Page 59 of A Lifetime in 30 Days
They sat that way for Vanna didn’t know how long. Crying and rocking and crying some more.
Chapter 18
August 21
Frito was barking like crazy.
Vanna could hear him through her closed bedroom door and Granny’s. Just hysterical barking. Then she heard a thump that had her sitting up straight in her bed. Granny had to be up by now, with all this noise going on. Still, Vanna swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. She pushed her feet into her slippers, then left her room, just in time to hear glass shattering downstairs.
Granny swung her door open, and Frito bolted down the hallway and the steps, barking like he’d caught a scent and wouldn’t rest until he found it. There was somebody downstairs. Vanna was about to head down the stairs when Granny came up beside her.
“Why don’t you wait up here,” she said, then stopped when Granny brandished the hand holding a narrow can with a spray nozzle.
Okay, Granny was coming with her.
They eased down the first few stairs, Vanna having no clue what they might be walking into. But then Frito’s barking turned into a growl, and a man’s voice shouted, “Shoot that mutt!”
“Oh, hell no!” Granny pushed past Vanna and took the last few steps.
Vanna hurried down behind her, both of them coming to a halt the moment they saw two men in the dining room. They were standingnear a window, a pile of glass on the floor. Frito had one hemmed up in the corner as the dog stood in front of the man, snarling like he was ready to pounce and sink his teeth into him at any minute. That was the man holding the gun. The other guy, presumably the one who’d yelled for Frito to be shot, was closer to the opening of the kitchen, a ski mask on his face as he turned to see them.
What the hell was going on?
Granny didn’t wait for an answer to the question Vanna hadn’t even asked. She went straight at the man with the gun with a guttural cry. She aimed that can of pepper spray and started a steady stream of the liquid.
“Fuck! I’m gettin’ outta here!” Ski Mask Guy turned to run toward the window Vanna now realized was pushed halfway up.
Her Mace was in her purse, which was too far away to get at this moment, but there was the pretty coral-colored vase she’d bought from HomeGoods on the table right next to where she stood. Grabbing it, she threw it with as much strength as she could muster. It smacked Ski Mask Guy in the back, and he fell to the floor.
The guy with the gun howled in pain as Frito finally sank his teeth into his shin, and Granny stood right up on him, spraying him directly in the face. The gun was still in his now-limp hand even though his eyes were shut and he’d lifted his free arm to shield his face from Granny’s onslaught. But Vanna wasn’t gonna feel better until the gun was out of his hand completely, so she ran toward him and picked up one of her dining room chairs. She slammed the chair down on his arm, and the gun skittered across the floor.
“Stupid bitch!” Ski Mask Guy yelled as he came up behind her and wrapped his arm around her neck. But before he could get her in the choke hold he was aiming for, Vanna elbowed him in the gut as hard as she could. As he tried to catch his breath, she turned and pressed a thumb deep into his eye until he jerked back so hard that he fell, this time going straight through her glass-top dining room table.
“Call 911!” she yelled to Granny, who was turning from one of the intruders to the other, her pepper spray aimed and ready to fire again. “Go into the kitchen and get the cordless phone, Granny!”
“You do it!” Granny shot back. “I’m the one with the weapon here.”
Vanna looked back at Ski Mask Guy, who had rolled over onto his side, moaning in pain as blood dripped from down the back of his neck. Granny was right: she was the only one of them who had a weapon, so Vanna looked in the other direction, where she recalled the other guy’s gun had slid across the floor.
“Get this mutt off of me!” the man who had backed into a corner—his hands still pressed to his eyes, Frito still holding on to his leg—cried.
“Fuck! I told you to shoot them all, man!” Ski Mask Guy yelled from the floor.
Vanna hurriedly took the few steps until she picked up the gun; then she aimed it at Ski Mask Guy. “Don’t move,” she said. “I’ll shoot you right there, and you’ll bleed a hell of a lot more.”
“Yo! What’s wrong with you people?” he yelled again, this time because he tried to roll over onto his hands and knees, but both pressed into the shards of glass on the floor.
Now he was on his back again, screaming in agony, and Vanna wondered who the hell these two were and why it seemed like they didn’t have a lick of sense.
She eased her way farther into the kitchen, still keeping her gun aimed in Ski Mask Guy’s direction. She found the only landline phone in the house—a cordless that sat on the island—and picked it up. Her fingers couldn’t press 911 fast enough.
Sixteen minutes later, she and Granny were still in their same positions. Frito had finally let that guy’s leg go, but he stayed right in front of him, giving him a glare that said he’d take another chunk out of him if he dared to move. When her front door flew open, five to six officers filed into the house, guns drawn.
“Get down on the floor!”
“Drop the gun!”
“Get down!”
