Shooting in the Dark

age. She was being stalked by someone from today’s world who wanted her dead.
    It had to be a mistake. He thought she was someone else, someone who had done him wrong. And yet he had taken Isabel as well. Surely he hadn’t mistaken both of them?
    ‘I haven’t done anything,’ she said to Sam. ‘Why does he want to kill me? I haven’t done anything.’
    Sam stroked her brow with his free hand. He didn’t answer. What could he say? Still, it calmed her. She felt herself stretching beneath the covers. The fear was still close by, but it was as if she had rolled it into a ball and put it to one side.
    When he made to withdraw his hand she clasped it tighter. It was an involuntary movement, something she had not intended to do, but she felt him relax into it. Disturbing. This was not something she had wished for. She could only disappoint him. They were never going to enjoy a film together, or wander hand in hand around a picture gallery. But there were those small charges in their fingers. The quickening of her breath, the delicious fluttering of her pulse, and the heat emanating from her shoulders and the back of her neck.
    If it didn’t cost freedom, that closing down of possibilities, she’d opt for love with this man. It was obvious to her that he’d be pleased to close down possibilities in his own life to make room for her. That he’d be only too ready to put all of his eggs in her basket.
    ‘I’m going to tell you something,’ she said.
    ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
    ‘I’m going to tell you anyway, Sam.’
    ‘You don’t have to tell me anything.’
    She gripped his hand hard, felt her nails digging into the flesh around his palm. ‘When I was young,’ she said, ‘I was a victim, or I experienced myself as a victim, because I was blind, because I wasn’t like the other girls I knew. But there came a time when I realized that in many ways I had more possibilities than they did. I discovered that, for me, the world was a place of adventure and that I liked it like that. That I was an adventurer. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
    Sam nodded. ‘I knew before you told me.’
    ‘The thing is, Sam, that I want it to remain like that. To become more like that. I need more possibilities, not less. If I give up what I have spent my life becoming, then I’ll be nothing.’
    ‘I spent most of my life becoming an alcoholic,’ he told her. ‘When I gave it up I was swamped by possibilities. If you make a space in your life, then other things can happen. But if you fill it to the brim, you don’t leave space for anything else.’
    She hesitated. ‘You gave up something negative, Sam. If you give up something negative, of course it makes room for positive things. But I’m worried about giving up everything I’ve won.’
    He didn’t answer. She felt him loosen his grip, and this time she let him do it. She wanted to tell him that it was as much in his interest as hers. That if she let herself fall in love with Sam Turner, she’d break his heart.
    After a couple of minutes he said, ‘You’re too young for me anyway.’
     
    *
     
    ‘Jesus, it’s like Fort Knox trying to get in here.’ It was the voice of Sam’s assistant, Geordie. ‘There’s cops everywhere.’
    ‘Keep your voice down,’ Sam said. ‘Ms Falco’s not feeling on top of the world.’
    ‘Sorry,’ Geordie said. ‘You have to turn the volume up with cops or they don’t understand what you say.’
    ‘We better go,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll call back and see you later.’
    ‘Thanks,’ she told him. Meaning it.
    ‘But I came to tell you about Russell Harvey,’ Geordie said. ‘Ms Falco’ll want to hear it as well.’
    Russell Harvey, Isabel’s boyfriend. Angeles had never met him; all she knew about the man was what she had heard from Isabel and from Sam. Now she was going to learn something else.
    ‘He’s dead,’ Geordie said. ‘Topped himself in the cells. Tore up his shirt to make a noose. They found him this lunchtime.’
    ‘No,’ Angeles said. She felt tears escaping from her eyes and running down her cheeks. Tears for someone she had never known. For a minute she couldn’t stop the flow and she didn’t know why. Eventually it dawned on her that the tears were not for Russell Harvey alone, they were for her sister Isabel and for herself, and they were for Sam and the pity of it all. A terror had entered her life and she knew that that terror would be the end of her if she had to face it alone.