Thirteen
 In the middle of the night, a sound woke her up.
She was alone and the bed was cold. It took her a moment or two to realize where she was. Where was Rob?
She heard a repetitive sound, like coins being dropped one by one into a bag in another room. The sound was muffled.
She rose to visit the bathroom briefly, intending to slip back into the bed and go right back to sleep. The sound was louder here, and she lifted the roll-down window shade by the toilet seat.
Now she heard the sound more clearly.
The window afforded a view down through some vines overlooking the back lawn. She saw the swimming pool, the deck chairs, everything clearly in the moonlight. The sound was that of a shovel. The wielder of the shovel was Rob, standing in the hole where she’d fallen. And lying on the lawn beside the hole was a long shape draped in what looked like an old nylon sail.
Her breath froze in her throat with a tiny squeak. There was clearly something wrong here. Suddenly some scary ideas fell into place for her, and she realized she must get out of her. To be on her own turf. To think things through.
Quickly, she padded into the bedroom and found her clothes. Jeans, shirt, shoes... Her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t get her socks on. Forget them. She grabbed her sweater off the back of a chair and stopped to listen.
For a moment or two the blood pounded so hard in her throat that she couldn’t hear.
No, the sound of the shovel had stopped.
Was he coming up the stairs?
She ran back into the bathroom and looked out the window. Rob and the shape were gone. But she had not dreamed this—the shovel stood in the hole, which was now a good two feet deeper. Maybe this was just crazy, she thought, of course it was just crazy, but she was too terrified to take a chance. She hardly knew this man, and here she was carrying on a torrid affair with him, and now she realized she was probably in over her head.
She took her shoes off and tiptoed across the bedroom.
Gingerly, she turned the door handle.
It made a soft squealing sound that reverberated through the dark, and she felt beads of sweat mix with tears in the orbs of her eyes.
There was nothing now but go for it. She pulled the door open, slowly, softly, listening.
Nothing. Just the ticking of a clock.
She slipped out into the hallway. Luckily it was carpeted. Her feet were soundless on the thick pile rug.
Moonlight seeped throughout the house, illumining the pictures of innocent family members—clean-cut boys and girls, happy women, smiling men—on the walls around her.
She ducked into one doorway and was prepared to run a few more feet to the next doorway, when something came up out of the yawning darkness of the steps leading downstairs.
She nearly fell over backwards and stood teetering in the darkness of an open bedroom as Rob walked past.
If he could not hear her on the rug, she could not hear him either. He moved like a ghost in the darkness.
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Thank you for reading half free (Read-a-Latte). If you enjoyed the story thus far, and want to read the rest, you can buy the whole e-book for the low price of a cup of coffee or latte. The book stays with you forever, while the coffee is gone in a few delicious minutes. If you liked the book, please tell your friends, and thus help the author with important Word of Mouth (WOM) promo. Thank you (JTC).
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Copyright © 1996 by John T. Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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