“Go back inside,” he said, “and stay. Don’t make a sound.”
She looked up at him. “Did he come?”
“He is here,” Kurt said, in that superquiet voice of his. “I don’t want you getting in the middle. Please, go inside and stay.”
She nodded, softly closed the door, and sat on the bed. And immediately felt trapped. Nothing quite like a closed door, knowing that all kinds of hell were going on outside, to disturb your peace and quiet. But she didn’t know what she could do to help. Then Kurt also had Sabine, which Laurie Ann hadn’t seen or heard just now. She frowned. Maybe the dog was also scared. Maybe it had been through too much and was no good as a watchdog anymore.
Her heart immediately melted, thinking about the hardship the dog might have gone through, and, of course, Laurie Ann couldn’t do anything about it right now. But, as she sat on the side of her bed, every sound she heard was amplified. Front of the house, back of the house, she heard every little creak, every little whisper, every little groan, as the night air changed temperature.
She got up, grabbed her robe that she had brought into the room with her, put her socks back on to keep her feet warm, and padded over to the window, where she peeked out from behind the curtains. It was dark and stormy. Of course it was. Why couldn’t it be a bird-singing night and a clear early dawn? Instead it was cloudy and gray and ugly outside. But as she watched and studied the street, she noted a car she didn’t recognize was on the street outside the neighbor’s house up one. She pulled out her phone and sent Kurt a text, letting him know. She hoped the sound on his cell was off, in case he was waiting for the intruder.
He responded immediately. Good, keep an eye on it.
And, with that, she settled in for the wait. Because, if that guy was waiting for his partner, then she wanted to make sure that he didn’t get away either. But she had no way of seeing the license plate. She didn’t dare go downstairs, and she couldn’t take a useful picture of it from here. She had tried and took several blurry ones but couldn’t zoom in close enough. It was an old Oldsmobile, as far as she could see. But that in itself was a unique vehicle. At least they weren’t that common in her day and age. As she stayed and waited, she kept listening and turning toward the other rooms to see if she heard anything happening. Every time she found nothing.
Finally she wondered what would happen if she walked over to the door and opened it. As she reached out and touched it, the knob turned under her hand. She slid behind the door. When it opened, a large hairy hand moved inside. She knew it wasn’t Kurt. And then all kinds of possibilities came to her, but the head just poked in, looked around at the room, and then popped back out again. She let her breath out ever-so-slowly.
Dear God, what had happened to Kurt? Where was he? What had happened? And she couldn’t even breathe, thinking that the stranger was already in the house. How the hell had he gotten in?
And while she tried to figure out what she should do, staring down at the 9-1-1 already keyed in on her phone, she heard sounds outside her door in the hallway—a series of thuds and a growl and another series of thuds and then complete silence. She held her breath, her eyes closed, as she crouched in the corner.
“Laurie Ann, it’s okay. Open the door.”
She immediately opened the door and bolted into the hallway and stared at him. The intruder was on the ground, and he looked to be unconscious, but Kurt stood tall, bare-chested, just his jeans on, the dog sitting at his side, looking down at the intruder. Laurie Ann raced forward and threw her arms around Kurt’s neck. His arms closed tightly around her, and he just held her close. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, “he came into my room.”
“Well, he poked his head in, yes,” he said. “Don’t worry. He wouldn’t have gotten any farther because I was right behind him.”
She let out her breath. “I was so scared,” she said. “I figured the only way that he would be coming into my room was if something had happened to you.”
“No, I was trying to see what he would do, but, as he went through the master bedroom, and then realized that you weren’t there, he carried on. And that’s why I was trying to see if he would check every room, which he did. He checked your son’s room, and then he checked the spare room.”
“So he was looking for me?”
“I think so,” he said. “I’m not sure what else to make of it.”
“But why?” she asked. “I didn’t have anything to do with anything.”
“Except for those five gang members,” he reminded her.
She winced at that. “That’s a scary thought,” she said. “Nobody really wants to think that a conversation like that will go down a path to this end.”
“Exactly,” he said. He rolled the stranger over, and she hit the light switch on the wall.
“Oh, my God,” she said, “it’s one of the five kids from that gang.”
“Yep,” he said, “it is.” He took a photo of the kid and then said, “Shut that light off.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll go down and have a little talk with the guy who drove him here.” And, with Sabine in tow, Kurt left the intruder securely tied up, and he said, “Don’t touch him. If he wakes up, don’t even talk to him. The cops are on the way.”
She hesitated.
He looked at her and said, “He can’t get loose. I promise.”
She took in a long slow breath. “That’s fine,” she said. She walked over to Jeremy’s room, picked up his favorite baseball bat, and brought it back with her. “If he wakes up, he’s got me to contend with.”
Kurt gave a bark of laughter and said, “That’s my girl.” And he raced downstairs.
Laurie Ann had always been full of grit like that. Kurt loved it. Loved her. Always had. He was just a fool for not even realizing it. It had taken a trip back here for him to figure out what was important in his life, and, now that he found it, he didn’t want to lose it. She was just too damn special. And he would do an awful lot to keep her and his son safe and in his life.
He made his way downstairs, and, instead of going out the front door, he went out the back door. Keeping the dog close to his side, loving the fact that she was so well trained that she understood even his rough commands, he let himself out the side gate and headed behind the neighbor’s house and down one more. Only her place was fenced; the others just had trees dotting their backyards. And when he got past the car, he stepped out on the front walk and then strolled along the sidewalk casually, as if nothing was on his mind. He checked out the vehicle. It was a dark-colored old Oldsmobile. That, in itself, was interesting because you didn’t see too many of them. They were gas guzzlers of the ’80s.
As he walked closer, approaching the trunk of the car, he appeared to look at the vehicle, as if it were something unusual—which, in this day and age, it was.
As he stopped to look at it and stepped around it, checking out the tires and the hub cabs, the driver stuck his head out the car window and said, “Keep moving, old man.”
He looked his way, smiled at a face in the dark that he couldn’t see—and hopefully the driver couldn’t make out his face either—and said, “Just admiring the car.”