Free In the Air Tonight by Lori Handeland Page B

so had Troy.
    After kicking off my shoes—they’d been christened too—I took the sweater into the bathroom and filled the sink. The garment was in desperate need of a presoak. It appeared Susan—or maybe Troy—had enjoyed grape jelly for lunch.
    I stepped into the bedroom and felt a draft. Ghost or …
    I glanced toward the front door. “Damn.”
    Unless I locked the door, and usually I did—I could almost swear I had—the thing blew open in any stray breeze.
    I moved toward it in nothing but my bra and jeans, hoping the UPS man wouldn’t suddenly appear on the landing—it had happened before—and got a chill the instant I stepped into the living room. I turned my head.
    Ghost this time. Meat-cleaver maniac. Big guy. Ugly. Bald. Looked like a member of the Hell’s Angels. Did they still have those? I’d be scared if he were real.
    “Take a hike,” I said, and continued on my way.
    The blade splintered the doorjamb I’d just passed.
    I stared—blinking, stunned. Ghosts couldn’t splinter wood.
    Thankfully, he’d sunk the cleaver in so deeply he was having a hard time yanking it back out. Then, suddenly, he did.
    It was going to be a shame that I hadn’t taken the time to pull on a sweatshirt, although the UPS man seeing my tacky, worn bra would soon be the least of my worries.
    “Get down!”
    I kissed carpet.
    The report was louder than today’s fire alarm, but staccato— bang, bang, bang —and over more quickly, yet my ears rang just the same. A current that smelled of smoke swirled past, then something thudded next to my head.
    The meat cleaver had missed me by an inch, slicing into the carpet and not my brain. The maniac fell right next to me, his weight causing the floorboards to jump beneath my cheek. I stared into his dead eyes.
    Talk about a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.
    *   *   *
    Bobby kicked the weapon away from the intruder’s hand. He’d seen enough dead men to know that this one was. Still, he was taking no chances.
    He’d left the school in a rush, thinking Raye would be safe inside. He was nearly an hour away, driving past fields dotted with pumpkins, before it occurred to him that the kids were not imprisoned inside all day. They imbibed in that dangerous activity known as “recess,” and their teachers probably did too.
    He’d turned around, then gotten stuck in a bumper-to-bumper jam when an eighteen-wheeler had jackknifed on the expressway. After taking the next exit, he had become horribly lost—the GPS on both his phone and the rental car telling him his destination lay on the other side of a field dotted with massive windmills. Unfortunately the road it instructed him to take through that field, in an annoyingly robotic voice he wanted to reach into the machine and rip out by the throat, did not exist.
    He’d arrived at New Bergin Elementary after school let out. Seeing a janitor dumping garbage, Bobby flashed his badge, and determined that nothing worse than an unscheduled fire alarm had broken up the day. As it was Friday, all of the teachers had already gone home.
    Terrified he would find Raye bleeding and branded in an alley, he sped to her apartment, relieved to pass no commotion on the streets. He parked in front of her building and ran up the stairs. He arrived just in time.
    His chest hurt. He couldn’t decide if his fear had been worse upon seeing the maniac so close, huge blade lifted to plunge into her back, or seeing the knife tumble from the man’s hand toward her head.
    He had no idea how the thing had missed her. Halfway down it had shifted, as if a sudden breeze, or invisible hand, had pushed it just enough.
    “Are you all right?” Bobby went onto one knee, laid a finger to the man’s neck. As expected, the maniac had no pulse.
    Raye continued to hug the carpet. He began to worry that the intruder had done something more than sink his cleaver into the wall. She was missing a shirt.
    Bobby tried not to be distracted by the long,