The Woman by David Bishop

Author:David Bishop
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, Suspense, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Thrillers, Fiction
ISBN: 9781937387822
Publisher: Telemachus Press, LLC
Published: 2011-11-14T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 29

Linda looked at the hotel phone, but the rings were more distant and muffled. Her ears followed the noise trail to her purse. Ahab. She had forgotten the cell phone he had given her was still in the bottom of her big, colorful Nora Larick purse.

She swung her feet off the bed and grabbed the bag. Then she stopped dead still. Did she want to answer it? Maybe she should run from him as well. After all, he was part of the world that had sucked in Cynthia, a world Linda wanted no part of. In her letter, Cynthia had said, “No contact with anyone. Just disappear.” During her uncertainty, the phone went silent, action taken through inaction. She briefly considered throwing the phone away, but decided she would keep it in case her thinking changed.

Linda’s gaze went to the window, the outside light muzzled by the open-weave drapes. She had opened the blackout drapes after the sun had passed over the top of the hotel. She burrowed into the warmth of the pillows, exhausted, and eventually her eyes closed and she fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

At some point during the night, Linda suddenly opened her eyes. She still faced the window, but the night had darkened the room. Perhaps she had been startled by a bird that had flown through the muffled outside commercial light, a seagull maybe. There were seagulls in downtown Portland, although mostly nearer the Willamette River. She watched for a while but saw no birds.

Straining her senses, she detected a presence. More like feeling a presence, not like in Sea Crest. Then she had smelled the musk fragrance he had worn. This time there was no aroma, just awareness. Maybe her mind had replayed the incident about the man who had been in her bedroom in Sea Crest, the man she had shot dead and left lying in the surf. She closed her eyes and tried to put this awareness out of her mind. But it would not leave.

She did not recall having taken off her clothes. She must have done so sometime during the night, too asleep to remember, because she now wore only her panties. If her instincts were correct and she was not alone, the room had no sliding screen door she could break through and vault onto the sand. Her only way out would be past whoever was in the room watching her, right now.

After trying with only modest success to calm her breathing, she groaned and turned over the way she imagined she might while sleeping. After lying in that position for a minute or two, she eased her eyes open far enough to see through her lashes.

The occasional chair had been moved close to the bed.

A man sat in that chair.

Close enough to reach her.

Suddenly, he raised one hand. His palm turned toward her. He curled his fingers a few times in a child’s wave. Linda fully opened her eyes.

“Ahab! What are you doing here?”

“Who the hell is Ahab?”

“It’s a name I’ve given you.

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