Page 85 of A Case of You
Backing across the living room away from the guy as Jake drunkenly lurched his bulk at him, Jeff snagged one of the barstools at the kitchen counter and toppled it, briefly slowing the guy as he tripped over it.
Jeff ran for the sliders and yanked them open, but there was no way he could outrun the guy.
And he realized this was a tactical mistake. If the guy got him in the pool, he’d probably drown Jeff.
“Help!” he screamed. “Call 911!”
The guy lunged for him but Jeff ducked, dodging toward the other side of the lanai. He could dive through the screen and run around that side of the house, where the gate was closer to the street and easier to get opened in a hurry.
Except then he tripped and went sliding along the concrete pool deck, pain slamming the air out of his lungs as skin peeled off his palms, elbows, and knees.
He tried scrabbling around the far end of the pool, past the barbecue and patio furniture, maybe if he could put room between him and the psycho—
The man clamped a hand around his left ankle. Jeff reflexively kicked back with his right foot, hearing a satisfying crunch of bone as he got the guy in the nose. The man let out a roar of pain and released his ankle.
Jeff scrambled to his feet again and turned, horrified to see Emma and Grace racing through the house toward the patio. But he didn’t dare turn his attention toward them for fear of the guy getting to them first and hurting them.
“Yeah, come get me, asshole,” Jeff yelled, trying to keep the guy’s attention on him. “You want a piece of me? Tell everyone the faggot busted your nose. How will that play when you crawl back to Iowa with your nutsac tail between your legs, huh?”
The man still howled, but now with rage as he let go of his ruined nose. Blood poured down his face. “Gonna kill you now, you fucker. Was only gonna beat you up before. Fucking asshole perverts did shit to my brother. Wasn’t like that before he moved here. All your fucking fault!”
Jeff kept his eyes focused on the guy. Behind Jake, the girls exploded into a sudden flurry of movement. Emma grabbed the pool dip net from where he’d left it next to the sliders and swung for the bleachers. She whacked the guy behind the backs of both knees, taking him down with a fresh howl of pain erupting from him.
Grace had snatched the barbecue fork from its hook on the side of the grill. She dropped onto the guy’s back with both knees, the fork gripped tightly in her hands like a sword and now pressed against the base of his skull.
“Mister, I don’t know for sure if this would kill you or put you in a bed for the rest of your life,” Grace growled, “but if no one told you, Florida’s a castle doctrine, stand-your-ground state. Guns, sharp, pointy things, doesn’t matter. Oh, and FYI, I’m a fucking minor. I don’t mind doing jail time because I’ll be out in a few months, if I even do any time at all.”
Jake started to move and she jabbed the fork into Jake’s skin, making Jake screech and Jeff wince. “Youthatfucking stupid?Seriously? I have a goddamned genius IQ and was a preemie. I doubt any fucking jury in this state will convict me.”
She leaned in and even Jeff felt his balls shrivel at her cold tone. “We can kill you painfully and tell them you put up a fight. Crazy asshole breaks in and tries to hurt our dad, who’s got Lyme disease and is disabled? His daughters protected him? We’ll make a fortune on the TV interviews.”
She jabbed Jake again, yanking another piercing, high-pitched shriek from him.
“Nooo! Please!”
Meanwhile, Emma had dropped the dip net pole over the backs of his knees and stood on it. “Yeah, she also forgot to mention she’s a damn sadist. Borderline sociopath, except she has a conscience. She’s spent enough time in hospitals over the years to know how to make shit hurt. So unless you want your obit to say a half-blind little girl killed you with a barbecue fork, I’d hold very fucking still, if I were you. You’re lucky she didn’t pin your nuts to the concrete with it.”
“Good idea,” Grace growled. “Go get the other fork from the kitchen.”
“No!” the guy shrieked. “Please, no!”
Jeff would talk to Brandon about excusing the F-bombs later. He finally rolled onto his back and fumbled his phone out of his pocket, fingers shaking as he dialed 911. Now pain washed over him, and definitely not the good kind.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Intruder attacked me and my daughters. We’ve got him pinned down, but he threatened to kill us…”
* * * *
Brandon paced in front of the couch. On it sat Jeff, Emma, and Grace.
All three wore identical grins.
The last deputies had finally left two minutes earlier, nearly two hours after their arrival following Jeff’s 911 call.
Until then, Grace and Emma had put on a really good act of crying, sobbing, acting terrified once Jake was handcuffed and they could let him go and let the deputies deal with him. They’d swarmed Jeff, clinging to him as the paramedics treated him. Jeff had managed solemn, stoic anger and pain in the face of his injuries.
Brandon had no sooner shut the front door than their grins had appeared.
