Flashback (Kendra Michaels #11)

“Come on!”

“Shhh!” Kendra pressed her eye to the peephole. She saw her attacker half staggering, half running past the door and down the hallway. He was heading toward the stairs, just as she’d hoped.

But then he stopped.

Shit.

He turned. Still wearing his ski mask, he appeared to be looking right at her. Could he tell that she was blocking light from the peephole?

Another long moment. He turned and ran for the stairs.

She faced the YouTuber, who still held up his knife as if he might have to use it as a weapon. “Relax. The bad guy was on the other side of this door, and now he’s gone.” She flipped on the lights and pulled out her phone. “I’m here looking into your neighbor’s disappearance. Sloane Morgan. Know her?”

“No. To be honest, I’d never heard of her until she went missing. I already talked to the police about her.”

“I’m not a cop, but I’m about to call one. Mind if I hang here until they show up?”

He finally lowered the knife. “Uh, okay. But after you make your call, I need to finish up here with my cooking demonstration. My fans are expecting it by midnight.”

She wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “Your—”

“My fans.”

“Right. Thanks.” She punched the number.

Kendra only had to endure three takes of the young man’s food prep demonstration before Detectives Perry and Breen appeared with a pair of uniformed officers in the hallway outside.

She flung open the door. “Did you get him?”

“Not so far,” Breen said. “We have ten officers downstairs, but no one matching that description is anywhere around. Of course, all he would have to do is ditch the jacket and mask, and he could be standing on the sidewalk drinking a caffe latte and we wouldn’t have any idea.”

Perry’s gaze was examining her forehead. “You’re bleeding.”

She lightly rubbed the wound. “Head versus plate-glass window. Neither one of us did well against the other.”

“You should have that looked at.”

“No, it’s pretty much clotted. I’d rather you look at Sloane Morgan’s apartment. I drew blood and, I believe, a front tooth from our guy. Maybe we can get a DNA hit from it.”

Perry smiled. “Well done. Let’s go see.”

They walked back down to the apartment. The wind from the broken window was colder and more intense than before. Two uniformed officers were already on the scene, and they had restored power to the unit. Kendra crouched next to the twin puddles of blood next to the shattered pane. She pointed to one. “Okay, this is mostly his blood, and you’ll find even more on that Salvador Dalí statue.”

Perry looked around. “Which way did the tooth go?”

“Look toward the kitchen.”

One of the uniformed officers shone his flashlight on the floor near the small dinette set. “Sir?”

Perry bent over a bloody object. “That’s it. I think you may have ripped out a piece of his gums along with it. Wherever he is right now, he’s not feeling too good.”

“Glad to hear it.”

He bagged the tooth and used a Sharpie to mark the label. “I’ll make sure forensics swabs the blood in here.”

“Thanks. But there’s something else.” Kendra looked out the window, knowing that her attacker could be on the street below, watching their every move. She backed away. “This guy knew who I was and what I’ve been doing. He knew I gave you something.”

“The files?”