As she turned down her street, Rachel told herself to forget about it. That particular question had been asked numerous times before and had yet to be problematic. The dream made the question sinister and made her remember things best forgotten. She needed to compose herself and reprise the role of Rachel Thomas, a woman with her life together. Letting those other thoughts and memories consume her would only destroy the new life she had built.
She longed to hop in the shower and wash off the residue of her afternoon class. A hot shower would go far in awakening her dull senses and erasing unwelcome memories. Besides, a shower was a necessity since she had a dinner date with Mark in a half hour.
She smiled and pulled her car into the driveway. She grabbed her duffel bag to go inside the house. It would be the perfect ending to her day to spend time with him. Mark had been a wonderful addition to her life, her light at the end of the tunnel in which she had been living, and it made the thought of leaving him so terrible.
He had a way about him, though Rachel couldn’t quite put her finger on why he had such an effect on her. His uncanny ability made her forget herself and swept her into another world, where the concept of her and Mark had always existed. Everything he offered was hers for the taking, in exchange for the price of continuous nightmares.
When she reached the front door, she unlocked the deadbolts and pushed open the door. The security alarm squealed at her. She had it installed a month earlier, after the recurring nightmares drove her to her first panic attack. She thought the alarm would add to her sense of security and keep the nightmares and panic attacks at bay. So far, it had failed.
Rachel opened the white door on the alarm box and punched in her code. 7439. The display still read “armed” and the shrieking alarm crescendoed. She hit the buttons again. 7439. No response. She smothered the panic rising from her gut and tried again. 7439. The alarm continued its song.
“Dammit!” She threw her bag down by the hallway table and started out the front door. She thought about trying her code one more time, but decided against it since the code didn’t work the first three times. She’d have to disarm the alarm.
A computer voice informed her that the police knew of her intrusion. Rachel froze on her front porch, consumed by the thought of disarming the alarm. The idea never should have popped into her mind. Sure, she could take out the alarm, but she wouldn’t. If the police showed up while she worked on the alarm, she’d have a lot of explaining to do.
The phone rang, an uninvited accompanist to the shrill music of the alarm. Rachel ignored the sounds. She left the front door open and lowered herself down onto the front porch, incredulous she would ever consider manually stopping the alarm. But the disturbing thought brought about a greater terror. She could take out the alarm faster than she could enter her code, and there were others who could do the same. People not so forgiving.
7943. Rachel closed her eyes. That was the right code. Police sirens added to the symphony behind her. Too late to enter the right code now.
A few moments later, a police car pulled against the curb. Rachel stood up and brushed off the back of her jeans. Two officers, one male and one female, climbed out of the patrol car and walked across the lawn toward her.
Rachel called to them while they approached. “I punched the wrong code into my alarm by mistake.”
“What’s your name?” the male officer asked when he reached her. He held a notepad, clipboard, and pen in his hands.
“Rachel Thomas.”
“You didn’t answer your phone when the security company called,” he said. “Is everything okay?”
“When the alarm went off, I came outside and I didn’t hear the phone ring. Look my code is 7943. Can you verify with the security company?”
The male officer didn’t answer, but wrote in his notepad. Rachel glanced down at their names pinned to their uniforms. Scrawny and mousy, Officer Duncan’s nameplate was askew on her disheveled uniform. Scuff marks stood out on her shoes and matched the food stain on her pants by her right knee.
Officer Shearn, her male partner, towered above her with his perfectly pressed uniform. He stared at Rachel from behind thick glasses. “Do you have some identification, Mrs. Thomas?” he asked.
“Ms. Thomas,” Rachel said, “and yes. My driver’s license is in the house.” Rachel’s heart sunk with the words. Her current driver’s license was as fraudulent as it had been in every state she lived. She had not yet encountered police in her travels, and she prayed the license would stand up under scrutiny.
Rachel started for the front door, but the officers didn’t move. “Did you want to come into the house with me?” she asked.
