Arouse Read Free Page B

arms wrapped around her even though his voice calmed her. Reassured her.
    He was here. Everything would be okay.
    “Jeff?” She breathed his name against his chest, seeking confirmation. Reassurance. He was no longer a shadow but a big, bulky shape pressing her against her door, breathing into her hair.
    “Let’s get you inside.” He smoothed her hair back and bent his knees a little to look directly into her eyes.
    Green. He had light green eyes.
    “Lock the door, draw the curtains.” He was giving her a list of instructions. She could do that. She could do those things his eyes beckoned her to do. Such pretty eyes on a man. “And get to the middle of your house. Away from windows.” She was falling backward, gasping for air as sure as she was grasping to make sense of what was happening.
    Oh, she was in her bedroom now, sitting on the side of the bed somehow while he was prowling around. Checking the bathroom, the closets, issuing orders and looking like a badass. “Jeff, what—”
    Had he physically carried her inside?
    “I’ll ring your doorbell three times when it’s safe. But look out your peephole first. Don’t let anyone else in. Call 911 if they try. How many times, Kami?”
    She had to clear the fear from her throat before answering. But his question brought her back into the moment—everything in sharp focus. “Three. You’ll ring three times.”
    Before she had a chance to appreciate it, he was back in front of her. His lips pressed into the top of her head, and her nose was all mushed up against the unyielding wall of his chest. And then he was gone.
    She was alone.
    Kami scanned the silence, desperate to make sense of a sound—any sound. Where was her dog, and why hadn’t he come back to her?
    “Oh God, where is Jeff?”
    Just saying his name spurred her into action. She moved to lock the French doors and draw the drapes. Peeking out one little slat of the wood blinds, she scanned the yard for the dog. The motion light was on. He wasn’t on the deck—dog or man. She had to trust that whatever had brought her through this far would continue, so Kami moved to her windowless hallway, grabbing her cell from the nightstand along the way.
    Should she call 911 now? What would she say? Hi, I was out on my back deck night-flirting with the neighbor I’ve never actually met—although he just kissed me in my bedroom—and my dog wouldn’t come back and he jumped over the fence and told me to stay inside. The neighbor. Not the dog. Dogs can’t talk. That would be ridiculous.
    Jeff had said to call if someone else— ohmygod —tried to get in.
    Someone else, as in the person who fired the shots. Because that was what they had to have been. Three gunshots.
    Three gunshots in her quiet little neighborhood with the flags on the porches and big hanging pots of begonias. She walked those streets every night. Waved to little old men on porches and toddling kids running barefoot through the grass.
    Where had the shots come from? Somewhere to the south? Oh God, what if they’d come from the house with the broken fence and the stairstepped kids?
    No. They couldn’t have been gunshots. Jeff was just being overly cautious; it was his job. They’d just heard a car backfiring. And she was being silly for wedging herself in the linen closet in the hall.
    Better to be silly than sorry.
    She scanned Twitter for any chatter. Nothing, of course. She didn’t even know what to look for. It wasn’t like APD broadcast every domestic call they received.
    Her stomach almost turned inside out. Surely Jeff wouldn’t do anything. Domestic calls were the worst calls. Surely he’d wait for the police.
    Kami laughed a bit hysterically. He is the police . But he’d been barefoot, hadn’t he? He’d been that big, dark shape launching over the fence; she realized that now. And when he’d been walking around her room, checking her window locks and closets, he’d been barefoot. Surely he wouldn’t go running through the