Authors: Kevin O'Brien

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

Terrified (5 page)

BOOK: Terrified

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He always ordered the same thing: a large Americano with room for cream. But ever since he’d started in with the questions about her boyfriend and cut back on his extravagant tips, Jade pretended like she didn’t remember his usual order.

Lyle leaned over the counter a bit. “C’mon, you know what I want, Jade. Try to guess.” He let out a long sigh. “And then maybe I’ll try to guess how you got that black eye.”

Jade turned toward the coffee machine. “A large Americano, room for cream,” she said, starting to make the drink. The awful thing about working retail was that she had to tolerate reptiles like Lyle Whatever-His-Last-Name-Was.

“When are you going to wise up and leave him, Jade?” Lyle asked. “One of these days, he’s going to hit you, and you’ll fall and bang your head against a coffee table or something—and you’ll be dead. And your boyfriend will tell the police, ‘Oh, it was an accident, I really didn’t mean it.’ Sometimes, all it takes to kill you is a good punch to the kidney—or a blood clot that might form after one of his sessions… .”

Working the lever on the machine, Jade stared at the stream of coffee filling the tall cup. A knot tightened in her stomach. She didn’t like confrontations, but she’d been pushed to the limit. “You’re way out of line,” she finally announced with a quiver in her voice. “My personal life is really none of your business.”

He let out a little laugh. “Hey, listen, Jade, I know you might feel a little uncomfortable, because I asked you out and you said no. But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about you. And it doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.”

With a long sigh, she put the coffee cup on the counter between them. Her hand was trembling. She finally forced herself to look at him. “That’s where you’re mistaken. We aren’t friends, Lyle. We’ve never been friends. I serve you coffee, and you pay for the coffee, and I try to be courteous to you. But we aren’t friends. Get that clear, okay? If you can’t respect that, you should get your coffee someplace else.”

His eyes narrowed, and he just glared at her, saying nothing.

Jade took a step back from the counter.

He glanced down at the coffee cup she’d set down for him. For a second, Jade thought he might pick it up and hurl the hot coffee in her face. He looked so angry. But he didn’t reach for it at all. He turned and walked away.

Jade watched him. Her stomach was still in knots.

He glanced back over his shoulder at her, and then he grinned.

Jade told herself he was just a loser creep, but she shuddered.

She watched him head outside. Her hand was still shaking as she poured the Americano down the drain and threw out the cup.

All she wanted to do was go home, sit in a warm bath, and place a cold washcloth on her bruised face. But there wasn’t anything to eat in the house. That was how the argument with Wes had started last night. She’d picked up Chinese for dinner, and despite stuffing his face, he’d wanted a snack later. He’d gotten all pissed off because he hadn’t had any chips or pretzels to nosh on with his beer. She’d made the mistake of saying something like, “Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t have time to pick up all your favorite foods today. But I have this thing called a job… .”

Wes had been cut back to part-time at the auto rebuild shop, only two days a week. It was killing his self-esteem. But he hadn’t done a damn thing to find a full-time job elsewhere. All he did was criticize her and knock her around. They’d been together since Christmas 1997, almost three years, and this “rough patch” had been going on for the last eighteen months. Jade often thought,
enough is enough,
but Wes hadn’t had an easy time growing up. His father and two stepfathers had been horribly abusive. Wes often told her that she was the first really good thing that ever happened to him. Most of the time, he said it while crying, and apologizing after having punched her in the face. He needed her. She couldn’t leave him just because things were bad right now.

So—Jade did her damnedest to cover up the bruises and pretend everything was fine. She tried to be understanding. But every once in a while, she couldn’t help pointing out to him that she was the one paying the rent, paying for the groceries, paying all the bills, and paying dearly for his lack of self-esteem.

Jade had a cartful of food—including beer, pretzels, and chips for Wes—as she trudged down the cosmetics aisle at her local Fred Meyer. Cover FX was the brand Megan had recommended earlier today. Momentarily removing the sunglasses that hid her too-obvious black eye, Jade still couldn’t find the cosmetic line Megan used to swear by.

She figured Cover FX was probably one of those pricy cosmetics available only at Nordstrom or The Bon Marche. Though she didn’t put on any airs, Megan had panache, like she’d come from money. She wouldn’t have recommended some bargain-basement cosmetic.

With a sigh, Jade pushed her shopping cart toward the checkout stands. The next line over, a screaming toddler in the cart’s child seat competed with Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way” on the store’s Muzak system. Bruce Willis on the cover of the new
People
caught her eye. Apparently, he was dating a Spanish model who kind of looked like Demi. Jade had had a crush on Bruce ever since
Moonlighting
, and Wes knew it. All she had to do was “toss good money away on some rag” with her celebrity crush on the cover, and it would be
Fists of Fury Part II
at home tonight. She couldn’t afford any more bruises right now. She’d buy the magazine later and keep it at work. She wasn’t even going to look at it in line. She pushed her cart a bit farther down the aisle as the cashier started helping the person in front of her.

Jade glanced up at a round security mirror near the store’s ceiling. Everything in the mirror looked slightly distorted. Still, she could see all the other shoppers in the general vicinity behind her, and three aisles of the store. At the start of one aisle, she could see someone standing there without a cart or a basket. She could see a man in a red sweater.

For a second, she didn’t think anything of it. But then suddenly she remembered her confrontation with Lyle this morning. She remembered his creepy grin.

Jade swiveled around. She looked for the man in the red sweater near the frozen foods aisle. But there was no one. She even stepped out of line to double-check—in case he’d ducked down the aisle. But she didn’t notice anybody. She quickly got back in line.

