Protector - Laurel Dewey [106]
Jane awakened at dawn. Filters of pink-tinged light radiated like fingers across her bedroom window. She turned to the right, expecting to see her clock but immediately felt disoriented. Jane lay on top of the covers and was catty-corner on the bed, her head resting in the bottom left corner of the mattress. Somehow in the night, she deduced, she must have gotten up and fallen back on top of the bed. The radio played low in the background, still on the same station that featured Tony Mooney’s nightly program. Jane lifted her head. She felt drugged. It was worse than a hangover; she felt as if she’d run a marathon all night long.
Jane sat up and stared at the carpeting. Strewn across the floor were the stacks of legal-sized notepads, files of the Stover case and the newspapers that she’d stuffed into her bag for the trip. Her first nerve-wracking thought was that somebody had broken into the house during the night. Grabbing her Glock, Jane carefully made her way down the hallway and checked the front door. It was locked securely from the inside. Looking around the living room, nothing was askew. An icy quiver crept up her spine as she returned to her bedroom and stared at the chaotic splay of coveted case information. Setting the Glock on the bureau, she knelt down and collected the newspapers, files and notepads, replacing them in her duffel bag. Looking over to the side, just under the bed, she saw the corner of a yellow legal notepad. She pulled it toward her and felt an odd sense of recollection. A blur of images suddenly raced before her eyes. There was a flash of blinding light followed by the blistering outline of a Glock followed by the millisecond likeness of a wolf’s face. Jane shook her head backward and the visions ceased. She thought the insanity was over—a lingering side effect of booze-fueled binges. But she was stone cold sober and the same bizarre, unrelated visual imprints had returned. Jane paged through the yellow notepad until she came upon the unexplained rudimentary drawing of the wolf’s face and the two words, WOLF FACE, all in capitals. She still didn’t remember drawing it—a fact that continued to disturb her. It was the last entry in the notepad. At least, it was to her knowledge. Jane turned the page. There, filling the next lined page was another crude drawing. This one depicted the palm of someone’s left hand. Imprinted across the palm were numbers.
Jane stood up and held the notepad up to the mirror, revealing 10-24-99. It seemed to obviously be a date but it held no significance to Jane. She stared at the drawing, realizing again that she was the elementary artist. Staring back at the floor, Jane surmised that she unexplainably awoke, rummaged through her bag and for some unknown reason, drew a picture of a hand with a backward date before collapsing on top of her bed. Cautiously, she checked out the remaining pages of the notepad and found them blank. “Oh, God,” Jane whispered. “Please make it stop.”
Jane waited until Mike was well on his way to work before leaving a message on his tape. Attempting to sound as ordinary and offhand as possible, she asked him to pick up her mail and take it to Weyler, per his instructions. She paused, trying to formulate some suitable good-bye, not knowing when or if she would ever return from her covert trip to that small-town, netherworld of Colorado known as Peachville. But before she spoke, Mike’s machine abruptly cut her off.
The vehicle pulled up in front of Jane’s house. Peering outside, she saw Weyler getting out of a car. Securing her shoulder holster and Glock, Jane grabbed her bags and turned around to face her living room. She gazed around the room and drank it in. If it was really good-bye, she wanted to etch the memory in her mind. Jane opened her front door just as Weyler walked up to the porch.