'Til Grits Do Us Part (42 page)

“She's gone? You let her out?”

“No, she just went! We've been over this before.” I sighed, bone weary and wishing I'd never gone on this stupid wild-goose chase with Jim Bob. “But Christie can't stay out long in this mess. She'll be back in a minute, and we'll leave.”

And just as I closed the door and locked it, it hit me: Mom's paper shredder. Up in the attic. I'd seen it there when I looked for her transmission warranty, and from what I'd heard of that particular brand of shredder, it was a piece of junk.

If she'd destroyed her drawing of Odysseus in the middle of the night, with swift but not-so-perfect results, I might've just stumbled on my biggest clue of all.

“You'd better go straight to Faye's,” Adam huffed, still mad. “Don't stop your car for anybody. Just get your things and go.”

There he went, ordering me around again. I knew he meant well, but it made my skin prickle.

“And make sure you have your ID with you.”

“My ID? For what?” I was already pulling down the attic ladder. Still feeling cranky at his bossy-yelling thing. Which, if we were supposed to live together, I'd probably have to put up with—because heaven knows men don't change much after they slap a ring on your finger.

Even Carlos had taught me that.
The cheater
.

“Meet me at the courthouse at 8 a.m. sharp. I think this whole thing has gone far enough.”

I froze, my foot on the first rung of the ladder. “To…to get married? You're serious?”

No answer. I shook the phone. “Hello? Adam?”

A blank screen stared back at me, its insolent gray rectangle reminding me not so politely that I'd let the battery run out.

“So everything's my fault, as usual.” I stuffed my phone in my jeans pocket and climbed up the rough pine stairs to the attic.

I found the paper shredder by the flashlight's glinting beam and carried it down to the kitchen table, holding my light steady as I opened the front of the plastic canister. Spilling thick paper shreds, some still stuck together by the blade's dull edge, onto the kitchen table.

I sorted through them by flashlight, illuminating flashes of brown and white.

Wait a second. I jerked up the slip of paper, which looked like Mom had sketched something in brown marker, and held it up to the light. Then I sorted through the loose wad of paper strips covered with sketch marks.

I started fitting them together, turning them this way and that until the sketch marks matched. Joining them to reveal the lines of a man's heavy jaw, a curve of hair behind his ear. A large, angular face. Long, thin nose.

I leaned closer, sensing something familiar in those full lips and that set of square jaw. Something…I'd seen before.

“Wow, Mom, I didn't know you could draw so well,” I said aloud, my flashlight beam flickering against the paper strips. Shadows of my hands stretched black fingers across the wrinkles. “You should have minored in art instead of me.”

I reached for another strip of nose and eased it into place, working my way up to the eyes. “And you're right. He looks nothing like Jim Bob so far. I'm so confused.”

A tremor of ice passed through me as my fingers fit together the lines of his face. The face of a man who'd stalked my mother, gotten me kicked off the crime beat, and ruined my wedding. My hand shook as I reached for the next piece.

I heard something. A soft sound on the side of the house.

“Christie?” I called, dropping the paper slips. I grabbed the flashlight and hurried to the door, pushing back the curtains on the side window. My hand on the doorknob.

But when a flash of lightning illuminated the wooden boards of the deck, it gleamed back empty. No Christie.

Maybe she'd gone to the other door. I marched through the living room and scrunched the sheers aside, straining to see the front porch through the large picture window.

Again, no Christie.

Something thumped against the side of the house, its movement reverberating through the walls. I felt it against my arm, and the window glass rattled slightly.

Without warning, a large shadow fell across the curtains.

A man's shadow
. Tall and angular, just a few inches away from me. Separated only by a thin pane of glass.

I
let the sheers fall back together in a silent second. Instinctively I grabbed for the flashlight and switched it off, plunging the house into darkness. But at least I could hide my location and buy a little more time.

The doorknob jiggled as he tried to force it open. Then again with more strength, shaking the door frame. The lock held, and I caught my breath. And then he slipped out of my field of vision, toward Mom's window. Half shrouded by gangly shrubs and a trellis thick with clematis and climbing roses.

Call the police, for pity's sake! Now!

I scrambled to my feet, stumbling over scattered packing peanuts as I hurled myself toward the kitchen. Grabbing the phone in one swift movement. My breath loud in my ears as I dialed.

Too loud. “Where's the dial tone?” I whispered, jiggling the cord.

No response. Just silence. And a peal of thunder that shook the walls of the house.

Of all the lousy luck! Leave it to Shiloh P. Jacobs to shut herself in the house with a madman outside
. No cell phone, no landline. And no Christie.

Poor Christie, out in the rain by herself with a maniac. Where was she? If that creep so much as laid a finger on her, I'd bite him in the leg myself.

The shadow reappeared, slipping along the edges of the picture window, and I wondered briefly if he was watching me.

I hung the phone back in the receiver without a sound and dropped to my knees, racking my brain for anything I could use as a weapon. But with everything boxed up, my options were limited. A plastic take-out fork? One of Stella's ugly garden gnomes?

Wait a second. The freezer. I jerked it open and pulled out a hefty leg of venison, plastic-wrapped and hard as a rock. Not that a piece of deer meat would help much if somebody slit the window screen and climbed inside—knife-toting wacko that my stalker had turned out to be.

But it was better than nothing, right?

As if mocking my thoughts, the screen in Mom's bedroom window squeaked as he tried to push it up. And when it groaned in hesitation, I heard the dull crunch of something like clippers or shears cutting through the screen.

I clapped cold fingers over my mouth, freezing in midstep. Those windows opened as easily as a Twinkie wrapper. Once I'd jimmied open my bedroom window with Becky's Blockbuster card when I left my keys at her house.

