Within the Shadows (30 page)

Read Within the Shadows Online

Authors: Brandon Massey

He drove to his mother’s house in East Point. She was always the first person with whom he shared good news. But she wasn’t home, and he didn’t call her on her cell phone. This publishing offer was the kind of stupendous announcement he wanted to make face-to-face.
While parked in his mom’s driveway, he thoroughly searched the interior and exterior of his car, seeking the device that he suspected Mika was using to track his whereabouts. He found nothing.
How was she managing to find him? It baffled him.
Maybe she was psychic, could concentrate on him and locate him anywhere he went.
It was a crazy idea, like something out of a horror movie, but he was beginning to believe that anything might be possible.
After hanging out at his mom’s place for a half hour or so, he gave up waiting and left. He stopped by a package store on his way home. He could use a drink, just for himself. He bought a six-pack of Heineken.
He pulled into the driveway of his house. With relief, he noted that the cats were not around.
But the front door was open.
 
Warily, he stepped inside the house. He hefted a golf club in his hands.
He wished he had the gun, but it was upstairs in his bedroom. He wanted to kick himself for not carrying it with him.
“Hello!” he said. “Who’s in here?”
No answer.
As he surveyed the first floor, he groaned.
It looked as if a mini-hurricane had torn through the place.
Artwork had been ripped off the walls, tossed to the floor, and smashed. Tables and chairs were overturned, their cushions slashed. Glasses and vases had been shattered.
The aquarium had been knocked over, underwater plants bristling from the tank like spilled guts. The fish were missing.
It was Mika. No one else would have done this. She was pissed off because he’d deserted her on the highway.
The crazy bitch.
He rushed through the house, to see the extent of the damage.
In the kitchen, her three cats sat on the counter. Circe, Iris, and Eos, or whatever the hell their names were. They were eating the fish from his tank.
They stopped and looked at him as if he were an uninvited guest at a dinner party.
“Get the fuck out of here!” He swung the club and knocked one of the felines across the room. It screeched.
The other cats scattered.
He chased them, swinging the club.
“Come back here, you motherfuckers!”
The cats made a beeline into the bathroom. He hustled after them.
But the bathroom was empty.
The animals had vanished.
They have a tendency to do that.
Cursing, he threw the golf club to the floor and went through the rest of the house. She hadn’t neglected a single room. Every area had been trashed.
In his office, the laptop screen had been busted. A hammer lay nearby.
His link to Sammy. Destroyed.
The pager she had given him, which he still wore on his hip, vibrated.
IT’S CALLED TOUGH LOVE, BABY.
He flung the pager to the floor, grabbed the hammer, and pounded the pager to bits.
 
 
Later, he called Eric.
“I need your help, man. I want to get a restraining order.”
Although he doubted it would do any good against Mika.
Chapter 31
 
E
ric dropped off Andrew at home. They’d visited the Fulton County courthouse, where Andrew had submitted a request for a temporary restraining order.
Without being able to provide Mika’s permanent address or legal name, he wasn’t optimistic that the police would be able to offer much assistance. The only concrete detail he had was the room number of her suite at the Ritz-Carlton. The police promised to follow up on it. They offered no guarantees, and echoed the advice Eric had given him earlier: record everything that happened, and watch his back.
On the drive back to his house, he’d told Eric everything, including the parts about Sammy. He was too tired and scared to keep any more secrets.
Eric didn’t express any skepticism, which surprised and relieved him. “You’ve been my boy my whole life, I know you aren’t making this shit up,” Eric had said. “I had a bad feeling about that female from the start, bro.”
Eric wanted him to spend the next few days at his house on Lake Sinclair, about a hundred miles southeast of metro Atlanta. To lie low and let Mika cool off. Andrew declined the offer. He wasn’t going to let Mika run him out of his own place. It would be like accepting defeat.
Besides, he wasn’t convinced that running away would help. Mika found him no matter where he went.
It was early evening when they arrived at Andrew’s home. The setting sun cast a crimson-orange glow across the sky. The deep, lengthening shadows promised an especially dark night.
He got out of Eric’s SUV and shuffled around to the driver’s side.
“Still think you should go to my lake crib for a while,” Eric said. “Take Carmen with you and chill.”
“Listen, anywhere I go, this woman finds me. Like she’s got a tracker on me or something. If I’m gonna be stalked, I might as well be in the comfort of my own home.”
“I hear ya, bro. If you change your mind, the keys to the place are yours, you know that.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Got your piece?”
He patted his side. He wore the revolver in a shoulder holster, concealing it with an oversize Atlanta Falcons jersey. He’d vowed that he wouldn’t be caught defenseless again.
“Cool,” Eric said. “What’re you about to do now?”
“The locksmith should be over in a half hour. I need to finish cleaning up, too. Got a helluva mess in there.”
“Want any help?”
“Nah, I can handle it.”
“I’ll check on you later this evening. But call me if you need anything, all right?”
“Will do. Thanks, man.”
Eric pulled away and drove to his home down the street.
Andrew faced the house. This wonderful place for which he had labored for years to be able to attain. He felt a surge of the same, fierce pride he’d experienced when the real estate attorney at the closing had handed him the keys to the front door.
And Mika had violated it.
As his pride gave way to righteous anger, he clenched his hands into fists.
His outrage didn’t really stem from her vandalism of the house; most of the items and furniture she’d broken could be repaired or replaced. He was angered because she was wrecking what his house symbolized to him. Freedom. Stability.
She’d robbed him of his freedom, had him nervous to sleep in his own bed. At any time, her or her cats might be watching and scheming.
And his stable life of comforting routines had been destroyed. He never knew what might happen next, what fresh terror would strike him. Chaos had taken over.
All because a woman he’d met in a coffee shop had fallen in love with him and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
He squeezed his fists so tightly that his knuckles popped.
He wasn’t going to give up the life he’d earned for Mika. Never.
He’d rather die than give up.
 