They followed her inside the house this time, but with vigilant and deliberate movements. Officer Duncan kept a wary eye on Rachel.
Rachel reached for her duffel bag, but Officer Duncan stopped her before she could pick it up. “I’ll get it for you,” she said.
She opened Rachel’s bag and pulled out her purse. She sat the purse down on the hall table and rifled through its contents. The search seemed to take much longer than it should, and Rachel wondered if such a lengthy search was normal procedure. She started to ask, when Officer Duncan extracted a driver’s license, studied it, and handed the license to her partner.
“Can I use your phone?” Officer Shearn asked.
“Sure. It’s in the kitchen, through there.” Rachel pointed across the living room toward the kitchen. Rachel concentrated on controlling her breathing, and her heart rate increased. Why did he need to use her phone? He had a radio on the shoulder of his uniform, so he had no need for a phone.
Officer Duncan moved closer to Rachel and brushed away a strand of dirty brown hair that escaped from the tight bun on the back of her head. Stale cigarette smoke emanated from Officer Duncan’s clothes, and Rachel had to stop herself from covering her nose.
The policewoman stared at her with skeptical, probing eyes, and Rachel’s paranoia grew. Did she even know for a fact these were real police officers? What if they were legitimate cops and Officer Shearn ran a background check on her? What would come back?
Deep down, Rachel didn’t care what the officers would find out about her. She didn’t even mind if they learned her driver’s license was fake. A background check would throw up a flare for the wrong eyes to see. Dark eyes searching for nothing other than her.
“Rachel!”
She rushed out of the hallway and onto the front porch. Mark ran full-speed across the lawn toward the house.
“Wait right there,” Officer Duncan said to him. She placed her right hand on her gun holster.
Rachel hoped the motion was instinctual and not because she wanted to use her gun against Mark. Rachel’s own gun was tucked in the drawer of her bedside table in her bedroom, too far away for her to get if the officers turned out to be anything other than sworn peacekeepers.
Mark halted at the edge of the driveway. “She’s my girlfriend,” he said, his words tinged with annoyance, as if the officer should have known.
“It’s okay,” Rachel said. “He’s telling the truth.”
Officer Duncan gave Mark the okay to move forward.
Mark went to Rachel, pulled her into his arms, and squeezed her tight. “What happened? Are you okay?” He released his hold on her and pulled back so he could look her over.
“I’m fine,” Rachel said. “I entered the wrong code into my alarm. It went off and the police came.”
Mark’s shoulders dropped and worry departed from his face. “I’m glad it’s nothing serious.”
Eyes bore through Rachel, and her skin crawled with paranoia. She shifted her gaze toward Officer Duncan, who wore the same peculiar expression as she did earlier. Her eyes never left Rachel, inspecting her as if Officer Duncan knew her from somewhere. She shivered at Officer Duncan’s stare and tried to squash her overactive imagination. Rachel looked back at Mark, who gave her a warm smile.
“Everything checked out,” Officer Shearn said, a
nd he walked down the front steps. “I called the security company back and gave them the all clear. They’re resetting the alarm right now. Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“Positive,” Rachel insisted. At her words, the alarm stopped, though it continued echoing in her ears.
“Would you like us to check the rest of your house to be safe?” Officer Duncan asked her.
Rachel hesitated for a moment. There was no harm in the police looking through the house, but something in Officer Duncan’s voice twisted Rachel’s stomach with anxiety. “No, thank you,” Rachel said. “I think we’ll be fine since I set off the alarm by mistake and it wasn’t an intruder.”
“I noticed your license doesn’t have this address listed on it,” Officer Duncan said.
Rachel smiled and tried to quell Officer Duncan’s suspicions. “I’m sorry, officer. I moved here almost three months ago and I haven’t found time to make it to the DMV.”
