Page 75 of Run to Ground
Jules reached for her phone, but her hand brushed her pocket-less uniform skirt. “Shoot.” The word sounded so insufficient for the situation that she almost laughed. Her phone was in the back, and she didn’t have Theo’s number memorized yet. “I’m going to call 9-1-1 on the diner phone.”
She took a step toward the counter when a loudcrackmade her spin around. Norman had a brick in his hand, and he was swinging it toward the large window. As it connected, Jules let out a shriek, her gaze locking on the small crack that had formed under the blow. How long could the window hold up against his assault? He hit the glass with the brick again, and the sound snapped Jules out of her paralysis. Whirling around, she ran for the phone.
Grabbing the handset, she started to dial when a smashing sound made her jerk, her fingers mashing too many of the wrong buttons. Her gaze flew to the window, but except for a few cracks, it was in one piece. The shades on the door rattled, and Jules realized with dawning horror that Norman had broken the glass in the door, and he was shoving the shades aside so he could reach for the dead bolt.
She couldn’t look away from that groping hand, rainwater diluting the blood oozing from multiple small cuts and running over his fingers. He gripped the dead bolt, and Jules knew a 9-1-1 call wouldn’t help them. The police couldn’t get there in time.
Dropping the phone, she ran for the kitchen door. “Sherry! This way!”
There was no response, no sound of running feet behind her, and Jules turned. Sherry was unmoving, frozen in place between two diner tables, watching as Norman unlocked the dead bolt. Reversing her steps, Jules ran toward Sherry, intending to grab her and haul the woman into the kitchen and to the back door. It was their only chance to get out of there, to get away from Norman.
She was only ten feet from Sherry when the door opened and Norman stepped inside. His jacket hood shadowed his features, turning him into a nightmarish figure, and Jules couldn’t hold back a cry.
Finally, Sherry moved. Lifting her right arm, she aimed a black pistol at Norman and pulled the trigger.
The blast was loud, so loud that all the other sounds went quiet for a moment. Jules skidded to a stop, turning her head from Sherry to Norman’s form sprawled on the floor. Shock kept her brain from understanding for several seconds. When comprehension finally started seeping in, she was torn between checking on whether Norman was dead and running just in case he wasn’t.
Running won.
“Sherry,” Jules said, her voice echoing strangely in her head. “Let’s go. We need to get help.”
Sherry finally turned, arm still outstretched. Staring at the gun that was now pointed directly at her, Jules stopped breathing. “No. We don’t. Norman’s been a pain in my ass since he came to town, always butting into other people’s business. I thought planting explosives in your barn and pinning it on him would finally get him out of my hair, but here he is again.” She shot his crumpled form a quick, disgusted glare. “Interfering bastard.”
“What?” It was a stupid thing to say, but it was the only word Jules could force past her lips. Sherry’s words weren’t making any sense.Nothingwas making any sense. Sherry blew up their barn to frame Norman? What was happening?
“Please close the blinds.” Sherry smiled, a friendly, completely nonhomicidal smile that made everything even more disorientating.
Jules could only stare at her. It was hard to believe it was real. In fact, it was hard to believe the whole morning was real, that she was standing inside a cozy diner with the rain pattering on the roof and a possibly dead guy lying on the floor and a woman she was starting to think of as a potential friend pointing a gun—a gun!—at her. It seemed more like a dream. Jules waited to be woken by one of the kids or a sound or just her own fear, but nothing changed.
She was still standing in the diner, Norman still bleeding by the door, and Sherry still had her gun.
“Didn’t you hear me?” It was strange. Even though Sherry was holding a deadly weapon, her voice stayed sweet and even. It was Jules whose thoughts were verging on the hysterical, while Sherry sounded perfectly reasonable. “Please close the blinds.”
Perfectly sane.
Numbly, with hands that shook, Jules walked to the window and dropped the blinds, turning the slats so they completely covered the window. She considered trying to leave them partially open, so someone could see in if they happened to be walking by at four thirty in the morning, but there was no way to conceal it from Sherry, who was watching her intently from just a few feet away.
So she closed the blinds, hiding the two of them from the outside world.
“Thank you,” Sherry said, and the small part of Jules’s brain that wasn’t screaming with fear marveled at how polite her captor was. “Now come this way, please.” She gestured toward the back.
Jules’s knees wanted to fold, to soften and place her on the floor, but she stiffened, forcing her legs to carry her as she walked in front of Sherry toward the counter. It was harder not being able to see Sherry, just knowing that she was right behind her, holding a gun pointed at Jules’s back. Her skin felt itchy with nerves, her body knowing that something very bad could happen at any second, but she couldn’t brace herself for it.
“What do you want?” she asked, more so Sherry would speak than wanting to know. Having the silent, menacing presence behind her was too nerve-racking. She needed Sherry to talk, to make some sort of sound.
At first, it seemed Jules’s plan wasn’t going to work, but then Sherry finally answered, “I’m never going to get what I want.”
That was unhelpfully cryptic, Jules thought semihysterically. She frantically searched her brain for words, for the right statement or question or argument to make Sherry see Jules as a person, as someone with a right to her life.
If she died, what would happen to Sam and Ty and Tio and Dee? It wasn’t just fear that was circling inside of Jules, twisting like a cyclone. There was also rage. How dare Sherry threaten to take Jules away from her family? How dare she hold a gun on her? Just a jerk of her finger, and Jules would be gone, leaving her sister and brothers to suffer…again. And Theo—
She sharply cut off that train of potential grief.
As she shuffled forward, trying to move as slowly as possible without getting shot, Jules welcomed the anger. It ate away the fear and sharpened her mind. She needed to be smart, to get through this so she could stay alive and give her siblings that chance at a new life she’d promised them. And as crazy as it was, she wanted to give this thing with Theo a chance to survive.
“Do you have a reason for doing this?” she asked out loud. Jules was proud that she sounded so strong, so undaunted. “Or are you just flat-out bat-shit crazy?”
From the hissing inhale behind her, it seemed Jules had struck a nerve. “I’m not crazy.”
