Page 55 of Crossing Paths
A random thought occurred to her. “You never mentioned how gross it feels to knee someone in the face.”
He stared at her before grinning. It didn’t last long, but she held on to the memory of that broad smile. “Pants help.”
“Okay. Next time, I’ll wear pants.”
Two uniformed officers approached them, neither looking familiar to her, and Norah held back a groan as she realized something. Being at Dash’s apartment was going to severely mess with their Zach Fridley story.
One crisis at a time, she reminded herself as Dash wrapped his arm around her. She leaned into him, feeling as if she was a hundred times stronger with him at her back. Together, they’d get through this police interview and every other crisis after that.
Thirteen
Sunlight beat down on Norah’s eyelids, making it impossible to fall back asleep. Prying open her eyes, she blinked at her wall clock until it came into focus. It was two in the afternoon, but her stiff and sore body didn’t think she should move. Thirst and a demanding bladder forced her out of bed though, and she knew her sisters were going wild waiting for an explanation.
When she’d dragged herself into her house in the wee hours that morning, bruised and jacked up on adrenaline and smelling like smoke, her sisters had demanded she tell them the whole story. She’d managed to get them to wait until she’d had a shower and a few hours of sleep, but midafternoon the next day was probably pushing it. Norah figured they’d be barging into her room at any moment to hammer her with questions.
To her surprise, they waited until she stumbled into the kitchen. Cara even handed her a mug of hot coffee. Norah’s thank-you came out as more of a grateful groan.
“Are you okay?” Molly asked, always the mother hen.
Norah did a mental self-check. Now that the adrenaline rush had worn off, every muscle in her body ached, but nothing felt broken or in danger of falling off. She’d discovered a few tiny cuts on the backs of her arms and calves—from flying glass, she assumed—when she’d checked herself over in the bathroom after her shower. They’d stung when the hot water had hit them, but they’d stopped bleeding by the time she’d discovered them. Her throat still felt raw from the smoke, and her knee was sore from hitting someone’s face, but overall, she was surprisingly fine. “Yes,” she answered truthfully.
“Whathappenedlast night?” Cara leaned forward in her chair.
Molly was standing propped against the counter, but Norah had a feeling her sister would be stress pacing before she got too far into the story. She figured it’d be easiest to just rip off the bandage and get the worst part out first.
“Someone broke Dash’s apartment windows with rocks and then threw in gasoline bombs, setting his place on fire.”
As her sisters goggled at her wordlessly, she remembered there’d been several other pretty bad parts that night.
“Then someone tried to grab me on the stairs, but I kneed them in the face.” She was inordinately proud of that. “It felt hard yet weirdly wet and squishy, but Dash told me just to wear pants next time.” That reminded her of something else that had gone wrong. “I’m going to have to tell Felicity I ruined her dress. It smells of smoke and probably has someone’s spit on it.”
“You…what…gasoline bombs?” Although she still wasn’t very coherent, at least Molly was managing to get words out now.
“Yes.” Blocking out the memory of exploding glass bottles and fire licking across Dash’s floor and over his bookshelves, Norah kept her mind firmly on the technical term. “Also known as Molotov cocktails or bottle bombs. Petrol bombs too, but I think that’s more a European term.”
With each synonym, Molly’s eyes grew wider and wilder.
“Uh…you might want to quit listing off bombs,” Cara suggested with an uneasy eye on Molly’s face.
Rather than explain she was talking about different names for the same type of incendiary device, Norah just gave a nod and continued, wanting to get all the bad parts out at once. “Also, if Detective Mills reads the police report, we might’ve blown the whole fake-boyfriend story, since I was at Dash’s place.”
“Eh…” Looking moderately calmer, Molly waved a hand, dismissing the last concern. “That’s minor. Let’s discuss the rest of it. Like thebombsand thefireand the part aboutyou being attacked!”
Norah realized she’d been a bit premature thinking Molly had calmed down. “Um…okay.” She figured she’d hit the important points, so she hesitated before asking, “What else did you want to know?”
“Ev-er-y-thing,” Cara said, drawing out the word into four definite syllables. “From start to finish. Who did this? Were they caught? Arrested? Is Dash okay? What happenedexactly?”
Norah tried her best to fill in the details. “We were talking on Dash’s couch…” She paused for a split second, expecting one of her sisters to make a suggestive comment, but they were both silent, listening intently with serious expressions. Thatreally brought home how upset they were about the whole thing. “Someone threw a rock through the living room window. Dash turned off the lights and looked outside but couldn’t see anything, since they’d apparently broken out all the lights in the alley. Then another rock came through the kitchen window, so Dash ran out to try to catch them. When he got outside, someone bashed him in the back of the head.”
Both of her sisters winced. “Is he okay?” Cara asked.
“Yes. The paramedics took a look.” Norah’s stomach twisted with remembered worry. Dash was so stoic she could see him saying he was fine, even if he had to carry his decapitated head around under his arm. “He didn’t lose consciousness, just was dazed and distracted for a few minutes.”
“Long enough for whoever it was to start throwing bottle bombs through those broken windows?” Molly asked grimly, and Norah nodded, glad she didn’t have to cover that horribly scary part in detail.
“So I tried to put out the fires, but the extinguisher was too small to do much good.” She very firmly kept her mind focused on the unemotional facts of the story rather than allow herself to relive every terrifying moment. She was rather proud that her matter-of-fact tone didn’t waver. “I left the apartment, closing the door behind me to keep the fire from spreading into the stairwell too quickly. At the top of the stairs, someone grabbed my wrist. I thought it was Dash at first, but then my eyes started to adjust to the darkness, and I saw they were too short and not…”
“He-Man shaped?” Cara offered, making Norah huff a surprised laugh.
