Chapter Thirteen

Andrew

I was up to my elbows in a corroded carburetor when my cell phone chimed distantly. It was a ring I couldn’t remember ever hearing before, a kind of blip sound, and I almost ignored it in favor of focusing on the task at hand--but then I remembered. The security app. The home invasion alert.

Michelle.

I clumsily pulled my massive arms out of the engine and bolted for the phone, rubbing my hands over my shirt and smearing oily fingerprints down either side. I panned its smudged screen up toward my face. The screen blinked red. Front door open. No code entered.

“Shit,” I hissed, storming out of the garage. “Couldn’t wait just two more hours, could it?” I fumbled with the keys as I locked the garage behind me, cursing myself.

This was my fault. I should’ve finished rekeying the lock last night, instead of being so weak and mortal whenever I had to watch Michelle traipse toward that bathroom, picturing her getting naked and slippery in the bubbles. I climbed into my truck, turned the engine, and revved out onto the street. Don’t wreck this car. “Not until Chet’s in my headlights, anyway,” I muttered.

It was regularly a six-minute drive from my garage to Withers Community, but I took the back roads at double the speed limit and was there in less than three.

The front door was closed. Michelle’s Volvo was in the driveway, but I couldn’t be sure if she was there. If she was, then she would turn off her own alarm. Wouldn’t she?

I marched heavily toward the house, and even though there was a clear, restrained violence to my gait, I still didn’t quite believe it. My mind harbored the illusion that truly terrible things don’t happen to sweet, gentle women like Michelle. It had to have been some sort of accident; there had to have been a logical explanation for this that wasn’t a home invasion occurring while Michelle was still inside the damn house. That had never—

I crossed the porch and grasped the front door, twisting the knob and swinging it slowly, quietly open, just in case I did have the chance to interrupt something nefarious.

I poked my head into the house. For a few seconds, I didn’t hear anything, and my blood pressure ratcheted down a notch. I could see the little red light flickering over the door. The alarm was going off. But I didn’t hear anything.

“You have the right to remain... soaking wet,” Chet’s voice leaked down the hall and I had another of those moments where I lost time. Everything went white and I was aware only of movement; maybe I broke the sound barrier. Maybe that was why I felt suddenly blind.

I forgot about being subtle or being quiet. It would’ve been cunning, but I’m not cunning. I’m a simple man. I see a threat and I bash it. Little guys can be cunning and quiet. My plan—“fists”—has always worked for me. I threw the bedroom door open but not so hard that it would crack against the opposing wall, and my heart felt like a fist, punching my chest, trying to get out.

My Michelle was still dressed in the sheer little slip she wore to bed last night... but now she was twisted with her front pressed into the wall and her legs kicked apart. Chet stood behind her, bracing her hips, slithering his palms down her bare thighs. I can tell by the way his pants hang on his ass that he’d already undone them. All this rushed into my mind at once, and I didn’t process it logically. All I got was a general sense of Michelle’s sexual vulnerability—a flash of strong certainty slicing through my every cell—and I barreled across the room.

I gripped Chet by his throat and heaved him with all the strength afforded between my two arms.

Chet went airborne over Michelle’s bed and crashed into her bedside table, overturning the table and sending a million little objects into the floor, including Chet himself. He groaned plaintively and I seized Michelle from behind, twisting her so that I could look into her eyes. “Did he hurt you?” I demanded. “Did he do anything to you?”

Michelle shook her head frantically, but even as she did so, I knew it was a lie. Her eyes were filled with tears and, even as she shook her head, trying to protect this walking dead man, they spilled down her cheeks. “He didn’t—” she said, breathless and broken, uncertain of what words to use. “He didn’t—didn’t get to—”

I pressed a hard kiss against her forehead and held her with my arms extended, surveying her body for damage. “Get out of here. I don’t want you to see this.”

“Don’t—” Michelle’s eyes suddenly bulged and she reeled away from me. “Look out!”

A stinging, slicing pain arced up into my brain and everything went black and red for a second. I staggered and lost my hold on Michelle’s arms.

“Andrew,” I heard her call to me, hushed in horror.

“Go,” I said, even though I had no idea what was happening, and she listened. Her footfalls receded across the carpet and my fingers went to the back of my head. Wet. I was definitely bleeding.

I shook my head and the pain only intensified. I pushed myself to my feet and spun to glare down at Chet. He held the bottom half of a lamp in one hand. The other half of the lamp had splintered off and fallen to the carpet.