 
The locksmith arrived around six-thirty and replaced the locks on the front and patio doors. Andrew called the security company and changed the access code to the system, too.
Tomorrow, he was taking his car to the dealership to get it outfitted for new keys.
Switching the locks and the passwords probably would not keep Mika out of his house or his car. She possessed unusual talents that might grant her entry to wherever she desired to go. But in the absence of detailed proof regarding exactly what she was capable of, it was logical for him to take basic steps to secure his possessions.
He kept the revolver in the shoulder holster as he cleaned up the mess Mika and her cats had left behind. If she showed up again, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to shoot her. The only thing he’d ever fired at were targets at shooting ranges. But keeping the gun on him made him feel safer.
Tidying the entire house would take days; he limited his efforts to the kitchen, bedroom, office, and bathroom, the areas that he frequented.
As he swept broken glass across the kitchen floor, the telephone rang. It was a cop.
“Mr. Wilson, we’ve run into a problem trying to serve this restraining order,” the officer said in gruff voice.
His stomach plummeted. “What’s wrong?”
“You say that a Lalamika Woods was staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead? That you spent time with her there this past Tuesday night, June first?”
“That’s right. Let me guess: the room’s listed under a different name.”
“Sure is, buddy. It’s listed under your name.”
“Excuse me?”
“Hotel says Mr. and Mrs. Andrew F. Wilson checked in on Tuesday, June first at two o’clock in the afternoon. You checked out the next morning.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” the officer’s voice held a note of sarcasm. “You having marital problems, buddy?”
“Huh? I’m not married!”
“The police department ain’t the place to vent your troubles with your wife. On top of that, filing a false police report is a crime—”
“Listen, I’m not lying. You’ve gotta believe me, she must’ve checked into the hotel under my name—”
“With your credit card, too, huh? American Express?”
“I don’t have an American Express card.”
“You used it to book the room at the Ritz.”
“It wasn’t me!” He pounded his fist against the counter. “She must’ve stolen my identity, gotten a card under my name, used it to book the hotel—”
“Why the heck would your wife go through all that trouble?”
“She’s
not
my wife!” he said. “Don’t you get it? This woman is nuts and she’s ruining my life.”
“Buddy, I usually wouldn’t do this, but I’m going to keep this TRO request on the desk here over the weekend, give you some time to reconcile with your wife. I’ll check back with you Monday and see if you’re ready to stop playing these silly games with us.”
“Wait, I really need your help!”
Click.
He slammed the phone onto the cradle. He paced the house.
Going to the cops was useless. As he’d feared.
Mika had set him up perfectly. He had no way to catch her. It was like trying to capture smoke.
Chapter 32
 
H
e called Carmen and told her what had happened. “Wow, psycho chick is a schemer and a half,” she said. “She’s really covered her trail.”
“There’s gotta be something I can do,” he said. “But I don’t know what.”
“I’m sorry, Drew. Wish I knew what to tell you. Is there any way you can talk to Sammy again?”
Standing in his office, he glanced at the smashed computer screen.
“Computer’s shot,” he said. “I’ll have to get a new one. I’d planned to go to Best Buy first thing tomorrow.”
“You saved your manuscripts to disk, right? Wouldn’t want the mega-author to lose his masterpieces.”
“Saved them to disk and uploaded the files to an online storage site, too. I do that for everything all the time. A few years ago I read about Toni Morrison losing some of her important manuscripts in a house fire, and that scared me to death.”
“I’m glad that’s covered, then.”
“Wish I could upload myself to a Web site right now, escape this madness. I’m not gonna sleep tonight, Carmen.”

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