The Murderer's Daughter

Chapter 22

Then everything changed.

Fifth pass, two fifty-three a.m., and there it was, the familiar blocky bulk of the sedan — indeed a 300, dark gray with blackened windows — parked half a block east of the cottage.

Bent front bumper but otherwise intact.

Using the same vehicle seemed breathtakingly careless.

Or arrogant. If so, all the better.

Grace drove by, regrouped mentally. She’d just driven by the cottage, seen the lights still out, no sign of forcing at either gate. So what was the plan tonight? Break in, rummage for records, and leave? Or lie in wait for Grace.

Or both.

Assuming the worst, Grace circled well east of the cottage and parked two blocks to the Chrysler’s rear. Taking what she needed from the Jeep, she got out and stretched. Continued a block on rubber-soled running shoes, concealing herself as best she could in the shadows.

Twenty-three minutes later, a man-sized shape exited the sedan. The door closed. Loudly. No attempt at concealment. Grace was definitely being underestimated but she wouldn’t make the same mistake.

She watched as the man walked — swaggered — toward the cottage. A bit taller than average but not huge or particularly wide.

Definitely two of them.

He, too, pressed himself into the shadows.

Grace began the stalk.

He reached the garage side of her property, looked around briefly, took something out of his pocket, and proceeded to her garden gate. Kneeling, he went to work.

Nothing like the movies, it took a while but finally he was in.

The gate shut silently. Now he was being careful.

Hunter’s instincts honed as he neared his goal?

Making sure she wasn’t being tailed herself, she padded toward the gate, stopped a few feet short. No sounds from the other side of the cedar fence. He was probably inside — how had he managed to avoid tripping the alarm?

Someone with experience. She stood there, listened, checked up and down the block, finally used her key and cracked the gate an inch. Waited. Spread the wood another inch. Waited again.

Not a peep, not a ruffle of grass.

Definitely inside. She waited for lights to go on, a sound, anything.

Nothing but silence. So maybe he was skulking around in the dark as she had, using a narrow-beam like her Maglite.

She pushed the door wide enough to slip through.

An arm, polyester-sleeved and steel-rigid, shot out from the left and hooked around her neck.

Grace brought her heel down hard on where she guessed an instep would be.

The man trying to drag her back by her neck grunted and paused for an instant. But Grace’s rubber-soled shoes lacked the weapon-value of a spiked heel and he said, “Stupid bitch,” and Grace felt his other arm leave the small of her back and heard a snick and knew he’d be stabbing her.

Reaching up and behind, she clawed her hands and went for his eyes but lacked the reach. Still, the very fact that she’d attacked threw his timing off and he grunted and lost balance and her second claw at his face made contact with flesh.

She dug her nails in deeply, raked down viciously, doing her best to flay him. Felt dermis and stubble give way, then a warm wet rush.

He cried out in pain and loosened his grip and Grace spun out of reach and they were facing each other in the dark garden.

His features were barely limned by skimpy starlight. Forty or so, angular face, heavy features contorted in pain and rage as his left hand pressed down on the bloody tracks Grace had inflicted on his right cheek.

His right hand held a knife, double-edged, some sort of sling-blade or push-dagger.

“Fucking bitch,” he said, and charged her.

The garden — small, concealed from neighborly eyes — must’ve seemed an ideal kill-spot and he was smiling through his pain as he continued his advance. Moving slowly and steadily.

Grace purposely fulfilled his expectations by mewling, “Don’t hurt me, please,” and backing away.

That emboldened him and, waving the knife in concentric circles, he prodded Grace toward the rear wall of the garden. Once they reached the wall, no escape, a woman left vulnerable as a rib roast. Confidence loosened his movements.

Grace busted his expectations by charging toward him.

Aiming herself straight at his blade and that confused him the way she hoped it would and he looked down at the weapon as if wondering why it no longer frightened her.

She veered to the right. No knife for her, concealed in her right hand, as it had been from the time she entered the garden, was her lovely little Beretta .22, eleven and a half ounces of lethality.

A gun Shoshana had derided. “Might as well slap a bad guy with your hand.”

But a petite weapon had its time and place and thinking for yourself was always best.

Her would-be killer wasn’t smart enough to imagine. Never looking down at her hand, he growled and lunged and Grace stepped just clear of the arc of his blade and he ended up slashing air.

Before he could recoup, she thrust forward, pressing the Beretta’s stubby barrel against his chest.

Knowing she’d found the spot where his heart resided, she pulled the trigger and danced backward.

His clothing and his body muffled the gunshot but the sharp pop-slap was still an assault on early-morning silence and Grace hoped she wouldn’t need to fire again.

He stood there. Surprise slackened his face. His arms dropped. The knife fell to the grass.

Still bleeding from the gouges on his cheek, he lurched, stumbled, fell flat on his face.

Grace waited, saw no movement, approached him and stepped hard on his back.

No reaction. Gone, he had to be. She checked for a pulse. Zero. She jostled him hard.

Definitely lights-out.

Standing over him, she appraised the situation. His cheek wound and the bullet hole were smack against her pretty lawn.

She’d have to find a way to clean the grass.

Among other things.