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Ollie was home tonight, too. He was probably waiting for me, but that didn’t appear obvious, given the laidback look he’d forced onto his face. The boys and Jolie couldn’t see the tightness beneath his expression, but I knew him better than they did.
I knew that if he saw my truck, that I’d driven at a snail’s pace without lights up the driveway, I wouldn’t get off this land tonight. He’d drag me inside if he saw me out here, skulking around the pretty Dogwoods where my family enjoyed picnics. Dinner and the placid look on his face would be forgotten.
I slipped back, leaving the family a man down. Leaving Ollie with that false smile to hide all his stress as he tapped Woodrow on the shoulder and told him, “Dinner smells great.”
Lipreading was a skill of mine, and I possessed it at a high level, having needed to adjust to my depleting senses.
Long strides took me down the driveway, the knife wedged down my pants, scratching at my thigh each time my legs moved. I’d chosen to leave the gun behind when I realized the damn thing was out of bullets.
The journey to Plaid Shirt’s was much longer on foot. By the time I got to the junction, my mouth was dry and craving another coffee.
His truck still blocked the narrow road, and I had to drop down a miniature bank to get around it.
Maybe he was still expecting me, but I’d convinced myself that wasn’t the case, and his truck was still blocking the road because he was too lazy to move it.
Seeing his house at night was a new experience—it was a thing of beauty—a Spanish villa of wonder, placed in the wrong country and filled with horror.
The house was a stark contrast to the backdrop of the dark sky, with lights on in every room. Money was nothing to me, and I pitied the poor bastard who received his electric bill.
I trailed the house and looked through the windows, feeling nostalgic.
I had enjoyed creeping from outside so many times. Staring up at Cat back when she lived with Cedric. Watching as she wandered around a home that wasn’t hers, trying hard to find anything to do and looking so fucking arousing while doing absolutely nothing.
I couldn’t see her now.
All I saw were valuable trinkets and the affluent cabinets they sat in. The place was expensive, inside and out, not straying too far from my own taste. I took in all the classy features that made this place scream of old money. The furniture, while costly, was dark and eerie. Gothic and black, like the painted walls.
Music played from an unattended MP3 player in the living room, docked on its LED speaker, standing out like a sore thumb against the décor.
The operatic voice could be heard from out here, where it aggravated the odd bird flying by and me, who hated fucking opera.
I moved to the kitchen, happy to get away from the sound. The windows were covered in that shit people sprayed all over them when decorating to stop people from looking in because, you know, people often hung around other people’s fucking windows.
Of course, I knew that wasn’t the case here.
I tried the door to the left. Locked.
I continued around the house, finding myself in the backyard, my eyes on a shed that vibrated with noise. Barking. There were dogs in there—surely a fucking dozen of them.
I didn’t like dogs, the big ones or the ankle biters.
I didn’t like people either, but here I was, trying to save one to clear my conscience.
Yeah, sure…that’s the reason, my mind taunted.
The barking increased, and what sounded like some kind of mutant hound led the pack to throw themselves at the shoddy doors.
“Quiet!” The scream came from inside the house.
I ducked behind a stone statue of a naked woman. What an odd fucking thing to have randomly placed in the fucking yard, I thought to myself, trying hard to hide my height behind the figure that was a foot shorter than me.
Basement doors flung open, and a tiny woman climbed out with a huff. It was hard to tell her age. Her face looked around fifty, but she dressed her saggy seventy-year-old-looking body like she was twenty.
I rolled my eyes, feeling secondhand embarrassment for her.
The small human stomped to the shed, painted black like everything else except her big white house. She picked up a stick from the yard on the way and kept walking until the night swallowed her up.
I could still hear her when she became hard to see. And that said a lot because I could hardly hear a fucking thing these days.
