Free Heart Stopper by R J Samuel Page B

hurried into her house, locking the door behind her, switching on the lights in the hallway, living room and kitchen as she went. She spent the next few hours sitting on the deck looking through her notes, but every half hour she stood for a few minutes beside the small front room window peering out at the empty road. She gave up any pretence of study at eleven, deciding on a shower and bed.
    ∞
     
    Priya turned the shower off. The bathroom was quiet, breathing in and out in time to the wind seeping through the open window. She tried to listen through the drips, her ears rang with the stubborn residue of a recent sound, a sound that wasn't water flowing, a sound that had cut through the swirl of water around her head. The bedroom through the closed door was silent. She turned the tap back on and the water rushed down over her. She rotated the temperature control, toward H, on and on, till her skin felt white hot.
    She heard it again from under the stream of water, what sounded like the metallic screech of a cat’s wail. This time she turned off the shower and stepped out of the stall, wet prints settling in her wake. Switching off the bathroom light she let her eyes adjust to the darkness outside before sidling to the window to stare out at the deck of the house and the field and sea beyond. She had forgotten to leave on the outdoor lights and the back of the house was drenched in its own shadow. She couldn’t see the dirt track that ran beside the house from the road and down alongside the field.
    The reflection of the moon on the ocean normally calmed her, but tonight the trembling glints of light smiled vacant and aimless. She slowed her breathing listening and the sea strained to listen with her. The sniff of seaweed drifted through the moist air. She saw the flicker of a light in the shadow of the back door, for just a second, and then it disappeared gulped up by the darkness.
    Goosebumps had poked up on her arms and the water on her skin and around her feet was drying. She grabbed a towel from the rail and hugged it to her, keeping her eyes fixed on the spot where the light had appeared. She waited and her eyes and ears adjusted, but there was no further light or movement or sound from the deck.
    She gave up her bathroom vigil after half an hour and crawled to bed. She got up four times during the night to go to the bathroom window and to the guest bedroom at the front to look out of the window there, before returning to bed. The night passed without any further sighting of the dark car and in silence apart from a restless sleep feathered with dreams of cats crying.

CHAPTER NINE
     
    Tuesday, July 19, 2011

    The diplomat was tired. The weekend had been long and lonely. He had rattled around in the house, trying not to think, but only thinking. Thinking while he ate his badly cooked meals, thinking while he practiced with the device, thinking while he took out the garbage. Thoughts of death. Not his. If everything went as planned, not his. Thoughts of a woman he met every year. A politician who was doing her job. Who felt so strongly about her country that she wanted to protect it from what she considered the grasping nature of other countries. So she championed a cause and she would be signing it into being the day after their meeting. Did she deserve to die for that? The diplomat’s only answer was that he loved his country too, and it didn’t deserve to die.

    As the diplomat had lain in bed and tried not to think, he had realized his hand lay on his collarbone, a habit he had already formed after just 9 days.

    He had 13 days.

CHAPTER TEN
     
    Tuesday, July 19, 2011

    It was 9.00 a.m. when Priya arrived at work. The clinic car park was full and most of the staff seemed to be around. Priya gave Clodagh a questioning look; the receptionist was on the phone, but she covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “Meeting at 10 a.m. in the boardroom. Mary sent around an email. They’ve been in for ages, even before I