One Last Breath Page 3

Her heart hammered wildly as she tried to think. What was happening?

  A few possibilities came to mind, and she stifled a sob. Cecelia was right. She never should have ventured out here alone at night. At the very least, she should have brought a weapon. Mace was practically invented for situations like this, and she kept a vial in her nightstand. Why hadn’t she brought it?

  God, this man was heavy. His knee pressed firmly into her spine, and he seemed to be crouching there, waiting for something. What was he planning to do with her? And why didn’t he move?

  Maybe someone was coming.

  She tried to listen. Shouts carried over from the boathouse, but she couldn’t hear clearly because of the rain. An engine roared to life, and she recognized it as belonging to her boat.

  Oh, Lord, were they leaving? If Josh and his friend left, she’d be totally alone with this maniac. She needed to get someone’s attention. Fast.

  She kept perfectly still. When the pressure at her back lessened a fraction, she summoned every ounce of strength she had and thrust her body sideways.

  He didn’t budge. Everything she could muster, and he didn’t even flinch. The engine noise changed, signaling the boat reversing out of the slip.

  She started to weep.

  Would Cecelia get worried? Would she come looking for her or go get Robert? Maybe they’d find her in a ditch somewhere. Or washed up on the shore, all tangled in the salt grass.

  Suddenly, the weight disappeared. The attacker yanked her to her feet. Feenie faced the boathouse with its two empty slips.

  She let out a shriek, but then the hand clamped back over her mouth, and a powerful arm hooked around her waist.

  “Feenie?” Someone called in the distance. “Feenie, where are you?” It was Cecelia, and she was getting closer.

  The arm tightened.

  “Can you swim?” he growled.

  Was he going to drown her? She was torn between wishing Cecelia would find her and hoping she’d stay as far away as possible.

  “Nod your head, yes or no,” he ordered.

  She remained silent, paralyzed with terror and getting dizzy from lack of air.

  “Nod your head!”

  She nodded yes.

  The hand vanished, and she doubled over, gulping down oxygen. Then the ground disappeared, and she plunged face-first into the water.

  Feenie peered over the photography editor’s shoulder at the computer screen.

  “Are you sure we can’t enlarge it any more?” she asked. “I can barely tell anything from this.”

  Drew Benson surveyed the grainy image on the monitor. “How ‘bout using a real camera next time?”

  He was right. The camera had been on clearance at Wal-Mart, an idiot-proof point-and-shoot for $39.99. Feenie had bought it along with the black sweatshirt just before going to Josh’s.

  “Cut me a break,” she said. “I’m an amateur here.”

  Drew looked her up and down and lifted his eyebrows in agreement. “Nice look you’ve got going, by the way.”

  “Thanks. I call it ‘swamp chic.’”

  After fishing the camera—and herself—out of the water, Feenie had made Cecelia take her to the newspaper office, hoping someone in the photo lab could develop her film. Cecelia had pitched a fit, of course, saying they should go straight to the police. But Feenie had talked her out of it. After all, what would she say? That she’d been sneaking around her ex-husband’s house with a camera, and someone had the gall to confront her? It sounded ridiculous. Besides, a guy from the newspaper checked police reports every morning, and if she filed a complaint, it would be all over town by noon tomorrow. Feenie had had her fill of being grist for the local gossip mill during her divorce.

  So now she was standing in Drew’s office, dripping mud all over his linoleum floor. Her jeans were coated with muck and grass, and her hair had gone into extreme frizz mode.

  Luckily, Drew had a pretty high threshold for eccentricity. He was the only man Feenie knew who wore a ponytail to work and still managed to be taken seriously. It probably helped that he was a genius with a camera. Feenie thanked her lucky stars he’d been working late tonight. If anyone could get a useful print out of her waterlogged camera, it was Drew. Sure enough, he’d managed to develop her film and upload it onto the computer in less than an hour. Feenie had taken three shots, but the last two were hopelessly blurred.

  She inched closer to the computer, and her tennis shoes slurped. “You’re sure there’s nothing else we can do?” she asked.

  Drew used the mouse to zoom out. The picture of Josh standing aboard the boat filled the screen.

