False Security (4 page)

The dream
haunted Rachel the rest of the night. After going back to bed, she laid awake
and stared at the ceiling with tears spilling onto her pillow. For two months,
night after night the dream visited her, and with it, pain that rubbed her soul
raw.

Rachel spent the next morning
contemplating the dream and rolling its images around in her mind. Danielle
noticed her struggle to stop the nightmare from ruling her days, and offered sympathetic
support. But if Danielle saw her downward spiral, Mark would soon recognize it
as well.

During her afternoon class at
the shelter, she contemplated leaving Mark. An inevitable outcome to their
relationship, they had maybe another week together. Until then, she would make
sure he remained ignorant to keep their relationship intact while it lasted.
The thought of leaving him still scared her almost as much as what would happen
if she stayed. If she had a choice, she would stay with him forever.

Rachel walked from the back exit
of the women’s shelter to her car. She slid into the seat and turned on the
ignition, ignoring the pain in her screaming muscles. She had pushed herself
too hard at the gym before class, and she made a mental note not to do it again.
The class had also been tough, and one of the women took her down while
practicing self-defense techniques. Even though the progress of all the women
made Rachel happy, the bruises forming beneath her skin told her she needed to
take it easy.

The new girl, and miracle at the
shelter, came to class, having recovered from her husband’s final attack. Her
husband had stabbed her eight times in her abdomen with a slender paring knife.
The random impalements missed all major organs, but caused her to lose their
unborn child.

As the others often did, she
came up to Rachel after class and asked a timid question. Twirling the ends of
her unruly red hair, she asked Rachel how she could defend herself against a
knife attack.

Though the question never
bothered her in the past, Rachel faltered with her words, and a thin scar on
the front of her neck burned with phantom pain.

I’d love the chance to use this knife on you.

She had thrown the voice out of
her mind and told the girl they would discuss her question in the next class.
Rachel’s neck continued to throb all the way home.

As she turned down her street,
Rachel told herself to forget about it. That particular question had been asked
numerous times before and had yet to be problematic. The dream made the question
sinister and made her remember things best forgotten. She needed to compose
herself and reprise the role of Rachel Thomas, a woman with her life together.
Letting those other thoughts and memories consume her would only destroy the
new life she had built.

She longed to hop in the shower
and wash off the residue of her afternoon class. A hot shower would go far in
awakening her dull senses and erasing unwelcome memories. Besides, a shower was
a necessity since she had a dinner date with Mark in a half hour.

She smiled and pulled her car
into the driveway. She grabbed her duffel bag to go inside the house. It would
be the perfect ending to her day to spend time with him. Mark had been a
wonderful addition to her life, her light at the end of the tunnel in which she
had been living, and it made the thought of leaving him so terrible.

He had a way about him, though
Rachel couldn’t quite put her finger on why he had such an effect on her. His
uncanny ability made her forget herself and swept her into another world, where
the concept of her and Mark had always existed. Everything he offered was hers
for the taking, in exchange for the price of continuous nightmares.

When she reached the front door,
she unlocked the deadbolts and pushed open the door. The security alarm
squealed at her. She had it installed a month earlier, after the recurring
nightmares drove her to her first panic attack. She thought the alarm would add
to her sense of security and keep the nightmares and panic attacks at bay. So
far, it had failed.

Rachel opened the white door on
the alarm box and punched in her code. 7439. The display still read “armed” and
the shrieking alarm crescendoed. She hit the buttons again. 7439. No response.
She smothered the panic rising from her gut and tried again. 7439. The alarm
continued its song.

“Dammit!” She threw her bag down
by the hallway table and started out the front door. She thought about trying
her code one more time, but decided against it since the code didn’t work the
first three times. She’d have to disarm the alarm.

A computer voice informed her
that the police knew of her intrusion. Rachel froze on her front porch,
consumed by the thought of disarming the alarm. The idea never should have
popped into her mind. Sure, she could take out the alarm, but she wouldn’t. If
the police showed up while she worked on the alarm, she’d have a lot of
explaining to do.

