The Motif

Chapter 12

"Shit!" Jennifer cursed under her breath. The guy disappeared for a month, so of course he had to come home at the exact moment when she was snooping through his journal.

She tried to think of the best place to hide until she could make an escape. The study she currently occupied didn't offer any hiding places (except under the desk, and she doubted that would work if he entered the room). The towel cupboard didn't offer any usable hiding space, either. The only hiding space in the bedroom was the closet and under the bed (the closet might be safe, unless he decided to unpack immediately, and she refused to resort to the horror movie cliché of hiding under the bed, which never worked anyway). That left the bathroom, which was a 50/50 shot as to whether he would use the downstairs bathroom or the upstairs.

Weighing her options, she decided to go with the bathroom – at least the shower had curtains that she could hide behind as long as he wasn't planning on taking a shower immediately.

She tiptoed over to the door leading out into the upstairs hallway, but as soon as she stepped out into the uncarpeted hall, the floorboard creaked underneath her pressing weight.

For a split second, Jennifer convinced herself that maybe Kyrie hadn't heard it from downstairs, but then she heard the sound of feet running downstairs toward the stairway.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Jennifer chanted in her head, as she dashed back into the study and slammed the door behind her. As she heard Kyrie's feet pounding up the stairs, she knew she only had a few seconds to make a move. Her only exit was the window. It was at least a twenty-foot drop, but it was either that or risk a face-to-face confrontation with a man who was very clearly not mentally stable, regardless of whether he had anything to do with Kimmi's death or not.

She had the window open and half of her body sticking out into the brisk November air when she heard the study room door open, and a familiar voice called out, "Jennifer, stop!"

She twisted herself around (not an easy feat to accomplish when one is sticking halfway through a window), and saw Tim, staring at her desperately from the other side of the room. As soon as she laid her eyes on his familiar figure, the melody which had been running through her head non-stop all day swelled to a new level of intensity within her head. She raised her hands, instinctively, to her ears, before she remembered the sound was internal, not external.

"Tim! You scared me half to death, you jackass! What the hell are you doing here?" she asked, as she pulled herself back inside the study.

"I couldn't get a hold of you, so I got onto the first flight to Boston this morning. I found out something you need to know," he said desperately.

"Well, you're here now, so spill it," she said, trying to ignore the pounding of the melody in her head.

"It's about Kyrie. It's bad. I mean...worse than everything else. About four months ago, one of his patients disappeared. No trace whatsoever. Her name was – "

"Let me guess, Chrissie?" Jennifer cut in, the music box reverberating throughout her skull.

"Yes," Tim said, a little shocked that she had known. "Chrissie Martin. The police questioned Kyrie about it, since she was a patient, but apparently they never thought of him as a suspect. I probably wouldn't think anything of it either, but considering everything else going on..."

"Yeah," Jennifer said.

"How'd you know her name?"

Jennifer pointed to the journal on the desk, which was still open to the page she had been about to read. "Let's just say Kyrie had become rather infatuated with Chrissie prior to her disappearance."