  “Well, we can print this, but it won’t help. The quality’s terrible. Why’d you go at night, anyway? Would’ve been much easier to get a good shot during the day.”

  Obviously. But tonight was the only time Feenie had felt reasonably sure Josh would be gone. The Wednesday poker game was a fixture in his life, had been for years. And Feenie knew better than to show up during a workday. Josh was notorious for taking long lunches and leaving early for fishing excursions.

  “I didn’t think Josh’d be home,” Feenie said. “Plus, with the fishing lights, I thought it’d be easy to sneak in close and get a good picture. I hadn’t counted on the rain or the people.”

  Drew sighed. “I can enlarge this, but it won’t help much. You’ll get the boat and the figure in the foreground, but the rest is crap.”

  The photograph showed not one but two other people in the boathouse with Josh. Feenie didn’t recognize either man. The first wore a T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap, and Feenie couldn’t see his face because the hat cast a shadow over it. But Feenie didn’t care much about him, anyway. What she really wanted was a clear view of the man in the background, the shadowy figure standing near the Boston Whaler. She hadn’t noticed him at the time. Was he the guy who had attacked her moments later? The timing seemed off, but at the very least, his image would offer a clue. His hands were shadowed, so Feenie couldn’t tell if he was wearing gloves or not. Her attacker had definitely been wearing leather gloves, either black or brown. That, plus the fact that he was strong as an ox, was about all Feenie knew about him.

  She shivered at the memory. God, she’d never been so terrified. She’d felt utterly helpless; he could have snapped her neck like a Popsicle stick if he’d wanted to.

  “Let’s print it anyway,” she told Drew. “At least we have a good shot of the boat.”

  Drew grinned. “You got it. And good luck with your ex. I hope you crucify him.”

  After wrapping things up, Drew offered Feenie a lift, and she gratefully accepted. Adrenaline had given way to fatigue, so she leaned her head back against the vinyl seats of his Toyota Tercel and closed her eyes for most of the drive. She was dying for a hot bath and a cold Corona.

  The house on Pecan Street was her refuge. The 1930s-era three-bedroom home had captured her heart the moment she’d seen it. It had a wide front porch and two dormer windows on top, with a white picket fence surrounding the backyard and pool. After she and Josh had bought the place, she’d spent months going room to room, freshening dingy paint, refinishing woodwork, and polishing tarnished fixtures. Josh wasn’t much of a handyman, but Feenie didn’t care. She’d preferred doing everything herself, anyway. The place had been her baby, and she’d grown even fonder of it since her divorce. Not only was it the only thing of real value she’d taken from the marriage, but it was the sole remnant of her former life that she still enjoyed.

  “Uh-oh,” Drew said, jerking Feenie out of her daze.

  Red and yellow lights swirled in the distance, and she spotted a fire truck parked diagonally across the street.

  In front of her house.

  “Oh, God,” she muttered. Her palms started to sweat, as they always did when she saw or heard a fire truck. The only thing keeping her from having a full-blown panic attack was the conspicuous lack of flames or smoke.

  Feenie glanced up and down the block and saw no signs of fire. Excep
t, of course, the shiny red rig. What was it doing there? Had something happened to Mrs. Hanak? The seventy-five-year-old widow lived in the garage apartment. Feenie had taken in the tenant a couple of months ago to help with expenses. Mrs. Hanak seemed to get around okay, but Feenie knew she had some health issues. What if she’d had a heart attack? Or a stroke?

  Then Feenie saw the tree.

  The giant pecan that had once shaded the house’s western exposure lay sprawled across the road. Its copious foliage peeked out from behind the fire engine.

  “Damn,” Drew said. “That thing’s huge.”

  Feenie nodded, both relieved and horrified. Mrs. Hanak, bless her heart, was okay. But the tree obviously was not. It had probably been a hundred years old.

  Drew rolled to a stop near the fire truck. Feenie thanked him for the ride and climbed out.

  “Road’s impassable, ma’am,” a firefighter in a fluorescent orange poncho told her. “You’re gonna have to move that vehicle.”

