"Lavene, Joyce & Jim - Mask of the Stranger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lavene Joyce)
Published by Awe-Struck E-Books ["http://www.awe-struck.net/"] http://www.awe-struck.net/ All Rights Reserved (c) 2000 ISBN 1-5874-9002-1
Prologue
He was out there again.
She could feel it. The proof would only take a step to the window, a careful lift of the blind. He would be there in the street. She was being stalked.
Sometimes, he was obvious. Staring up at her window from the corner. Standing in the white halo of the streetlight. Sometimes he hid himself, wearing the shadows of the night like a cloak.
But he was there. She knew by the faint prickle of her skin. By the sensitivity in her body, the restless movement of her mind. She always knew when he was there.
But who he was or why he was stalking her was a mystery.
So, she huddled in her apartment with its double locks and security system. She kept a phone by her bed with 911 dialed in already so she would only have to push the redial button.
Of course, that was only when she could bring herself to go into the bedroom. Most nights she spent in a chair, watching the door.
She'd bought a gun out of sheer desperation. But she hadn't been able to make herself load it. The bullets were still in their package, unopened. The gun was tucked into a drawer.
The police had been kind, at first. Even sympathetic. They were courteous and efficient in their cold, dispassionate way. But after coming a dozen times to her call on 911 and finding no one, they'd begun to tell her to get help.
They'd even come up with a name for her. Call-in Kelsey. She'd heard them laughing about it in the hallway one night as they were leaving.
"Not bad lookin'," the officer had joked, "but totally out of it."
Kelsey knew that he was there but the police couldn't find him. He vanished like a wisp of smoke, only to return again when she was alone.
She'd noticed him the first time about two weeks ago. It was late. She'd nearly worked past the time when the corner gas station closed, almost forgetting that her car had to have gas for the next day.
It was bitterly cold. Snow swept through the streets with the icy wind from Lake Michigan. The station was bustling with people. She'd consoled herself that she wasn't the only one to wait until it was almost too late that night. She climbed from her car, shuffling through the new snow to the pump, taking off her brown knit glove so that the gas smell wouldn't ruin it.
She had been thinking about the project she'd been working on that day. The gas gushed into the tank of her small, white car. Things had been going very well. Better than she could have guessed they would and she was feeling very pleased with herself.
It was then that she felt it for the first time. The faint lift of the hairs on the back of her neck. The slight shiver of awareness. The feeling that someone at the crowded station was watching her.
She looked around quickly, purposely, just in time to see him turn away. He had been watching her.
He was very tall. The long black coat he wore only added to the impression of height. He had powerful shoulders. He glanced to the side and she saw that he had dark hair, worn tied back at his neck. Snowflakes fell against it. White crystals against the jet of his hair.
He was willing to wait for what he wanted.
She knew that now. After the long week she'd spent watching him. She felt as though he'd become an intimate part of her, never far from her thoughts. Her life measured in terms of when he would be on the corner and where she felt safe.
Kelsey prodded herself out of her reverie to take those few steps to the window, abandoning the hollow safety zone her sofa provided her.
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