The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [16]
A nice July afternoon. A safe, charming place, even by New York City standards.
Kimberly was breathing too hard. Panting. She had a bag, once slung over her shoulder, now in a death grip in her hands. She had been on her way somewhere. She couldn’t remember where. Sweat poured down her face.
A man in a business suit walked briskly down the sidewalk. He glanced casually at her, then came to a halt.
“Are you all right?”
“Go . . . away.”
“Miss—”
“Go away!”
The man hurried away, shaking his head and no doubt sorry he’d tried to do a good deed in New York when everyone knew the city was full of nuts.
Kimberly wasn’t nuts. Not yet at least. The logical part of her mind, which had taken enough psych classes to know, understood that. She was having an anxiety attack. Had been having them, in fact, for months now.
She’d go days, even weeks, when everything was perfectly normal. She’d just wrapped up her junior year at NYU and with two summer courses, an internship with her criminology professor, and volunteer work at a homeless shelter, she had places to go and people to see. Out the door at six forty-five A.M. Rarely home before ten P.M. She liked things that way.
And then . . .
A strange sensation at first. A tingle running up her spine. A prickle at the nape of her neck. She’d find herself stopping abruptly, halfway down a street. Or whirling around sharply in the middle of a crowded subway. She’d look for . . . She didn’t know what she looked for. She’d just suffer the acute sensation that someone was watching. Someone she couldn’t see.
Then it would go away as swiftly as it had come. Her pulse would calm, her breathing ease. She’d be fine again. For a few days, a few weeks, and then . . .
It had been worse since the funeral. At times almost hourly, then she’d get two or three days to catch her breath before bam, she’d step onto the subway and the world would close in on her again.
Logically she supposed it made sense. She’d lost her sister, was battling with her mother, and God knows what was going on with her father. She’d consulted Dr. Marcus Andrews, her criminology professor, and he’d assured her it was probably stress related.
“Ease up a little,” he’d advised her. “Give yourself some time to rest. What you don’t accomplish at twenty-one, you can always accomplish at twenty-two.”
They both knew she wouldn’t slow down, though. It wasn’t her style. As her mother loved to tell her, Kimberly was too much like her father. And in many ways that made the anxiety attacks even worse, because just like her dad, Kimberly had never been afraid of anything.
She remembered being eight years old and going to some local fair with her father and her older sister. She and Mandy had been so excited. A whole afternoon alone with Daddy, plus cotton candy and rides. They could barely contain themselves.
They’d gone on the Tilt-A-Whirl, and the spider, and the Ferris wheel. They’d eaten caramel apples, two bags of popcorn and washed it down with well-iced Coke. Then, positively buzzing with sugar and caffeine, they’d rounded up their dad to continue the adventure.
Except their father wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. He was studying some man who stood off to the side by the kiddy rides. The man wore a long, grubby overcoat and Kimberly vividly remembered Mandy crinkling her nose and saying, “Oooh, what smells?”
Their father gestured for them to be quiet. They took one look at the intent expression on his face and didn’t dare disobey.
The strange man had a camera around his neck. As they all watched, he took picture after picture of little kids on the rides.
“He’s a pedophile,” their father murmured. “This is how he starts. With photos, lots of photos of what he wants but can’t have. He’s still fighting it, or he’d have his own stash of porn by now and not be into fully dressed targets. He’s fighting it, but he’s losing the war. So he’s setting himself up to be a situational offender. Going places where there are lots of children.