A Wild Ride (Jessica Brodie Diaries #3)(28)

“Yeah,” I breathed.

Fred was standing in front of the door, staring at it, body poised, growl turned off.

The door handle jiggled.

“Oh God the door jiggled. The door just jiggled. Oh holy f**k. I gotta run. I gotta get outta here. I can’t be here. Not again. Can’t do this again!”

“Fuck! Jessica, calm down. It’s okay, just—“

“Hi Jess,” Lump said in calm voice. She’d talked me out of a bad choice trying a drug once using that voice. She knew I responded well to it. She was almost right.

Fred was on the move, as silent as a ghost, following something as unseen as a ghost around the perimeter of the cottage. How he knew where they were, I didn’t know. I also didn’t follow.

“Lump, what does it mean when the growl is off?”

“I don’t know, Je—“

“PUT ADAM BACK ON!” I whisper-screamed. I didn’t need calm voice, I needed to know what the hell was going on.

“Hi Jessica.” Adam was working on being calm for me; probably getting coached by Lump. “Fred growling means there…might be someone outside.”

“Adam, someone just f**king jiggled the God-damned door handle, then started walking around the place. Someone is def—“

A large shape passed by the far window, barely darker than the night beyond.

“It’s no kid, Adam,” I whispered, my focal cords tightened.

“How do you know?” Adam asked worriedly.

“Saw a shape. I have my running shoes. I should run.”

“No! Jess, no! Betsy, she wants to run—“ There was a pause, which I filled by watching Fred follow the shadow to the rear of the house. “Running would probably be the last thing to do, Jess. You are locked in with Fred. You are safe. Betsy is calling the police and we are on our way as we speak. We are in the car. We’ll be there shortly.”

I nodded, not wanting to voice that this was the third time Adam would not make it in time. And this time, I didn’t have William to save me.

Fred barked from the back of the house.

“Did Fred just bark?” Adam asked in a near panic.

“Yeah, at the back of the house. I should run. I should. I’m fast. I have my shoes—“

“Jessica-you-will-not-run! Trust in Fred. The police are on their—“

Lights, sirens—the world turned white, bright lights streaming through the windows like spot lights. Disembodied voices yelled, shouting directions. Two shadows jiggled through my window, one getting smaller—off to the Big House. One bigger. Coming here.

“Why me?” I asked, covering my eyes against the glare.

“I don’t know, Jessica. Why can I never help?” Adam answered in the same voice.

The glass back door—my back door—shattered.

“I don’t hear Fred…” My voice trailed off, overtaken by blind, numbing panic.

A shout echoed through the front door.

Then, out the back, sounded a vicious, fierce, louder than a gunshot, wet growl. And screaming. A man screaming so loud and high it didn’t sound like a man anymore.

In a daze I walked that way. I walked toward my dog, probably dying. Toward a man, surely dying.

“JESSICA! JESSICA TALK TO ME!!”

It was Lump. For the first time she sounded just as panicked as Adam. As my inner thoughts.

“I’m here,” I said through numb lips into a phone clutched by numb fingers. I was only so tough, after all. I could only go through so much. And this was one time too many. I was spent. All done. This time, I just didn’t give a shit anymore.

“Do it for William, Jessica! Keep it together for William!” Lump was yelling at me from a different world.

“Do what?” I asked stupidly, staring at a man lying on my kitchen floor with his throat shredded.

“There’s so much blood.” Spilling out. Inching across the tile floor in a smooth, shimmering pool. Crawling along the cracks, reaching out to my feet. “It’s ruining the floor.”

“She’s lost—GO FASTER!” I heard through my fog.

A man’s feet came into view. My eyes traveled up a body a mile high, landing on calculating, steel blue eyes. If he was taken aback by the body at his feet, he didn’t show it.

I waited for my calm bubble of survival, but it didn’t come.

“Too much,” I said to the man, who had taken one step toward me. His balance wavered as his foot hit the slick tile coated with blood.

“Sorry honey—wrong place at the wrong time.” He sounded like a West Coaster. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I wasn’t expecting you. Wrong place at the wrong time.”

The phone clattered to the ground. Lump didn’t need to hear this. Not this. I had been trying to avoid something like this since I got to this damn state, and so far narrowly missed. But luck eventually runs out. My safety blanket was in another state.

“Well shit,” I said, watching the cool headed man working his slow way around a dying man. There wasn’t much room in this part of the entryway, and most of the floor space was filled with a body, blood or urine. Or a disgusting mixture of all three.

“I guess I better go out fighting, huh?” I said dejectedly. That was the name of the game, wasn’t it? That’s what heroes always did? They didn’t write stories or sing songs about people that just laid down and died.