“You’ll want to get it fixed right away,” Officer Shearn said. He ripped a sheet of paper off his clipboard and handed it to Rachel with her driver’s license. “It’s a warning for your false alarm. There isn’t a fine this time, but if you have another one, we’ll have no choice but to fine you.”
Rachel took the paper. “Thank you. I appreciate your quick response.”
“No problem,” Officer Shearn said. “Be more careful in the future with your code, and fix your driver’s license.” He walked toward his police car.
Officer Duncan kept her eyes on Rachel for a moment, and then followed Officer Shearn to the car.
After the officers drove away, Mark put his hands on Rachel’s shoulders. “When I saw the police here...” He pulled her close, and placed his hand on the back of her head. Worry filled his jagged breathing. “I thought something happened to you.”
She rested her cheek on his shoulder, and pressed her face into his neck. His tight hold comforted her, and she did everything she could not to cry. The past couple months had stretched her emotional stability to a breaking point. Her overwhelming feelings for Mark competed for control against paranoia and anxiety.
Her obsession with security had reached an all-time high, having added the alarm last month and a hinge lock to the back door a few days ago. She fought the urge to put bars on the windows and lock herself up, away from the world. Everywhere she went, she looked over her shoulder and in her rearview mirror.
All the while, she made sure Mark remained oblivious to her self-destructive behavior and naïve to her torments, as well as the cause of them. No matter what it took, she intended to keep it that way.
Rachel pulled away from him. Hand-in-hand, they walked into her house. “I haven’t had a chance to shower yet,” she told him after closing the front door and securing the locks.
“I’m in no rush. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I promise.” She slipped her driver’s license and the written warning into her purse on the hallway table. “I’m going to take a quick shower, if you don’t mind. Then we can go wherever you want for dinner.”
“Unless you’d rather stay in tonight,” Mark said. “We could order something for delivery. Maybe Chinese?”
Her taste buds jumped at the thought of fried rice and sesame chicken, and the world was back to right once more. “That sounds good.” She leaned over and picked up her bag. “I’ll be out soon.” Her lips pecked his cheek, and she headed for the bathroom.
Chapter Eight
Rachel disappeared into the bathroom, and Mark’s smile faded. As he held her, she erected another wall between them. The way she tensed against him, and then relaxed as if nothing was wrong. But something was wrong. His conviction of that grew stronger every day.
Still standing in the hallway by the front door where Rachel left him, Mark caught sight of her purse sitting on the hall table. The officer’s words came back to him about her driver’s license having the wrong address. He peered down the hall and listened to the faint sound of the shower. Rachel would be occupied for at least another ten to fifteen minutes.
Mark stood over her purse, his hands ready to rifle through it to get out her driver’s license. As far as he knew, she had always lived in this house since she came to Wichita. He couldn’t fathom the reason why her driver’s license would have a different address.
Mark left the foyer without sneaking a look at her license, and admonished his suspicious thoughts. He couldn’t spy into Rachel’s personal items, not without asking about the discrepancy. She might have lived at a different address before she moved to this house. He must have misunderstood that she always lived in this house, as the wrong address had no other explanation. Yet it seemed his misunderstandings were piling up over time.
He stepped into the living room and glanced around for some kind of clue as to what mysteries controlled Rachel’s life. He partly blamed his suspicions on the house. Aside from the feeling he had stepped back into the days of peace signs and orange Volkswagen vans, the house brought about no emotions, heightened no senses.
Cold and dead, the house lacked in the feeling of being a home. No pictures on the walls, no plants or flowers, none of the small touches to make him think Rachel and Danielle lived here. There was the candle on the coffee table, but he had been in the living room with Rachel when Danielle brought in the candle and set it there.
Mark’s house at least had the sense of home. The pictures of Greg and Anna on his fireplace mantel. The mesmerizing Salvador Dali print hanging in his dining room. Two bookshelves full of broken spines in the living room. Rachel’s house had none of those little things.
