Safer by Sean Doolittle Read Free Book Online

club.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “Who are you?”
    “Maya Lamb, Channel Five Clark Falls. Sorry to barge in—Sara told me I could find you at home.”
    “Sara told you that?”
    “Is this a bad time?”
    I finally looked past the edge of the door and saw the guy in faded blue jeans and a Channel Five T-shirt standing at the bottom of the steps. He had a massive television camera perched on his shoulder, a Channel Five ball cap turned backward on his head. For now he held the camera’s bazooka lens at a downward tilt toward the sidewalk. When our eyes met, he lifted his goateed chin and said, “Hey.”
    “Hi,” I said. Back to you, Maya Lamb. “When did you talk to Sara?”
    “We just came from the meeting over at the school.”
    “The meeting?”
    “The neighborhood watch meeting, yes. We’re running a piece.”
    “A piece about what?”
    “About your break- in.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “I’d love to get a comment,” she said. “Do you have a few minutes?”
    “I don’t think so.” I had any number of minutes, but none I felt like sharing. I was sweaty and tired. Cranky. By then I’d gotten over my earlier frustration with the Associate Dean, and for the past hour I’d been feeling like a grade- A chump. Wishing I’d done a better job of being supportive, wishing I’d done a better job of just about everything that day. Wishing I hadn’t drunk all my beer the night before. I’d been on my way out to restock when Maya Lamb rang the doorbell. “Actually, I was just leaving.”
    “We’ll be quick, I promise.”
    “I said I don’t think so. Sorry.”
    She dialed down the telecast smile. “I know. Last thing you need, right? I wouldn’t want to talk to me either.” She glanced over her shoulder at the camera guy, then leaned in closer and lowered her voice, as if we were conspirators. “Look, I won’t bullshit you. I’ve got an inside tip that there’s a network job opening up in Chicago. I’m trying to get a decent clip file together. Know where I’m supposed to be right now?”
    “Miss Lamb—”
    “Covering the garden show at the Kiwanis Center.”
    “I don’t know how I can make this any—”
    “A home invasion in Roger Mallory’s neighborhood is a great angle, that shiner of yours is going to read great on camera, and if I don’t get this cut to tape inside the hour my news director is going to flame- broil my ass. Five minutes? Help me out?”
    “Go away, Miss Lamb.”
    Her face fell, but I was unsympathetic. What made a home invasion in Roger Mallory’s neighborhood a great angle? At that point, I didn’t care enough to ask. She’d said that Sara had sent her here, and I doubted that very much.
    Maya Lamb stood there a moment, as though considering an alternate approach. Finally she sighed and nodded. “Of course. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
    “No harm done. Good night.”
    “I mean, some guy breaks into your house with a knife your first night—”
    “Sorry?”
    “I’m just saying, I understand. Your first night in a new town, and some guy—”
    I stopped her there. “Nobody had a knife. That’s not what happened.”
    “It’s not?”
    “No. Who told you that?”
    “I thought … Wait a minute. You’re saying he didn’t have a knife?”
    “That’s what I’m telling you.”
    At first I couldn’t tell which disappointed her more: the fact that I didn’t want to be interviewed, or the possibility that her story didn’t have a knife- wielding maniac in it after all. Somehow, over the course of the next minute or so, I found myself explaining the circumstances in spite of myself.
    I barely noticed Maya Lamb’s subtle gesture to the cameraman, the subtle rise of the microphone in her hand. I washeadlong into setting the record straight on the knife rumor once and for all when I became aware that both the microphone and the camera were now pointed directly at me.
    “Still, you must have been terrified,” she said. “What went through your