The phone rang, an uninvited
accompanist to the shrill music of the alarm. Rachel ignored the sounds. She
left the front door open and lowered herself down onto the front porch,
incredulous she would ever consider manually stopping the alarm. But the
disturbing thought brought about a greater terror. She could take out the alarm
faster than she could enter her code, and there were others who could do the
same. People not so forgiving.

7943. Rachel closed her eyes.
That was the right code. Police sirens added to the symphony behind her. Too
late to enter the right code now.

A few moments later, a police
car pulled against the curb. Rachel stood up and brushed off the back of her
jeans. Two officers, one male and one female, climbed out of the patrol car and
walked across the lawn toward her.

Rachel called to them while they
approached. “I punched the wrong code into my alarm by mistake.”

“What’s your name?” the male
officer asked when he reached her. He held a notepad, clipboard, and pen in his
hands.

“Rachel Thomas.”

“You didn’t answer your phone
when the security company called,” he said. “Is everything okay?”

“When the alarm went off, I came
outside and I didn’t hear the phone ring. Look my code is 7943. Can you verify
with the security company?”

The male officer didn’t answer,
but wrote in his notepad. Rachel glanced down at their names pinned to their
uniforms. Scrawny and mousy, Officer Duncan’s nameplate was askew on her
disheveled uniform. Scuff marks stood out on her shoes and matched the food
stain on her pants by her right knee.

Officer Shearn, her male
partner, towered above her with his perfectly pressed uniform. He stared at
Rachel from behind thick glasses. “Do you have some identification, Mrs.
Thomas?” he asked.

“
Ms.
Thomas,” Rachel
said, “and yes. My driver’s license is in the house.” Rachel’s heart sunk with
the words. Her current driver’s license was as fraudulent as it had been in every
state she lived. She had not yet encountered police in her travels, and she
prayed the license would stand up under scrutiny.

Rachel started for the front
door, but the officers didn’t move. “Did you want to come into the house with
me?” she asked.

They followed her inside the
house this time, but with vigilant and deliberate movements. Officer Duncan
kept a wary eye on Rachel.

Rachel reached for her duffel
bag, but Officer Duncan stopped her before she could pick it up. “I’ll get it
for you,” she said.

She opened Rachel’s bag and
pulled out her purse. She sat the purse down on the hall table and rifled
through its contents. The search seemed to take much longer than it should, and
Rachel wondered if such a lengthy search was normal procedure. She started to
ask, when Officer Duncan extracted a driver’s license, studied it, and handed
the license to her partner.

“Can I use your phone?” Officer
Shearn asked.

“Sure. It’s in the kitchen,
through there.” Rachel pointed across the living room toward the kitchen.
Rachel concentrated on controlling her breathing, and her heart rate increased.
Why did he need to use her phone? He had a radio on the shoulder of his
uniform, so he had no need for a phone.

Officer Duncan moved closer to
Rachel and brushed away a strand of dirty brown hair that escaped from the
tight bun on the back of her head. Stale cigarette smoke emanated from Officer
Duncan’s clothes, and Rachel had to stop herself from covering her nose.

The policewoman stared at her
with skeptical, probing eyes, and Rachel’s paranoia grew. Did she even know for
a fact these were real police officers? What if they were legitimate cops and
Officer Shearn ran a background check on her? What would come back?

Deep down, Rachel didn’t care
what the officers would find out about her. She didn’t even mind if they
learned her driver’s license was fake. A background check would throw up a
flare for the wrong eyes to see. Dark eyes searching for nothing other than
her.

“Rachel!”

She rushed out of the hallway
and onto the front porch. Mark ran full-speed across the lawn toward the house.

“Wait right there,” Officer
Duncan said to him. She placed her right hand on her gun holster.

Rachel hoped the motion was
instinctual and not because she wanted to use her gun against Mark. Rachel’s
own gun was tucked in the drawer of her bedside table in her bedroom, too far
away for her to get if the officers turned out to be anything other than sworn
peacekeepers.

