Private S.W.A.T. Takeover. Julie Miller
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Two gunshots.
Death.
And she had a ringside seat.
The dog squirmed in her arms and Liza absently began to stroke his belly, feeling each and every rib. “Shh, baby.” She mouthed the words. She wasn’t the only witness to this crime.
Eyewitness.
Almost of their own volition—maybe it was a subconscious survival streak kicking in—her eyes began to take note of the details around her.
Black car. Big model. Missouri plate B? Or was that an 8? Oh hell. She couldn’t make out the number without moving.
But she could see the men inside. She had a clear look at the driver, at least. He was a muscular albino man, with hair as shockingly white as the tattoos twining around his arms and neck were boldly colored. In the passenger seat beside him sat a black man. He was so tall that his face was hidden by the shadows near the roof of the car’s interior. She could tell he was built like a lineman because he was having a devil of a time finding room enough to maneuver himself into his suit jacket.
The size of the black man was frightening enough, but the albino looked crazy scary, like he’d beat the crap out of anyone who stared crosswise at him.
She was staring now. Stop it!
Liza closed her eyes and turned away. She could note any damn detail she wanted, but if those crazy colorless eyes spotted her, she was certain there’d be no chance to tell anyone what she’d seen.
The gunshots had rent the air only a couple of minutes ago, but it felt like hours had passed before she heard the next sound. The sticky, raspy grind of metal on metal as someone opened the front door of the warehouse and closed it with an ominous clank behind him. At the sharp bite of heels against the pavement, she opened her eyes again. The black man was getting out of the car with an umbrella, opening the back door.
“No, Liza. Don’t look.” It was almost as if she could hear her mother’s voice inside her head, warning her to turn away from the eyes of a killer. “It’ll hurt too much.”
“But I need to see,” she argued, feeling the tears welling up and clogging her sinuses again. “It’s the only way I’ll be free of this nightmare.”
“Don’t look, sweetie. Don’t look.”
“I have to.”
Liza squinted hard, catching sight of the back of a pinstriped suit climbing into the backseat of the car.
“No!” She threw her head back. She’d missed him. She hadn’t seen the man who’d fired the gunshots.
The next several minutes passed by in a timeless blur. The car drove away. She’d seen fogged up windows, and a face through the glass. But it had been too vague. Too fast.
She didn’t know what the third man looked like.
As she had dreamed so many times before, what happened next was as unclear as the mist off the river that filled the air. But Liza was inside the warehouse now, cradling the weightless black and tan dog in her arms, creeping through the shadows.
If there were gunshots, if there were killers, then there must be….
“Oh, my God.”
Liza had no free hand to stifle her shock or the pitying sob that followed.
In the circle of harsh lamplight cast by the bare bulb hanging over the abandoned office door was a man. Lying in a spreading pool of blood beside an overturned chair, his broken, bruised body had been laid out in a mock expression of reverence. His twisted fingers were folded over his stomach. The jogging suit he wore had been zipped to the neck, and the sleeve had been used to wipe the blood from his face.
“Stay with me, baby.” She set the dog on the floor, keeping one foot on the leash she’d looped around his neck in case he should find the energy to try to run from her again. Although she was in grad school learning how to treat animals, not humans, she knelt beside the man’s carefully arranged body and placed two shaking fingers to the side of his neck. She already knew he was dead.
“Remember.” Liza heard the voice inside her head. Not her own. Not her mother’s. “Remember.”
“I’m trying.”
Barely able to see through her tears, Liza pulled her cell phone from her pocket and turned it on. She punched in 9-1-1. “I need to report a murder.”
“Remember.”
“Shut up.” She tried to silence the voice in her head. She wasn’t on the phone anymore. She was kneeling beside the body, reaching out to him.
The dead man’s eyes popped open.
Liza screamed. She tried to scoot away. “No!”
His bloody hand caught hers in an ice-cold grip and he jerked his face right up to hers. “Remember!”
“No-o-o!” Liza’s own screams woke her from her nightmare. She thrashed her way up to a sitting position. Panting hard, she was barely able to catch her breath. And though she felt the haunting chill of her cursed dreams deep in her soul, she was burning up.
“What the hell? What…”
She became aware of wiping her hands frantically, and then she stilled.
On the very next breath she snatched up the pen and notepad from her bedside table, just as she had been trained to do. Write down every detail she remembered from her dream before the memories eluded her. Dead body. Cold hand.
“Remember,” she pleaded aloud. Before the body. There were gunshots. She put pen to paper. “Dead man. Two shots.” And…and…
Blank.
“Damn it!” Liza hurled the pen and pad across the room into a darkness as lonely and pervasive as the shadows locked up inside her mind.
A low-pitched woof and a damp nuzzle against her hand reminded her she wasn’t alone. She was home. She was safe. She flipped on the lamp beside her bed and with the light, her senses returned.
Three sets of eyes stared at her.
She could almost smile. Almost. “Sorry, gang.”
The warm, wet touch on her fingers was a dog’s nose. She quickly scooped the black and tan terrier mix into her lap and hugged him, scratching his flanks as she rocked back and forth. Liza couldn’t feel a single rib on him now. “Good boy, Bruiser. Thanks for taking care of Mama. I’m sorry she scared you.”
Not for the first time Liza wondered if the scrappy little survivor remembered that night more clearly than her own fog of a memory allowed her to. She traced the soft white stripe at the top of his head. “I wish you could tell me what we saw. Then we could make this all go away.”
But she and her little guardian weren’t alone. The nightmare might have chilled her on the inside, but her legs were toasty warm, caught beneath a couple of quilts and the lazy sprawl of her fawn-colored greyhound, Cruiser. “So I woke you, too, huh?”
Cruiser outweighed Bruiser by a good sixty pounds, and could easily outrun him, but a guard dog she was not. She was the cuddler, the comforter, the pretty princess who preferred to offer the warmth of her body rather than her concern. Liza reached down and stroked the dog’s sleek, muscular belly as she rolled onto her back. “I know you’re worried, too, deep down inside. I wish I could