  “He’s just dropping me off,” she explained, waving Drew away. “I live here.”

  “Three-two-six Pecan Street?”

  “That’s me.” She surveyed the damage with a knot in her stomach. “Was anybody hurt?”

  He turned toward the massive pile of leaves and branches blocking the road. “Just the tree, ma’am. Took a bolt of lightning. Looks like she was a beaut, too.”

  A crowd of neighbors milled around on the other side of the truck. Mrs. Hanak stood beside the newlyweds who had just moved in across the street. She wore her yellow velour bathrobe and sneakers and had donned a plastic produce bag to protect her hair from the drizzle. Mrs. Hanak had her hair done weekly and was very particular about keeping it dry.

  Feenie smiled halfheartedly and waved.

  “ ’Course, your kitchen’s gonna need some work,” the firefighter said.

  “My kitchen?”

  “Yes, ma’am. This here’s just half the tree. Other half crashed right through your roof.”

  An hour later, Feenie had shed her soggy clothes and stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror. It was worse than she’d expected. Her lip was puffy, and both kneecaps were decorated with blue and purple polka dots. Turning and looking over her shoulder, she saw a fist-sized bruise in the dead center of her back where the assailant had pinned her with his knee. The face-plant onto the grass had left a magenta scrape on her chin.

  Her answering machine droned in the other room. Two stern messages from her credit card company. Then a message from Cecelia wanting to make sure she’d gotten home okay and begging her to go to the police station in the morning. Feenie listened to the voices while cataloging her collection of welts and scrapes.

  “Francis, it’s Dad. Just calling to check in.”

  She closed her eyes and felt a stab of guilt. She needed to call her father. Last year, he’d sold the house Feenie had grown up in and retired to a waterfront condo in Port Aransas, and now their relationship Was limited to phone calls and occasional visits. It had been weeks since Feenie had talked to him, and he tended to worry. But she couldn’t deal with him just now. Instead, she had to deal with her reflection.

  Did one of Josh’s friends really do this to her?

  Highly unlikely. Maybe Feenie wasn’t the only one stalking Josh. Maybe some gal’s husband or boyfriend had a reason to be lurking around. It was possible. Josh tended to let his libido run amok.

  She turned on the faucet. As the claw-footed tub filled with scalding water, she let her mind wander to what was really bothering her. Besides the tree in her kitchen, she was worried about Josh. What had he been up to tonight, anyway?

  He hadn’t been going fishing, that was certain. No one went fishing in a thunderstorm. And who were those people with him? She knew his poker buddies, but the guys from tonight had looked totally unfamiliar. And Josh’s friends weren’t the type to drive jacked-up trucks with oversized tires. Nothing about the scene made sense to her.

  She dumped some vanilla-scented gel into the bath. As she sank into the foam, she closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind of everything Josh-related. They’d been divorced nearly two years, and he still managed to suck up all her mental energy. Why did she let him do this to her? She needed to stop wasting time on him. She had a story to write, a career to pursue. And now her kitchen was wrecked. How on earth was she going to pay for that? She was pretty sure the insurance bill was one of the many sitting unopened and unpaid on her desk downstairs.

  She needed a real job. Soon.

  She couldn’t lose her house. It embodied all the plans she’d ever made for herself. It symbolized adulthood, security, family. Although her marriage had been an obvious failure, she wasn’t willing to give up on all the rest yet.

  She’d long ago given up on Josh. He was a lying, cheating jerk who had humiliated her in front of everyone she knew. Feenie didn’t know what he was up to these days, but she suspected it was something illegal. Drug running, maybe? Josh the stellar athlete had never been into drugs, at least not to Feenie’s knowledge. But who knew what he was into now?

  Whatever it was, she wanted nothing to do with it. Feenie didn’t need any more trouble, and Josh Garland had already given her enough to last a lifetime.

  When the alarm wailed in her ear the next morning, Feenie immediately thought of calling in sick. But her emaciated bank account and the tree in her kitchen changed her mind. As an hourly employee, she didn’t get sick leave, so any morning she failed to clock in simply meant money out of her pocket. Suppressing a groan, she levered herself out of bed and tried to think of something in her closet that would conceal all her cuts and scrapes.

