Page 3 of Wolf Cursed
“Dad, those guys aren’t going to give you another extension,” I said, half-pleading now.
Why couldn’t he be stronger? Better? Why couldn’t he stop letting her absence break him? Ugh. I hated seeing him let himself go. I hated my mother more for causing it.
“Go get the rifle,” he said.
My jaw fell open. Was he kidding? There was no way he could shoot straight right now.
“What? No, come with me. We’ll go out the back. Run to the car—”
Something hard slammed into the outside of the front door. I jumped and looked down to see a small dent had appeared on our side. I stared at it in horror. Stupid, cheap-ass, plastic door.
But really, what did I expect in a trailer? This thing was not exactly fortified against invasion.
“Joe, you can either come out or we’re coming in,” Vorack called.
My panic rose.
Urgency gripped me.
“Dad,” I said, tugging on his arm. “We have to get out of here.”
He hesitated. I could see some sort of indecision in his eyes. Like he was trying hard to access a clear thought.
“Okay,” he said finally. He reached over and grabbed the car keys off the wall hook and pressed them into my hand. Then he looked at me intently, the glassy look turning fast to fear. “When I say go, run for the back door. Start the car.”
“What about you?”
He reached out and pressed a warm hand to my cheek. “I’m right behind you, kid,” he said.
I nodded, my chin bobbing incessantly. This would work. It had to work. Forget the bags we had stashed. We needed to get the hell out of here.
Something slammed into the door a second time.
I jumped.
“You have to be fast,” I warned him.
“Kid, I’m the fastest,” he shot back. It was an old argument and hardly true anymore. But I didn’t say so. “Ready . . . set . . . go!”
With the car keys clutched in my fist, I took off at a barefooted sprint for the back door. My dad shuffled, but the noise was lost to the roar in my ears as panic drove me onward.
In the kitchen, I flipped the lock free and yanked the back door open only to crash into someone waiting on the other side.
Hands came up to grip my wrists, and I immediately started kicking and fighting. A male grunt sounded, and my attacker released one of my wrists to grab at his shin where my foot just landed. I tried turning and twisting away, but then a fist smashed into my cheek, and I went down to my knees as pain radiated through my skull. I blinked, my vision closing in until I saw through a narrow tunnel.
I fell to the floor and covered my face with my hands, my eyes filling with tears.
God, that hurt.
A loud crash came from the front, followed by yelling. Then grunts like the one my attacker had made. Except the voice sounded exactly like my dad’s.
“You always choose the hard way, Joe,” Vorack said—except this time, his voice came from inside the house.
No.
I scrambled up and rushed toward the living room only to be grabbed again before I could make it across the tiny space.
“Let me go,” I demanded, twisting and kicking and scratching at the body currently blocking me from getting to my father. In the darkness, I could see the way the man’s eyes lit every time I fought back. Bile rose in my throat as I began to imagine just how they planned to extract this debt my father owed.