I eased down the hall toward Mom's room, clutching the venison leg like a baseball bat, but the shadow disappeared. I whirled around, terrified. The only thing worse than a shadow outside my house was a shadow that kept disappearing.

The rain switched directions, spattering against the windows, and the rattling of the window screen abruptly silenced. I took advantage of the pause to crawl back to the table and feel for my cell phone, determined to squeeze every last drop of juice from the battery. Just one call would do it.

At the first push of the button, my cell phone turned on, sending a blue glow into my cupped fingers, and then unceremoniously blinked off.

I unzipped my purse and dug through it frantically in search of my work pager, in hope that I could send a frantic page to Meg or Kevin. I dumped my purse upside down on the table and pawed through it, dropping coins and rumpled tissues and pens. A checked-off wedding planning schedule. Kyoko's throwing star, which wouldn't accomplish a thing through panes of glass. Tubes of lip gloss rolled onto the floor.

I shook out my purse, but no pager. Probably still in the car.

A scrape of rusty metal screen at the far end of the house made me jump, knocking pens and breath mints off the table. I heard my bedroom window screen stick and then suddenly—in one ugly screech—slide up.

Instead of retreating, all my weeks of worrying and checking over my shoulder suddenly boiled in my mind like storm clouds. The spray paint and notes. The worries I wouldn't make it to my wedding. The arguments with Adam over roses, and the fear in Mom's letters.

I wasn't Amanda.
And I wasn't about to disappear
.

I tripped over lipstick and keys littering the linoleum floor on my way to the bedroom, smacking the wooden window frame hard with my leg of frozen meat. Nearly breaking the glass. “Get out of here!” I yelled, raising the venison to swing again—and hoping it made contact with his head.

Spine-chilling laughter shook the glass, and he pushed at the pane again, trying to force it up.

I swung and smashed the window frame again, this time miscalculating and cracking the glass.
Bad idea
.

Laughter again, louder than before—sounding vaguely familiar. But not familiar enough to place. It was maddening, all this ducking and hiding and guessing.

“Get out of here!” I shouted. “My neighbors have probably called the police already!”

“
Never
!” came the muffled shout through fractured glass. And he punched it with something blunt, probably the shears he'd used to cut the screen. A chunk of glass fell onto my bedroom floor, and I jumped back, shielding my eyes from splinters.

In a dull flash of lightning I saw a man's gloved hand appear, and I swung again with my trusty leg of venison, trying to keep a grip on the slippery plastic wrapping. The frost coating melted on my nearly numb palms. More glass shattered down, but to my horror, choked in the uncut portions of the screen and fell inward rather than outward. Spilling all down my carpet in glittering pieces.

Making a perfect hole for him to reach through, and as I swung again, grab the thick venison leg. I slid across the carpet as he pulled me forcefully toward the window.

I stumbled and let go of the frozen meat just as he reached through the window and grabbed my cardigan sleeve, and somehow I managed to pull myself loose and scream. Floundering through the darkness of the room, banging into boxes as I lurched for the doorway.

In a lull between thunder and rain, I heard the sound of breaking glass. I slammed the bathroom door behind me and locked it then leaned against the door—my racing brain trying to process one last piece of ridiculous information.
He's coming in after me
.

And all I had for defense was a stinkin' hairbrush! I rummaged through the bathroom cabinets, stuff spilling out of the drawers and onto the rug. A tube of toothpaste. Some bad-tasting mouthwash. A couple of old hair elastics. Perhaps I could make a slingshot with the brush and hair elastics, à la David and Goliath, and let fly a few bars of peach-scented soap?

And then suddenly over the din came a loud shotgun blast.
BLAM!
The house shook.

I dropped the hair elastics.

“I don't know who you are, but you'd better git the tarnation outta here!” blared Stella's voice from the front of the house, loud and strident.

“Stella?” I crawled to the bathroom door and pressed my ear to wood.

“You mess with me or my friend an' I'll blow yer fool head from here ta kingdom come, ya hear?”

Another blast.
BLAM!
My knees shook as I felt the vibrations, like earthquake aftershocks.

“Yeah, you better run! Run, you mangy dog, before I… Where the blazes are ya?”

I stayed silent, waiting, hearing nothing but my breath. Then jumped back as someone pounded on my front door. “Shiloh?” came Stella's muffled voice. “You okay? The rascal musta run off.”

“Stella?” I called, shaking, raising myself a few inches.

“He ain't comin' back! An' I'll be standin' here till the police come. Ain't nothin' gonna move me outta the way!” She paused a minute. “Say, what's all this trash on yer porch?”

Police sirens whined in the distance. “Hold on. The po-lice is comin'!” Stella called. “Sure took 'em long enough.”

The sirens increased to a high-pitched wail, and Christie's barking rang against the walls. The sound of an engine. I cracked open the bathroom door, hoping I didn't find Odysseus's shot-ridden body slumped outside my bedroom window.

“Shiloh!” Stella pounded on the front door. “Answer me! Ya okay in there?”

In the faint crack of streetlight from Mom's bedroom window across the hall, my bathroom rug glowed ruby red. Red like the string of fate. The color of Odysseus's roses. The color of my bridesmaids'dresses. The color of the wedding dress obi I'd never wear.

“I think Stella shot somebody,” I murmured out loud, feeling strangely light-headed.

And I bent over right there on the rug and forgot everything else.

When I came to, someone was pounding on the front door so loud my teeth rattled, and Christie barked incessantly. Loud, harsh sounds that made my head ache.

I felt around for my venison leg, not finding it, and heard the distinct squeal of a police dispatcher. I crawled out of the bathroom and ventured into the hallway. The living room curtains blinked white and blue. Through the window I saw a uniformed officer I didn't recognize on my front porch, hand on his holster.