Mark couldn’t be sure, but he had a hunch not one item in their house belonged to either girl, as if Rachel and Danielle had come to Wichita with nothing more than their clothes. Even the books on the short oak bookshelf in the back of the living room were ones Mark recognized as coming from his store, ones he had sold to Rachel. Their house felt more like a hotel, rather than a home in which they planned on staying.
He moved into the kitchen to get the menu and order dinner from their favorite Chinese restaurant. He stopped halfway across the linoleum floor, and his eyes fell on her backdoor. He counted the locks. One on the doorknob, two deadbolts, a chain, and a hinge lock. The hair stood up on his arms. First she added the security alarm last month, and now a new hinge lock. It seemed Rachel wanted to keep someone out.
A memory flooded his mind. Rachel had blamed their landlord for putting the excessive locks on the front door. Danielle later said they had the locks added because of a break-in at their old home. Now, a security alarm and a hinge lock had been added. Not for the first time in the past two months, Mark realized there were too many contradictions in the things Rachel told him.
Mark looked away from the door. He had suspected Rachel of dishonesty several times, but her motives eluded him. Locks seemed such a trivial thing to lie about, unless Rachel had something to hide, something she didn’t want to share with him. Maybe Rachel wanted to keep more than burglars out of her life.
Mark swallowed hard. He didn’t need to think those things. He wanted to keep her as part of his life, and doubting her would only drive her away. He went to the telephone and opened the drawer underneath it. He dug through a stack of menus until he found the one he wanted.
Rachel came up behind him right after he finished ordering their dinner. She slid her arms around his waist and laid her head down on his back, hair still moist from the shower.
Mark didn’t mind the dampness penetrating the back of his shirt. The gesture kicked his heart into gear, and he took her hands, entwining his fingers with hers. Her smile warmed his back, and he closed his eyes, forgetting his earlier concerns. He had exaggerated the situation. Nothing was out of the ordinary with Rachel except his imagination.
“When’s dinner coming?” she mumbled.
“Thirty minutes. Did you have a good shower?”
“Of course.”
He turned around and she adjusted her ho
ld on him. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Is Danielle getting off work soon?”
“Not until ten. Why?”
“I want to know how much time I have you to myself. It’s bad enough I already had to share you with the police.”
Rachel frowned. “I don’t like the way the policewoman looked at me.”
Mark chuckled. “Why? Did you knock over a liquor store on your way home?”
All humor from his statement was lost on Rachel, who didn’t crack even a small smile. “I don’t know why, but she was looking at me funny.”
“Maybe she was jealous. It’s not every day people get to see someone as beautiful as you.”
Rachel laughed and moved around him. She closed the menu for the restaurant and put it away in the drawer with the rest of the menus. “You are so full of it.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and gave them a light squeeze. “I’m telling the truth, Rach. You’re an angel.”
A sharp intake of breath, tense muscles, and cords rising up from her neck. A second later, she was back to normal, and Mark questioned whether the momentary change had occurred, but he knew better. Another wall had gone up.
He turned her around and took her hands in his.
Rachel shied away from his gaze and bit down on her lip. “What did you order us for dinner?”
He smiled, knowing her real question. “Don’t worry, I asked for extra fortune cookies for you. What was it about the way she looked at you?”
“I don’t know. Creepy, I guess.”
Mark recalled the woman to his mind, along with the expression on her face when she looked at Rachel. She seemed curious at first, but Mark remembered seeing something beneath the officer’s eyes. More than just a normal glance, the officer studied Rachel, as if memorizing her features.
Definitely creepy.
Chapter Nine
Officer Shelly Duncan stopped pacing her kitchen tiles and ran her hands through her hair. She collapsed into a chair and rested her elbows on the small kitchen table, tired of wrestling with her conscience. Her good angel always lost anyway, having been weakened over time. It was all Frank’s fault. If he hadn’t taken up heroin as his drug of choice, she never would have been in this position.