Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
My house shouldn’t be dark. I lived with three women, all who worked hard, partied harder, slept with their TVs on, and didn’t know how to turn out a light to save their life. There was a reason our electricity bill never dropped below three hundred bucks, and it was primarily because our house was never dark.
I walked up to the porch and paused on the stoop, my eye on the knob. The unease inside grew, morphed. It had me sliding my hand into my purse and wrapping my fingers around the small handgun I kept there. I forced my arms to relax until the tremor in my grip stopped.
I’d had this feeling before.
Two
Eight years ago. The horse limped, favoring its front hoof in an exaggerated motion that gave me pain just to watch it. I walked slowly, guiding it to the stall and unclipping the lead rope, patting the mare’s neck as she passed me by and headed for the feed bucket.
“Good girl.”
I pulled the door shut. There was the contented quiet of the barn, the soft nicker of horses, the sound of buckets bumping against stalls, of crickets outside. Peaceful, yet something was off. I glanced at the open doors at the end of the aisle, at the dark fields behind them. Nothing out there but a thousand acres of fields, the dotted black of the timber forests barely visible in the dusk. My unease grew, and I watched the mare eat and willed her to hurry up.
Headlights cut across the stalls, and the growl of an engine hummed through the quiet. Relief came and I pushed off the stall gate, heading to the front of the barn. Mom probably got off work early and swung by to save me the walk home. I paused at the sight of the truck. The driver’s side door opened and I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the headlights, watching as the passenger door also opened.
“Bell?” The voice was gruff and deep, an unfamiliar one.
I took a step back. “Yes?”
“It’s John.” He shut off the lights, and I could see Mr. Wright, the owner of the barn, a man I’d only seen a few times before. I typically dealt with his son. Johnny was a few years older than me and had the twitchy muscles of a drug user and the sort of wandering eyes that caused me to wear jeans and long-sleeve shirts in the dead of summer.
From the passenger side, Johnny stepped out. He flung the door closed and I flinched at the sound. He came closer and I watched a smile slowly stretch over his thin face.
I shifted my weight, uneasy. “I just finished feeding the horses. I’m headed home now.”
“Well, don’t run off so soon,” Johnny called. “We’d like to talk to you first.”
They came closer and I forced myself to stay in place.
It was a mistake.
I stepped back from the front door and weighed my options, trying to push back the old memory, the clench of their grip around my arms as they’d dragged me back into the barn. I should have run. The moment they’d stepped from the truck, the second I’d felt that spark of fear ... I should have taken off. They wouldn’t have caught me. Not that stiff man with his big gut. Not Johnny, with alcohol on his breath and that pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. He’d started panting before they’d been half done with me. There was no way he could have caught me in a sprint.
But I hadn’t run. I had stood there because I didn’t want to be rude, because I didn’t know what else to do.
Now, I wasn’t a scared fifteen-year-old girl. I had my handgun and a phone. I could get another taxi or try the police. I could call one of my roommates and find out what the hell is going on. I took the third option and dialed Jackie.
It rang, and I took a deep breath and eyed the other houses in the neighborhood. Everything looked normal, each home well-tended and still. It was the sort of neighborhood where the houses were stacked on top of each other, the front-facing garages all blocked by minivans and SUVs. Jackie’s car was in our spot, and I spotted Meredith’s Camry two spots down and Lydia’s Jeep just behind it.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?” I stepped closer to the house.
“Home. By the way, don’t turn on the lights when you get here.” She sounded annoyed and I relaxed, pulling my hand from my bag and moving toward the house.
“Why?”
There was a rustle of background noise, and she cursed. “Fucking Lydia. She had a bunch of lightning bug larva in her room, and they hatched. We’re trying to catch them now, and we can’t find them in the—oh! I got one!”