Free Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions by Rosemarie A D'Amico Page B

and the only light came from the outside, through the large windows.
    “Hello?” I called out tentatively.
    My stomach was knotted with nerves but I walked through the eating area into the kitchen. I found a corridor off the kitchen to the left and I peered into complete darkness. I stupidly started down the hallway, with my arms outstretched, feeling for a light switch on either side of the wall. A sound came from behind me but before I could turn around I was sprawled on the floor. I wasn’t hurt but I cried out in surprise and quickly tried to scramble to my feet.
    Whoever had pushed me, shoved at my back again and this time I yelled in frustration and anger.
    “Stop.”
    I was on my hands and knees and before I could turn around, a fistful of knuckles slammed into the side of my head. The force of the punch landed me on my side and my hands automatically covered my face. I kicked at my attacker and tried to see who it was but I could only see a large figure standing above me in the darkness.
    My ears were ringing from the punch and fear screamed up and down my spine. But no screams or sounds came out of me. I was paralyzed with fright, afraid to move. All of this had happened in seconds but time seemed endless. The body above me reached down and grabbed my suit jacket at the shoulder and heaved me a few inches off the floor. I hit out at an arm and tried to push away but I should have left my hands over my face because the next blow knocked me out cold.
    The patrolmen told me that the intruder had left through the door in the kitchen that led to one of the internal staircases in the building. I was nursing a wallop of a headache and holding an ice-pack to the side of my head, while they checked the perimeter. They informed me that there were two exits to two different stairways and they were sure the kitchen exit had been used because the door was unlocked. That stairwell went all the way to the basement of the building where anyone could leave the building without being seen.
    Ted the doorman was standing nervously against the window, turning his hat round and round in his hands.
    When I had come to and called him on the intercom I discovered on the kitchen wall, he and Lou had rushed up to the apartment.
    “Shouldn’t have happened,” he kept mumbling, over and over. I think the poor man was in more shock than I was, and Lou had taken control of the situation and immediately called 911.
    The scene was somewhat reminiscent of what had happened to me several months ago, and I felt a certain sense of deja vu. That time someone had broken into my apartment, while I slept. Afterwards my apartment had been filled with police while I sat, dazed and confused. And pissed off.
    And I was pissed off again. I had sworn that I wouldn’t find myself vulnerable again, after the last time, and here I had walked right into it. The promise to myself to learn how to defend myself had never been acted on.
    I looked up at the patrolman standing in front me.
    “We’ve checked, and it seems he came in the same way he left. All of the other perimeter doors are locked. Ted here tells us no one could get past him in the lobby, so we’re assuming it was a professional job of lock picking. Must have come through the basement.”
    I nodded in agreement because I didn’t know the layout of the building. It all seemed feasible to me. But why this apartment? So, I asked the question.
    “A number of reasons, ma’am,” the cop told me. “My best guess is that your attacker read that the man who owned this apartment died and thought the place would be an easy mark. We can’t tell if anything’s been stolen, but the place doesn’t seem disturbed. We think you interrupted him in his tracks.”
    When they had left I asked Lou to take me to my hotel. I needed to get out of here, and in spite of my throbbing head, I was full of nervous energy.
    It was only 8:30 when I got back to my suite and I paced the rooms, chain-smoking and thinking. I