Mark halted at the edge of the
driveway. “She’s my girlfriend,” he said, his words tinged with annoyance, as
if the officer should have known.

“It’s okay,” Rachel said. “He’s
telling the truth.”

Officer Duncan gave Mark the
okay to move forward.

Mark went to Rachel, pulled her
into his arms, and squeezed her tight. “What happened? Are you okay?” He
released his hold on her and pulled back so he could look her over.

“I’m fine,” Rachel said. “I
entered the wrong code into my alarm. It went off and the police came.”

Mark’s shoulders dropped and
worry departed from his face. “I’m glad it’s nothing serious.”

Eyes bore through Rachel, and
her skin crawled with paranoia. She shifted her gaze toward Officer Duncan, who
wore the same peculiar expression as she did earlier. Her eyes never left
Rachel, inspecting her as if Officer Duncan knew her from somewhere. She
shivered at Officer Duncan’s stare and tried to squash her overactive
imagination. Rachel looked back at Mark, who gave her a warm smile.

“Everything checked out,”
Officer Shearn said, and he walked down the front steps. “I called the security
company back and gave them the all clear. They’re resetting the alarm right
now. Are you sure everything’s okay?”

“Positive,” Rachel insisted. At
her words, the alarm stopped, though it continued echoing in her ears.

“Would you like us to check the
rest of your house to be safe?” Officer Duncan asked her.

Rachel hesitated for a moment.
There was no harm in the police looking through the house, but something in
Officer Duncan’s voice twisted Rachel’s stomach with anxiety. “No, thank you,”
Rachel said. “I think we’ll be fine since I set off the alarm by mistake and it
wasn’t an intruder.”

“I noticed your license doesn’t
have this address listed on it,” Officer Duncan said.

Rachel smiled and tried to quell
Officer Duncan’s suspicions. “I’m sorry, officer. I moved here almost three
months ago and I haven’t found time to make it to the DMV.”

“You’ll want to get it fixed
right away,” Officer Shearn said. He ripped a sheet of paper off his clipboard
and handed it to Rachel with her driver’s license. “It’s a warning for your
false alarm. There isn’t a fine this time, but if you have another one, we’ll
have no choice but to fine you.”

Rachel took the paper. “Thank
you. I appreciate your quick response.”

“No problem,” Officer Shearn
said. “Be more careful in the future with your code, and fix your driver’s
license.” He walked toward his police car.

Officer Duncan kept her eyes on
Rachel for a moment, and then followed Officer Shearn to the car.

After the officers drove away,
Mark put his hands on Rachel’s shoulders. “When I saw the police here...” He
pulled her close, and placed his hand on the back of her head. Worry filled his
jagged breathing. “I thought something happened to you.”

She rested her cheek on his
shoulder, and pressed her face into his neck. His tight hold comforted her, and
she did everything she could not to cry. The past couple months had stretched
her emotional stability to a breaking point. Her overwhelming feelings for Mark
competed for control against paranoia and anxiety.

Her obsession with security had
reached an all-time high, having added the alarm last month and a hinge lock to
the back door a few days ago. She fought the urge to put bars on the windows
and lock herself up, away from the world. Everywhere she went, she looked over
her shoulder and in her rearview mirror.

All the while, she made sure
Mark remained oblivious to her self-destructive behavior and naïve to her
torments, as well as the cause of them. No matter what it took, she intended to
keep it that way.

Rachel pulled away from him.
Hand-in-hand, they walked into her house. “I haven’t had a chance to shower
yet,” she told him after closing the front door and securing the locks.

“I’m in no rush. Are you sure
you’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I promise.” She
slipped her driver’s license and the written warning into her purse on the
hallway table. “I’m going to take a quick shower, if you don’t mind. Then we
can go wherever you want for dinner.”

“Unless you’d rather stay in
tonight,” Mark said. “We could order something for delivery. Maybe Chinese?”