As she placed her groceries on the conveyor belt, Jade kept glancing over her shoulder. But she didn’t see Lyle—or anyone in a red sweater. She knew she hadn’t imagined the guy.

Outside, it was overcast and drizzling. The lights in the parking lot had gone on. She struggled with the cart on her way to the car. One of the front wheels became wobbly and kept squeaking. Jade glanced around the crowded lot, but didn’t see anyone in a red sweater. Loading the heavy grocery bags inside her trunk, she eyed the other cars parked nearby. All of them looked empty. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling someone was watching her.

Before climbing inside her car, she checked the backseat. No one.

God, Jade, quit being so paranoid!

With a sigh, she scooted behind the wheel and started up the car. She switched on her headlights and the intermittent wiper, and then told herself to relax. She’d let a distorted red blob in the store security mirror throw her into a tizzy. She was worrying over nothing.

Still, Jade locked the car doors before she started out of the parking lot—and she kept checking her rearview mirror. She really wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but no one seemed to be following her home.

Home was the two-bedroom, slightly shoddy, rented rambler she’d shared with Wes for the last two—mostly miserable—years. Their block, in a somewhat less desirable neighborhood of North Seattle, didn’t have any sidewalks and only a few driveways. Most people parked their cars on the gravel bays in front of their homes—except for two houses down, where someone had a beat-up old Lincoln Continental in their driveway. It had no tires, and had been sitting on brick blocks for as long as Jade could remember. She hated this neighborhood.

Jade listened to the gravel crunching under her tires as she pulled up in front of the house. A huge evergreen dominated the patchy yard and towered over the squat, little gray-shingle shack. She’d tried planting some flowers by the front door, but everything seemed to die in the shadow of that big tree.

Popping open the trunk, she grabbed the first two of five full double plastic bags and lugged them toward the front door. She’d left the trunk open. It didn’t look like Wes was home. At least, none of the lights were on. She set down one of the bags, unlocked the front door, and opened it. “Wes?” she called, reaching inside and switching on the light in the living room. The chain lock on the door frame rattled as she accidentally brushed her hand against it. She waited and listened for a response from Wes. But there was no answer.

Jade picked up the other bag from the front stoop and carried both bundles through the living room and into the kitchen. She switched on the kitchen light with her elbow before setting the bags on the breakfast table. One of them was top-heavy, and she unloaded a few items so it wouldn’t tip over.

She heard the front-door chain lock rattle again. Jade froze. “Wes?”

No answer.

Biting her lip, she stepped back into the living room. It was empty. She’d left the front door open, because she still had three bags of groceries in the car. The chain lock dangled from its fixture on the doorway frame. It swayed from side to side like a clock’s pendulum. Was that from when her hand knocked against it a minute ago? Or had someone else just now accidentally brushed against it, too?

Jade stared at the darkened corridor off their living room. It led to the master and guest bedrooms and a bathroom. “Wes?” she called again. “Honey, are you home?” She knew he wasn’t there. He would have turned on a light. From where she stood, she could see the bathroom door was ajar, and the light was off.

You’re being paranoid again,
she told herself.

Still, as Jade headed outside to retrieve the rest of the groceries, she gave one more wary look at that swaying chain on the door frame. She felt the damp cool air blowing through the doorway. “Silly,” she muttered. “It’s probably just the wind… .”

Shielding her head from the rain, she scurried back to the car, where the drops tapped on the car roof. With her hair pulled back in the scrunchie, Jade felt the cold water dripping down the back of her neck. She grabbed two more grocery bags and hurried toward the house.
Just one trip—and one bag—after this
, she told herself, ducking inside the front door.

Once again, Jade headed into the kitchen and set the bags down on the breakfast table—beside the others. She heard the floorboards squeak in the living room, and quickly turned around. The living room looked empty. But Jade only saw one section of it through the kitchen door.

Suddenly, the front door slammed shut.

Then the chain lock rattled again. She knew it wasn’t just the wind this time.

In the front picture window, Jade saw the reflection of someone in her living room—someone in a red sweater. All at once, she was paralyzed. She stood there, watching him in the darkened glass as he moved toward the kitchen door.

From outside, no one could see him. The tree blocked the view. No one could see what was about to happen to her.

Lyle stepped into the kitchen doorway. He had a small baseball bat in his hand. It looked like one of those souvenirs from baseball games. He had that same malignant smirk on his face from this morning.

Jade automatically stepped back, and knocked over one of the grocery bags. A jar of Ragu spilled out, then smashed and broke on the floor, splattering the tiles with tomato sauce.

Lyle didn’t flinch. He didn’t take his eyes off her for a moment.

“What are you doing here?” Jade asked, her voice shaking. She could hardly breathe. She stared at the small bat in his hand. “You know, my boyfriend will be home any minute now… .”

“Then he can clean up that mess you just made,” Lyle replied, still grinning. “Wes will have to learn to do a lot of things for himself from now on.”

She shook her head at him. “What are you talking about? What—what do you want?”

“I’m going to take care of you, Jade,” he whispered.

She glanced at a can of peaches on the table. She grabbed it and hurled it at him. The can hit the kitchen doorway frame. The smile disappeared from his face. Enraged, he bolted toward her, raising the bat up in the air.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she screamed, reeling back.

All at once, the bat came crashing down. Jade felt it slam against her skull. Then her legs went from under her. She felt herself falling. She hit the floor with a thud.

She smelled spaghetti sauce—and knew she was lying in it. She knew her head was bleeding, too. Stunned and unable to move, Jade tried blinking her eyes, but she couldn’t see anything.

She felt him hovering over her. She was helpless.

“I’m doing this,” she heard him say, “because you look like her.”

BOOK: Terrified

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