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“I have to head out for a while, too,” Wyatt said. “But Griz is going to stick around. Nobody is going to get through him.”
“Right,” Becca said.
There wasn’t any point in arguing, or discussing it with anyone. Her mind was made up. She was the target, she was the bullseye, and she had to get the bullseye off of her sister. Off of everybody.
And there was only one answer to that. She had to disappear. Take off, go hide someplace no one would ever think to look. Then, everyone would be safe, at least until the trial was over, and then she could figure out something else from there.
She had no idea where she was going to go, but at this point, she figured she would take this one step at a time. First, she had to sneak out without anybody realizing she was gone.
That was going to be harder than it looked. Griz was loyal to a fault and had a crush on her to boot; trying to get rid of him was going to be like outrunning a persistent mosquito.
Still, there wasn’t going to be any better opportunity. With Kate and Wyatt both out of the house, only big, bearded Griz stood in the way of Becca making her escape.
She found him standing in the living room, staring out of the window, motionless. He was so still, Becca thought he might be suffering from some sort of catatonia.
“What are you looking at?” she said.
“The street.”
When nothing more was forthcoming, she said, “You’re just… staring at the street?”
“Yes.”
Becca scratched at her head, waiting for more words to come out of Griz, but she realized there weren’t likely to be any. She found herself wondering what was going on inside of Griz’s head; she imagined his inner mental landscape to be filled with cobwebs and very, very simple stick figure drawings.
“Look, um, you really don’t need to do that,” Becca said. “You can take off and go do… whatever it is you do with a day.”
“Can’t,” he said.
“Can’t what?” she said.
“Can’t leave.”
“You can, though,” Becca said. “Seriously, Chewie. I’m fine. I need to be alone for a little while.”
“It’s not a good idea for you to be alone, Becca,” Griz said. “It’s not safe.”
That’s the point, Chewie, she thought.I’m trying to sneak out so that everyone will be safe.
“Alone is what I want to be right now, okay?” is what she said. “Just… go. Give me some space.”
“I can’t.”
She didn’t want to do this, but he wasn’t budging, he was just standing there staring like a lump of lead, so she started making her voice loud and angry, shoving at him a little bit to usher him towards the front door.
“I’m not asking, Chewie, go!” she said. “Shoo! Get out!”
As big as he was, he offered almost no resistance to her little pushes, letting her brush him across the room and out of the front door like she was sweeping out wayward bits of dirt. He didn’t say a word the entire time, just allowed Becca to scoot him out of the door and out onto the porch.
Becca peered through the peephole to make sure that he left, half expecting him to stand mute like a statue right smack dab in front of the doorway. Again, she felt a lot of regret to have to be a little harsh with Griz, but it was the only way to get him to leave.
And, as much as she didn’t want to see her sister get hurt on account of her, she also found she didn’t want Griz to get hurt, either. He was growing on her like a big, bearded barnacle, she supposed. He wasn’t her first choice of people to spend time with, but she really didn’t want to see anything bad happen to him, either.
“All right, then,” she said to herself, to shake off all of those thoughts, so that she could get down to business.
She didn’t have a lot of time before Kate came back home, or Wyatt came back, or Griz forgot that she kicked him out and he wandered back like a lost dog.
Moving in a quick flurry, she shoved her clothes and other travel necessities back into the bags she’d packed for the trip out here. It seemed to go so slow, so agonizingly slow; she wondered how it was possible for clothing to get into bags at such a snail’s pace when she was in such a hurry.