I lunged, and perhaps the pain slowed my reaction time. Chet got in a good blow. He raised the base of the wooden lamp overhead and arced it down into my shoulder, where it sank several inches into muscle. Still, even with this makeshift stake buried in the meat of my arm, I stayed sharp. My other hand whipped to collect the electrical wire for the lamp, and I wrapped it around Chet’s throat, twisting him in my arms. He sputtered and scratched at his throat as I hauled him from the room. My body vibrated with adrenaline as I extracted the lamp from my shoulder with a roar, then, infuriated by my own pain, sent Chet hurtling down the hallway.

“You never could get a woman on your own,” I told him. I followed him as he rolled, boneless and weak, all the way into the foyer. He hurried to unravel the wire from around his bright red throat. “You always had to pick off someone else’s and use a little pressure.” I sent a kick directly into his sternum just as he was finished freeing himself from the lamp’s cord. Chet floundered back against the front door, sweeping it shut with his body. The half of a lamp crashed to the floor.

“Wrong,” Chet rasped, rubbing his throat and glaring up at me with bleary eyes. He crossed the foyer toward the living room. I wasn’t sure about Michelle’s position right now. “I got Michelle. She wants me like the dirty little girl she is.” Chet licked his lips and his eyes gleamed.

He surprised me with a quick grab behind the wall, into the living room, popping back into his defensive stance with a standard issue police club. I realized he must’ve shirked his weapons and left them in the living room. The sick son of a bitch really did believe that he was giving Michelle Harper what she wanted.

“She wanted it bad,” Chet said, “and if you hadn’t interrupted us, we’d be making sweet love right now!”

He swung hard toward my face, but my hands felt like steel as one stretched out to catch his club in a fist. He paused, shocked by my ability to absorb pain when infuriated, and I took the opportunity to punch the stupid look off his face.

The trajectory of the punch sent him deep into the living room, sprawled on his back. I entered after him, intent on cracking a rib or two, but Chet rolled and fumbled on the carpet near Michelle’s sofa. I saw her crouched in the corner of the room, utterly silent, watching me with wide, bleak eyes. Chet hadn’t seen her.

A strange crackling noise brought my focus back to Chet with crystal clarity. He staggered to his feet, nose bleeding freely. Not that it meant much to me. My shoulder oozed in spurts right now. We’d get everything patched up and settled after I finished fucking killing him. The thing crackling in Chet’s hand was a live Taser. He showed me its little blue-white tendrils of electricity, skipping between the metallic prongs, to threaten me.

“Now get outta here,” Chet huffed. “And let us finish what we started before you barged in, Ace. Get outta here or I’ll put you out myself.”

I didn’t dare let my eyes redirect toward Michelle, even though I could see her slowly rising to a stand in the corner. She stared intently between the two of us and I took a deep breath, never letting my eyes leave Chet.

“Michelle is mine,” I promised Chet. “If you touch her, I’ll kill you, even if you hnnn—”

Sudden, blinding pain filled my entire body like a riot of nerve endings buzzing and screaming at once. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t feel. My body went plummeting as stiffly as a falling tree.

A thought of Michelle frittered through my mind, a fuzzy, helpless recollection. I saw her again, as I saw her last night, striding away from me in a white dress and sandals, gazing coyly over her shoulder. Now she was coming down that staircase at her office in slow motion, wearing the pearl gray heels and the top knot bun, a few wisps straggling free from the bond. I saw her smile, saw her ankle bend, and I saw her tumble.

But this time, I couldn’t catch her before she hit the ground. This time, I fell with her.

In a dream somewhere, Michelle Harper leaned over me, wearing that tight little bun at the tippy top of her head, those wisps straggled free in a halo around her clear-rimmed glasses and heart-shaped, glossy lips. She was happy. She smiled down at me and said, “You’re the mechanic who—”

“Fixed your car,” I interjected for her helpfully. “I have to get back, Michelle... you need me.”

“Will you come with me to a friend’s wedding?” She stood and I saw that her sundress was a voluminous gown. Her face blurred away behind a veil. “His name is Andrew. Her name is Michelle. They’re good people.” She swayed and smiled at me, a twinkling from behind the veil.

I couldn’t remember what was happening anymore. But I knew that Michelle needed me, and I was trapped in a dream.