From the bed, with its tangle of blankets and sheets, she looked up at him and saw him grin again, and this time she was certain there was no mirth in his smile, just a cold, deadly satisfaction. His once handsome face now appearing demonic.
“What did you do?” she tried to say, though the words were barely intelligible.
“Sweet dreams.” He walked to the doorway and paused, and she felt a chill as cold as death.
“Nine-one-one,” a female voice said crisply from the phone. “Please state your name and emergen—”
“Help,” Shelly cried frantically, her voice the barest of whispers. Her mouth wouldn’t work, her tongue thick and unresponsive.
“Pardon me?”
“I need help,” she tried to say more loudly, but the words were garbled, even to her own ears.
“I’m sorry. I can’t hear you. Please speak up. What is the nature of your emergency?”
“Help me, please! Send someone!” Shelly tried to say, now in a full-blown panic. Oh, God, help me! The room was swimming around her; the words she wanted to cry out were trapped in her mind. She managed to jerk her arm toward the phone but it slid off the bed and to the floor.
Her head lolled to one side, but she saw him standing in the doorway, staring back at her. The “killer” smile had slid from his face, and he glared at her with pure, undisguised hatred.
Why? Why me?
Evil glinted in the eyes she’d found so intriguing just hours before.
She knew in the few last moments of her life that her death hadn’t been random; for some godforsaken reason, he had targeted her. Theirs hadn’t been a chance meeting in the bar.
God help me, she thought, a tear rolling from her eye, the certainty of death dawning. From the doorway, the mysterious stranger with his disturbing smile stared at her as she drew in a slow, shallow breath.
A voice was squawking from the phone on the floor, but it seemed distant, a million miles away. She watched as he came closer again and placed the vial of pills at her bedside. Then, while staring into her eyes, telling her silently that he was the cause of her death, he slowly and methodically began stripping her of her clothes....
CHAPTER 1
Balancing a cup of coffee and a chocolate macadamia nut cookie from Joltz, the local coffee shop, in one hand and the case holding her laptop in the other, Dr. Acacia “Kacey” Lambert hurried along the sidewalk. Though it was nearly dawn, streetlights glowed, Christmas lights were strung and burning bright, dancing in the icy November wind that whistled through the small town of Grizzly Falls.
Winter had come early this year and with gale force, bringing early snow and ice, which was causing all kinds of electrical outages and traffic problems.
Just as it had a year earlier, she thought.
So much for global warming.
A steady stream of cars, this part of Montana’s rush hour, was cutting through the surface streets on the way to the highway as people headed for work. Pedestrians in thick jackets, scarfs, wool hats, and boots walked briskly past, their breath fogging, their cheeks red from the cold.
Winters here were harsh, much more frigid than they had been in Seattle, but she loved this part of the country and didn’t regret for a second moving back to the small town where she’d grown up.
At the clinic, located in the lower level of the town, a few blocks from the courthouse and the river, she juggled her keys and unlocked the front door. Another blast of winter air cut through her down jacket as it raced along the river’s chasm, rattling storefronts.
Colder than a witch’s teat. Or so her grandfather would have said. Alfred Lambert, eyes a mischievous blue behind wire-rimmed glasses, had never given up his salty language, though his wife, Bess, had forever reprimanded him.
God, she still missed them both. Sometimes achingly so. She lived in the farmhouse where they’d spent over fifty years together, and consequently thought of them often.
A truck rolled by, and despite the cold, the passenger window was rolled down a bit, the nose of a hound of some kind poking out, the strains of “Jingle Bell Rock” audible.
“Still too early,” she muttered as the door unlocked and she slipped into the empty reception area of the low-slung building that housed one of only two clinics in town. A row of slightly worn chairs rimmed the walls, magazines had been placed on the scattered tables, a dying betel palm filled a corner, and there were a few toys for the little ones stacked neatly near the reception window.
Lights were glowing from behind a wall of glass, and Heather Ramsey, the receptionist, was already planted at the long counter that served as her desk on the other side of the window. Nose to computer monitor screen, Heather was rapt, her eyes rapidly scanning the series of pages in front of her.
The images weren’t patient charts, records, or anything remotely to do with the clinic’s business.
As usual Heather was reading the latest on the gossip columns and blogs before she settled down to her work routine. “Brace yourself,” she said, without even glancing up.