Page 1 of Danger Close

Prologue

Teri

Ten Years Ago

Phoenix, Arizona

Someone was following me. I could feel it in the back of my skull. It was unsettling, the feel of someone breathing on your neck when you think you’re completely alone.

I thought I could hear the sound of someone’s footsteps as I walked the short distance from the grocery store to my house. It wasn’t even that dark! We were just at the end of sunset, when the peach sky turned blue, before changing to black beyond the jagged desert mountains.

Everytime I looked behind me, there was no one. No one behind, no one in front. But that fear was still there.

With my grocery bag slung over my shoulder, I quickened my pace.

But the sound was there again—like an echo of my feet, but it was just slightly off. Like someone was in step with me. I began to jog, sparing a glance over my shoulderagain,and this time, I thought I saw something. Like a shadow in the corner of your eye that disappears the moment you look at it.

No, no, no! Not again. Not this time!

My heart pounding, I ran. I ran as fast as I could, as hard as I could. Straight to my apartment, to the doorman who greeted me, “Hello, Ms. Guerro,” and right to the elevator where I pressed the button like a madwoman, begging it to arrive faster.

It was still strange to hear that name. Guerro. A name I’d received in my brief marriage to a man with a Filipino father and Spanish mother.

I stepped inside when it dinged and the doors slid open. Then I pressed the ‘close door’ button so often and so hard I thought that I would break it!

When the doors closed and no one was behind me, I finally relaxed. Slumping against the wall, I laughed at myself for my ridiculousness. I placed my hand over my heart, taking deep breaths to calm myself.

“Teresa, tu es paranoïaque!”I chided myself in my native French.

When I arrived at the tenth floor, I had already steadied myself. I opened the door to my empty apartment, a place so devoid since my daughter left two years ago for the Army. I thought that was a silly thing for her to do, as bright as she was.

She should be going to university. I would have found a way to pay for it so she would not be burdened by student loans. But she said that the Army would pay for her to go to school. However, my maternal heart only saw a simple, white cross, above a grave. Or her, in a hospital bed, missing a limb, or an eye, or something worse that I could not allow myself to dwell on because it would lead me into panic.

So far, though, it seemed that my daughter was doing well, from what few phone calls I’d received. She sounded happy, even though I felt myself dying a little each day I could not lay my eyes on her.

I dropped my grocery bag on the kitchen counter, lit only by the open windows that faced the darkening night.

I hummed to myself gently, as I put away the items one by one—even the orange juice with extra pulp which I hated but kept buying, because my daughter had loved it. So now, I was simply used to it.

Then, that feeling was back. The breath at the back of my neck. The fear of ghosts from a past living nightmare creeping into the present.

I mentally chastised myself again. I was growing paranoid in my loneliness. I was sure that was it. Until I heard it… the slow, cruel chuckle, and low, slow drawl.

“Hello, Baby.” His cruel, ice-colored eyes grazed over me, before his thin lips spread into a smirk. “You’ve let yourself go.”

I dropped the juice as I let out a blood curdling scream.

Thus began the worst night of my life.

I’d spent most of it in my own mind, remembering a time when I still believed in fairy tales. I clung to it so fiercely that when I eventually returned to my body, it was as though I’d woken from a dream into a nightmare.

As strong as my mind, my memories, might be, they weren’t strong enough to block out the sight of him cleaning himself on the garments he shredded off my body, as he moaned with pleasure, “Oh, baby, that was so good, I forgive you for burning the house down. I can’t wait to do it again.”

He winked, then left, slamming the door behind him.

I silently screamed, weeping my humiliation into the worn-out rug.

Chapter 1