No Way Home (A Carly See FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 3)

PROLOGUE Sarah Tooley awoke to the sound of a low, whispering voice in the dark. “Don’t move.” Sarah didn’t immediately know where she was. She reflexively twitched and heard the voice again. “Don’t move, I said. I don’t want this to be painful.” Sarah froze in place, struggling to clear her mind. I’m at home, she realized. In bed. I was fast asleep. She felt the icy chill of fear creep over her body. Then she became aware of a sharp point touching her throat. A knife. She didn’t dare move. Whoever it was could s***h her throat in an instant if he chose to do so. A question formed on Sarah’s lips: “What do you want from me?” But she didn’t speak the words aloud. The answer seemed horrifyingly clear. She was alone in bed in her apartment at night, and an intruder was holding a blade at her throat. It wasn’t hard to guess what the intruder intended to do to her. “Please don’t do this,” she said in a voice that was hoarse with sleep and fear. “Please don’t.” The man let out a small gasp of surprise. “Do you think I want to … ?” His voice faded for a moment. “No, no, I wouldn’t think of that. Please don’t worry, I don’t mean you any harm. But you really mustn’t move. This blade is extremely sharp. I don’t want to cut your windpipe. That would be terrible, Sarah. You would suffer.” He knows my name. She was almost as puzzled as she was terrified. The man’s face was shadowy but visible in the dim light that spilled in through her apartment window. His expression was gentle, and his eyes were crinkled in a slight smile. And there was something familiar about him, although she couldn’t remember from where or when. Have I heard this voice before? Or is it just his face? She didn’t know. Somehow, though, his expression was all the more frightening for seeming almost friendly—frightening and grotesque and wrong. “Listen,” the man whispered. Listen to what? Then she realized—the couple who lived next door were shouting at each other, and their baby was crying. They argued a lot, and Sarah could always hear it through the flimsy wall that separated their apartments—although lately she’d gotten so accustomed to their late-night quarreling that she sometimes fell fast asleep even while it was going on. The man tilted his head. “I can’t make out their words, can you?” Sarah couldn’t either, but she didn’t risk a reply. Though often painfully loud, the couple’s voices were always too muffled for her to hear exactly what they were shouting at each other, except for an explosive obscenity now and then. The man sighed sympathetically. “What tragic lives those two must live,” he said. “And the baby too. What chance has the poor child in life, growing up around so much anger? So much hate? The cycle will repeat itself again and again, generation after generation.” He listened intently for a moment, then added, “Such a shame there’s nobody to stop it.” For the first time since this ordeal had begun, Sarah fleetingly wondered whether she might be dreaming. Her assailant’s words echoed her own frequent thoughts about the quarreling couple. She’d even said as much to her husband. “I feel so sorry for them, Scott,” she’d said. But Scott never shared her sympathy. He had a temper of his own, and when he heard the couple quarreling, he’d often charge down the hall and pound on the door and yell at them to shut up. A shouting match would ensue between Scott and the man inside, and other neighbors would start poking their heads through their doors to complain about the racket and … Scott! Sarah suddenly thought of something she needed to say. “My husband will be back at any minute.” The man looked disappointed as he shook his head. “Oh, Sarah, Sarah, please don’t lie to me.” “I—I’m not lying.” “You are. I know perfectly well that Scott works the midnight-to-eight shift at the Saunders Building. He won’t be here for hours. It’s really hurtful to lie to me like that.” Sarah was terrified into complete silence again. The noise on the other side of the wall continued. The man tilted his head curiously. “What are their names?” It took a moment for her to understand that he was asking about her neighbors. “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. The man’s eyes widened. “You don’t know the names of your next door neighbors?” “No.” “Don’t you have any friends at all here in this building?” Sarah didn’t reply for a moment. For some reason, it was hard for her to admit the truth. His voice was so compassionate that Sarah almost relaxed a little. “Please tell me,” he urged in a comforting tone. “I really want to know.” Maybe he really doesn’t mean me any harm. But then, why was he still holding the point of a blade at her throat? “Scott and I don’t know anybody here,” she finally blurted. “Such a shame. But that’s what life is like in these low-rent apartment buildings, isn’t it? So cold and impersonal. Everybody is half-afraid to make eye contact with anybody else. That must be very hard for you—especially since you and Scott scarcely ever see each other, with him working nights and you working days. You must be putting in—what?—45 or 50 hours a week at that gift shop.” Sarah felt a new surge of panic. He knows where I work. He even knew how much she worked. Again, she felt as though his face was somehow familiar. The man stroked her hair with his free hand. “But soon all that will be over. Soon you’ll be with Amber.” Amber! Sarah thought with a shudder. She felt a stab of grief as well as horror at the mention of the name. Amber Jordan had been her best friend since childhood. But she’d died a slow, lingering, painful death from leukemia about a month ago. Sarah became dimly aware of the man reaching into his pocket for something with his free hand. “I’m going to give you something very important,” he told her. “Whatever you do, you mustn’t let go of it. You will need it, I promise you.” He pushed something hard and round into the palm of her hand—a coin, Sarah thought. Then he closed her fingers around it. Then he moved the knife around to the side of her throat. “This doesn’t have to hurt much. No worse than cutting your finger, really—and only for a moment.” Sarah suddenly felt a swift, sharp pain at her throat. Then she felt a pulsating spray of blood. Her own blood. She tried to thrash loose, but the man held her down with a single strong hand in the center of her chest. She felt too weak to put up a struggle. Then came a wild dizziness, almost like being drunk. Numbness swept through her body. He’s right. It really doesn’t hurt. She felt on the verge of remembering where she’d seen that face. But she lost consciousness before that could happen.