.
The door opened.
The phone fell to the floor.
