Disclaimer: I do not own anything to do with red eye

Chapter One

She walked alone on a dark road, thunderclouds overhead, threatening rain. She knew she was late for something important, if only she could remember what it was. She noticed a shadow behind her, dogging her every step and breathing heavily, making her nervous. But all she could see was the shadow, she was afraid to turn around all the way, afraid of what she might see. Or of what she might not see. She began to hurry, quickening her pace without even thinking about it, until she was all out running. Bam! She smacked into a wall, and her heart nearly stopped. Then she noticed that the wall had ice blue eyes, narrowed to slits of rage. She spun around, trying to lose him, but he was everywhere she turned, breathing heavily into her face, the rotten, putrid stink, she could breathe, there was pressure on her chest-

"Oof!"

Lisa Reisert awoke with a giant woosh of air leaving her body. Her enormous wolfhound, Baby, was licking her face with a passion that could only equal an overweight boy trying to get every last lick of ice cream out of his bowl.

"Baby, get off me. You stink soo bad," lisa muttered to her dog, pushing him vainly. The sixty pounds of love refused to move.

"Ok, Im up!" She announced in resignation. She climbed out of bed, pulled on a pair of shorts groggily and, without even hazarding a glance to the mirror, she jerked her head at the door, whistling to her dog.

As she stood on her front lawn, waiting for Baby to do his business and shivering in the pre-dawn chill, she once again wondered to herself why on earth she had decided to buy a dog. Nearly a year after the red eye flight, she had still been skittish (paranoid, according to Cynthia), and had allowed herself to be persuaded into getting a companion for herself. After carefully researching breeds, she had decided that too much work in research was a total waste of time, and had chosen to buy the biggest dog she could find, assuming that it would be the most able to protect her.

But having a champion protector and best friend certainly had its drawbacks.

Grimacing as she scooped up the refuse with a plastic baggie, she whistled again to her dog, and they went back inside the house.

"Baby, you might be more trouble than youre worth,"she stated glibly.

Baby whined.

Lisa considered trying to sleep another couple of hours, but decided it was useless. It was already 4:30, and she had to be at the Lux Atlantic at 6:30. and, she reflected, she probably wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway. She was a light sleeper at best, and since the "ordeal", that characteristic had been heightened.

She heated the stove in preparation for her meager breakfast, a pan of oatmeal. To spruce it up, she threw some strawberries and blackberries in it, and sat at her table with the latest Harry Potter book, (her dirty little secret; she was obsessed). She cozily curled her toes up under her as she sat, and the sound of Baby's tail thumping against the floor drifted into the background as she lost herself in the world of witches and wizards.

She was startled out of her comfort ritual by the fierce sound of Baby barking, followed by a frenzied knocking at her door.

She smiled.

"Now I remember why I got you," she cooed. With her heart slightly in her throat, and her hands clenched into fists, she tiptoed to the door, and snapped open the peephole.

No one there.

Without taking a second glance, she scuttled back to her seat, and sat, her heart thumping wildly. A thought had sprung unbidden into her mind as she went to the door. A random feeling, perhaps brought on by the dream.

"I really thought it would be him this time," she whispered to Baby.

She felt odd, disappointed. She shouldn't want to see him, not after he terrorized her, tried to kill her, and made her life and psyche miserable. She examined her thoughts. Besides her father, jack rippner had been the first man to get so close to her after the rape three years ago. That should make him all the more feared, logically. But he had also made her feel more alive than she had in a very long time. She remembered how he'd slammed her against the wall numerous times, and tried to remember how much it had hurt. It had hurt. But in those few moments before the police had arrived, the look in his eyes hadn't been murder, like before. It had been desperation. She hungered for that again. Was it possible that she missed him? How could that be? That wasn't how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to loathe him with a fiery passion for making her life what it was. He was the reason she'd gotten Baby, she mused as she scratched his ears absently. But she knew it wasn't just random memory that made his eyes appear every time she closed her own.

But where was he now?