  She decided on a rose linen pantsuit that was leftover from her charity luncheon days. It kept all her limbs hidden, and she could wear a sleeveless white shell underneath without looking too casual. Reporters weren’t known for their fashion acumen, but Feenie believed in dressing for success. She might not feel successful, but she could at least look the part.

  After working some magic with her makeup and popping a few aspirin, she grabbed her purse and headed for the front door. Because her garage had been converted to an apartment—Josh had wanted it for a home office—Feenie made a habit of parking in front. She supposed she should feel lucky her car hadn’t been parked in the driveway during last night’s rainstorm.

  The sky had cleared, but the air outside still felt like a warm, wet blanket. Mrs. Hanak ambled toward the end of the driveway to collect her Gazette.

  “Morning, Mrs. Hanak,” Feenie said, manually unlocking her car door. In a former life, Feenie had been the proud owner of a convertible white Mustang. In her current incarnation as a semi-employed, debt-ridden divorcée, she drove a secondhand white Kia Spectra somewhat lacking in amenities.

  She slid behind the wheel and pulled away before Mrs. Hanak could press her for details about her home repairs. She drove straight to the office, resisting the urge to pull into Southern-Made Donuts for a sugar boost. She had exactly nine dollars and twenty-six cents in her wallet, and she was saving it for her weekly lunch date with Cecelia.

  The Mayfield Gazette was headquartered in a vintage building on Main Street. The newsroom and ad offices occupied the top floor, and the printing press lived downstairs. A receptionist in the first-floor lobby greeted visitors and controlled the flow of crackpots who stopped by routinely to complain about various and sundry offenses suffered at the hands of the liberal media.

  Feenie climbed the stairs and headed for the break room. Drew found her there pouring a sixteen-ounce cup of the sludge that passed for coffee at the Gazette. Sometimes Feenie really missed her job at Josh’s law firm. The work had been mind-numbing and thankless, but there had been a cappuccino maker in the reception area.

  “Hey, Drew,” she managed after a sip.

  “It’s your lucky day, Feen.”

  She wasn’t feeling terribly lucky at the moment, but the look on Drew’s face piqued her curiosity. “What’s up?”

  “I spen
t some more time on that photo,” he said. “Managed to lighten up the shadows a bit with the computer.”

  “You’re kidding,” Feenie said. Drew was definitely racking up brownie points.

  “Nope.” His smile widened. “And I’ve got an ID for you.”

  Brownie points galore.

  Feenie followed him into the photo lab, where several color pictures were spread out on a Formica counter. She recognized an eight-by-ten enlargement of the baseball cap guy from Josh’s boathouse.

  “Nice,” she said. The photograph was grainy, but Drew had lightened it somehow, making the face visible beneath the cap. “Who is he?”

  “That’s the interesting part. I thought he looked familiar, so I checked our electronic archives,” Drew said. “You’re looking at a Mr. Rico Martinez. Better known on the street as Rico Suave.”

  “Rico Suave? That awful eighties singer?”

  Drew grinned. “Nineties. And it’s also the name of a young drug dealer out of Corpus Christi. We ran the kid’s mug shot about a year ago when he was arrested for supplying dope to high school kids there.”

  “No way.”

  “He stood trial about six months ago, but got off on some kind of technicality. Police in Corpus botched the search of his apartment, if I remember it right.”

  “Are you sure it’s the same guy?”

  “Take a look for yourself.” Drew pulled up an old issue of the Gazette on the computer screen. He toggled between the two pictures so Feenie could compare them. The mug shot showed a man with longish brown hair and a goatee. The guy in Feenie’s photo was clean-shaven, but the eyes and nose were identical. It was either the same man or his twin brother.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “What was he doing at Josh’s boathouse last night?”

  Drew raised his eyebrows.

  “Shoot,” she muttered. Now what was she going to do? Just last night, she had decided she didn’t want anything more to do with Josh, and now here she was in possession of some truly damaging information about him. Not only that, but the information was potentially newsworthy, and she worked at a newspaper, for crying out loud.