When the Flood Falls. J.E. Barnard
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Dee limped over and closed the nine sets of drapes with their power cords, then stood fussing with all the edges she could reach to make sure nobody could peer in through a gap. She said, half into the curtains, “You’re likely not in a shape to drive, even if you are an RCMP-trained expert with thousands of patrol kilometres a year. Stay here tonight. I’ve got extra toothbrushes and stuff upstairs, and your choice of spare bedrooms. And your commute to work will be really short in the morning. Hell, stay all week and be my legs. I might need a lot more wine brought up to get me through this last crush before the museum officially opens. If I’d known how stressful being the president of the museum’s building committee was going to turn out, I’d have evaded the honour. Will it all be ready before the gala on Friday, do you think?”
“The security stuff will be,” said Lacey, setting aside for the moment her leap of joy at being offered any bed that wasn’t her old patrol buddy Tom’s much older rec-room couch. Between three weeks of crash space and him lining her up with AWL Security Services for the museum job, the favours were adding up fast. “Wayne is driving himself and me hard to get every metre of cabling in and every uplink tested, inside and out. I can’t speak for anyone else’s job.” Dee, she noted, was still standing, her hand clutching the edge of the last curtain. She didn’t want to be here alone tonight. Would she say why if asked outright? “I shouldn’t drive tonight, you’re right. Can I take you up on the bed and the toothbrush? If you make the offer of a longer stay tomorrow, when we’re both stone sober and wide awake, I promise to give it due consideration.”
“Spoken like the cautious old McCrae of our university days,” said Dee, taking her hand down from the drapery. “How could you have faced that dangerous job year after year when your personal life is more carefully calculated than an insurance actuary’s?”
Soon Lacey was settling into a luxurious upstairs bedroom with magazine-quality décor. Dee’s master suite, from which she had retrieved pajamas and other sleepover necessities, was twice the size and even more lavishly appointed. Its occupant, though, was not much different from the old Dee, who still walked her dogs with messy hair and no makeup, who teased and laughed and reminisced. She would not care if her old friend didn’t arrange the matching throw pillows quite as artfully on the bed in the morning.
Despite the relaxation brought on by the wine and the soft cuddling of the pillow-top mattress, Lacey had a hard time dozing off. The stresses she’d held at bay all evening were niggling again: her lack of a home, her uncertain post-RCMP job and future, Dan dragging his feet on both the divorce and selling their house in Langley, and yes, whatever had Dee so frightened she wouldn’t leave a drape open day or night. The nighttime sounds of the surrounding forest, so soothing by day, whispered ominously by night of beasts on the prowl and hinted at the wildness in the hearts of the trees. Trees like in the fairy tales, whispering, surrounding human habitations, cutting them off with impenetrable hedges and …
At some point along the restless path to full sleep, when the trees were stooping over her bed, clutching at her shoulders, she roused to find Dee bending over the bed, shaking her shoulder and whispering urgently. “Lacey, wake up, please. Please wake up. There’s someone on the deck and the dogs aren’t barking. Please!”
Chapter Two
For a long, frantic minute Dee shook and whispered at Lacey, but her friend didn’t stir. She had to wake up, to listen and look and scare away the footsteps on the deck. Unless it was all another horrible trick of Dee’s overworked imagination, a side effect of the pain meds and the stress, and there was nobody out there at all. Dee crept to the nearest window and slid the handle over slowly, slowly, willing the wood not to stick or squeak. As soon as the frame opened enough to admit a thin line of nighttime air, she stopped. Bending down, she edged her ear to the crack, pulling back her hair to hear better. Anything? Anyone?
There! Another footstep. A man’s boot heel, surely. She sagged against the windowsill, torn between relief that she hadn’t imagined this and terror at the confirmation that the prowler was real and outside right now, maybe trying to get in. After a slow, deep breath, she slid the handle back over to block out the night and shuffled the two paces back to the bedside.
“Lacey! There’s someone on the deck. Please wake up!”
“What? I’m awake.”
Dee repeated herself. This time Lacey seemed to take it in. She swung her legs out of bed and reached for the lamp. Before flipping the switch, though, she stopped. “This has happened before, hasn’t it? Is this why you really wanted me out here tonight?”
“Not the only reason, but yes, I’ve heard someone other nights. Never seen anybody.” Please believe me, please believe, please go look and make them stop.
“Okay.” Lacey’s face was a white blur in the dark room. “Here’s what we do. Don’t turn on the lights just yet. You got your cellphone up here? Take it and lock yourself in your bathroom. If I’m not back in five minutes, or you don’t hear me calling out to you and you think somebody has entered the house, call the police. You have 911 out here?”
“Of course.” Dee wanted to explain that it would take ages for them to get here, but Lacey was already halfway to the stairs, her borrowed pajama pants flapping against her legs. She swung around the newel post and paused, one hand on the banister.
“Any weapons in the house?”
Dee shook her head, then realized she’d only be another shadow in the deep dark of the guestroom and said softly, “No.”
“Lock yourself in,” Lacey repeated and sank away, her footfalls mere whispers on each carpeted stair.
Left alone in the blacked-out upper hall, Dee lowered the hand that she had stretched out after her friend without realizing it. The night crowded her, squeezing the breath from her throat and swallowing the last shreds of comfort left by Lacey’s presence. She crept to the top of the stairs and crouched, listening with all her might to the faint sounds of movement through the house. Lacey must be peering out the doors and windows before she stepped outside. With a thrill of horror, Dee realized she had not told Lacey where to find a key. Would her friend open a door, walk outside, and risk being locked out, at the mercy of whoever was out there? Or risk leaving a way in for a prowler intent on reaching Dee?
She couldn’t just lock herself in the bathroom, leaving herself no escape route. She could go down, give Lacey the keys, then hide on the main floor, where there were at least three ways out if she needed them. More if she counted windows.
“Lacey?” she whispered down the stairs, as loud as she dared. But of course there was no response. She crept three steps down, peering into the gloom below. No hint of starlight filtered through her drapes, which were drawn shut obsessively well. No way to know if someone was outside any particular window or door except by moving aside the drape. How many nights had she done just that — crept downstairs to peer out while trying not to move the cloth noticeably, always dreading being confronted by a face peering in?
Her ankle twinged, a reminder to keep moving or sit down. Which would it be: go downstairs and stand ready to help Lacey, or go hide and let someone else face the terror she was shirking?
Dee Phillips, she told herself fiercely, crouched in darkness on the third stair, You have survived broken bones, a broken marriage, law school, and the most cutthroat profession in the so-called civilized world. You will not hide while someone else defends your turf for you. She stood up straight, clutched her cellphone tight and the railing tighter, and descended, step by cautious step, into the abyss.
