In Self Defense Susan Sloan (summer reads .txt) 📖

tension of the past several days was broken.  The children howled in delight, and the free-for-all was on.  Within five minutes, they were all covered in potato and pork gravy and salad dressing and applesauce, and Doreen was standing in the doorway, threatening to quit if they didn’t stop it that instant.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Clare gasped, finally dropping her fork.  “I don’t know what got into me.”

“We’re all guilty, Doreen,” Richard apologized.

“I’ll help you clean up,” Clare promised.

“We’ll help, too,” Julie said, glaring across the table at her brother.

But the housekeeper was grinning.  It had been a long time since she could remember seeing the family have this much fun together -- a very long time.

When the telephone rang an hour later, and then half an hour after that, and again half an hour after that, Clare was already sound asleep.  Richard answered the calls in his office.  When there was no one at the other end, he hung up.

***

Clare spent Thursday morning on a chaise in the sunroom, a wonderful tiled space of windows and skylights and paisley-covered wicker furniture that overflowed with all manner of exotic potted plants.  It was unseasonably warm and dry for October, with temperatures pushing up into the seventies, and the rains that usually heralded the arrival of autumn seemed a long way off.

Nina came by just before noon, bringing two manuscripts with her, as she had been requested to do.

“I may not be able to go to the office for a while,” Clare told her, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t work.”

“God, you look awful,” Nina observed when Doreen showed her into the sunroom.

“Thanks,” Clare responded with a grin.  “That makes me feel better already.”

“All right now,” Nina said, settling down in the wicker chair across from her friend with selections from the lunch tray that the housekeeper, who had insisted on giving up her day off, had brought in.  “I want all the gory details.”

“I wish I had some to give you,” Clare said.  “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember very much about what happened.”

“Well, maybe I’ve been reading more than my share of fiction lately,” Nina said, “but if you’ll forgive me, I smell a rather big rat.”

Over the past four years that they had known each other, the two editors had grown to be more than friends.  They had become confidantes.  Clare sighed.  “The police think it may have been deliberate,” she said.

Nina’s eyes widened.  “The idiot in a hurry ran you off the road on purpose?”  Clare nodded and Nina gasped.  “Oh my God, do they think it was him?”

“I think so.”

“Clare, this is serious.  He wants to kill you.  Once he knows he didn’t succeed, he’ll try again.”

Clare’s glance drifted past her friend’s shoulder.  “I think the police know that,” she whispered.  “I think they want to use me to draw him out in the open.  I think they want him to try again, so they can catch him in the act.”

“Well, that’s all very fine and good for them,” Nina declared, “but do you have any way of protecting yourself in case they don’t happen to make it in time?  Do you at least keep a gun in the house?”

Clare frowned.  “I think Richard might have one somewhere.”

“Well, if you’re smart, you’ll keep it under your pillow.”

“What good would it do?” Clare responded with a giggle.  “I don’t know how to shoot it.”

“If you don’t know how to shoot it, get Richard to show you, for pity’s sake.  This isn’t the time to be helpless.”

Clare thought about Nina’s words for the rest of the day. The last thing she intended to be from now on was helpless.  “Do you think you could teach me how to shoot your gun?” she asked Richard when he came home that evening.

“What for?” he asked, staring at her.

“Just in case I might need to use it,” she replied.

“Okay,” he said after a long moment.  “If you think it’ll make you feel safer.”

“Well, at least on the nights when you’re out of town, it might,” she told him.

“Can it wait until the weekend?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” she replied, satisfied that he was at least willing to consider it.

***

It was shortly before nine o’clock when the telephone rang.  Dinner was over and the children were upstairs finishing their homework.  In a few minutes, they would be ready for bed and then Clare would join them for the reading hour.  Meanwhile, she and Richard were in the library, going over the pages of business-related numbers that Henry Hartstone had put together for her.

“Hello,” the voice said.  “I missed talking to you last night, and I couldn’t go another day without knowing how you were feeling.”

“I’m feeling just fine, thank you for your concern,” she said, her tone neutral.

“That’s good,” the voice crooned.  “Because I want to be sure that you’ll be strong and well for when we meet.”

“Yes, well, the thing is, you see, we aren’t going to meet,” she told him.  “Ever.”

“Of course we are,” the voice assured her, “and it’s going to happen very soon now.  I hope you’re as excited about it as I am.”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that I’ve already called the police?” she asked.

“Of course it has,” he said with a deep chuckle.  “That’s what makes this so much fun.”

“Why?” she asked, sure that Dusty and Erin would want to know.  “Why is it such fun?”

“Because this isn’t about them, it’s about us,” he told her.  “It’s about destiny.”

“Destiny?” she repeated.

“Of course,” he said.  “You and I, we’re destined to be together.  Don’t you know that?  Can’t you feel it?  No one can keep us apart.  Really, it’s true.  No one.  Not Detective Grissom or Detective Hall out there listening in their little van, not your husband, not your housekeeper, not even your helpful editor friend.”

Inside the van, a startled Dusty and Erin looked at each other. Apparently, their stalker knew far more than they realized, and he was taking great pleasure in letting them