She inched her way toward her bedroom door.
* * *
The side of the building was dark, a narrow concrete walkway leading toward the back of the building. He was glad the lights were off in the first-floor apartment. The last thing he needed was for someone to call the cops on him.
He withdrew his weapon and kept his eyes on the windows, barely above ground, to Alexa’s apartment. He could only assume they belonged to the room she’d said was her office and her bedroom.
The muffled sound of a TV drifted through one of the upper windows, and traffic was a distant hum beyond the cocooned side yard of the apartment building, but other than that it was quiet.
The light from the street got fainter as he came closer to the back of the building. He stepped into the darkness, heading for what he assumed was Alexa’s bedroom window.
* * *
She reached the open door of her darkened bedroom and hesitated. She hadn’t heard a sound since she’d left the couch, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something had woken her up, that whatever she’d heard had been real.
And if it was real, whoever was in her apartment had to be in this room.
She glanced at the phone in her hand, the emergency phone number still on the display, waiting for her to make the call. She hadn’t found anything so far, but she should check her room, just to be sure. A reputation for being skittish would kill her as a prosecutor for the AG’s office.
She stepped through the doorway, the little bit of light that had made its way to the back of the hall disappearing behind her as she entered the room. She was only a couple of feet inside when she caught movement on her right.
She turned toward it, instinctively holding the knife out in that direction.
But she wasn’t fast enough. Something flew at her from the darkness, slamming into her body and pushing her back into the hall.
Both her phone and the knife flew from her hands, pain crashing through her body as a man in black pinned her against the wall. She got one surprised scream in before his hands closed around her throat.
* * *
The scream was faint, but it still sent a cold wash of fear through his body. He hurried toward the bedroom window, cursing when he saw that it was open despite the cold.
He got on his stomach and shimmied through it, his gun still in his hand. As soon as he hit the floor of Alexa’s bedroom, he heard it: a low thud, a gasp that might have been mistaken for a whisper.
He looked through the open door into the hall and saw a broad back, legs clad in black, hands raised to something Nick couldn’t see.
He lifted his weapon as he rushed the figure, wanting to get close enough to muffle the sound of his shot. Alexa came into view a little at a time, pushed up against the wall, her feet struggling for purchase against the slippery floorboards as the man in front of her — Nick assumed it was a man even though the figure wore a ski mask — choked the life out of her.
His mind was trying to keep its hold on the logic that had always served him, but inside panic was clawing at him like a trapped animal. Panic and a rage so clean it blocked out everything but the need to make this man — the man who dared to hurt Alexa — suffer.
His finger was squeezing the trigger when he spotted the knife on the floor.
* * *
She was going to die. The thought came to her in a wave of clear consciousness as she stared into the watery brown eyes of the man choking her to death.
She’d always thought she’d be okay when the end came. After all, she’d almost died once before and she didn’t remember anything. If that’s what death was, a sweet oblivion, it wouldn’t be so bad.
But now she found that she wanted to live. She wanted to see her parents again, laugh with her mom, feel her dad’s arms around her.
She wanted to see Nick. She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to listen, to see if there was a future for them after all.
But the pressure around her throat threatened to knock her into unconsciousness. She fought to stay coherent, to relieve the pressure by getting her feet under her again.
It was no use. The edges of her vision began to blacken, her mind buzzing with something that felt like peace.
* * *
He reached for the knife in one smooth motion and plunged it into the back of the man holding Alexa’s throat in his hands.