Lily-Grace tried to open her eyes, but she was still mostly asleep. The urgency in Jesse’s whisper had penetrated her REM sleep cycle though. After the amazing time they’d had in his office, they’d taken a quick water break and moved things to his bedroom, where she gave Jesse another lesson in oral sex. He was a quick study, of course, and by the end, she had to beg him to stop. Another orgasm might actually kill her. She had every intention of convincing him to skip church so they could spend the whole morning in bed together.
Even though she was extremely out of it, she knew this was not that kind of wake-up call. She rolled toward him, then froze when he gripped her upper arm, holding her in place. Her eyes sprang open and that’s when she heard it. Dogs barking in the distance. She blinked hard and looked up at Jesse in the near dark.
“What’s wrong?” she breathed.
“Someone’s outside my house. Keep quiet, grab your phone, follow me,” he whispered back. As soon as she’d reached for her cell off the nightstand on her side of the bed, he took her hand and tugged her out of bed, rushing her to the closet. He put his finger to his lips, then threw her a T-shirt. He stepped into a pair of gym shorts.
“Should we call the police?” she asked, her adrenaline already pumping up to her eyeballs. She tried to take a slow breath but it was useless.
Jesse held up his own phone, before he set it silently on his watch case. “Family panic button. Corie’s on it. Tuck yourself behind there and wait for me to come back.” Jesse motioned to his dressing table, which was plenty big, but there was no way she was just gonna tuck herself anywhere and hide.
“Are you crazy? I’m coming with you.”
“And what if this someone has a gun?” he hissed.
“And that means you should go alone? This isn’t a horror movie. We’re not splitting up,” Lily-Grace hissed back. She looked around until she spotted Jesse’s pristine golf clubs. She grabbed the driver out of the bag and shoved it in his hand, then grabbed the nine iron for herself. She nodded toward the door.
He looked her straight in the face, a different kind of hard edge hitting his voice this time. “Stay behind me.” She nodded in agreement and followed him out of the bedroom. They made it down the dark hallway, every sound, the air conditioning, her breathing, his, the sounds of the dogs barking getting louder and louder, all of it pounding in her ears and somehow all she could feel was the eerie stillness that only came in the middle of the night.
And then the pounding.
Jesse stopped. He stuck out his hand to stop Lily-Grace from running into him. The pounding got louder. They inched forward until they got to the end of the hall. Jesse peeked around the corner into the kitchen and Lily-Grace peeked around him, but only for a split second. That was all she needed to see two men in the backyard. One seemed to be standing watch. The other was trying to break the glass of the patio doors with the lawn chair.
Another loud thud and Lily-Grace sucked in a tight breath. She was about to tell Jesse they should make a run for the garage when the glass shattered.
“Fuck man! Shit!” she heard one of the men yell.
“Come on, man! This way! This fucking way!”
There was the crunching of glass and then a second later the alarm started blaring. Alarms usually scared people away, but the intruders were inside the house, screaming and swearing, crashing into Jesse’s living room furniture.
Jesse pressed himself back against the wall and pinned Lily-Grace back with one arm. She braced herself, gripping her golf club, ready for what was going to happen next. She was going to have to help Jesse fight them. She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them, realizing the inevitable. They were gonna have to kill her if they thought she would make this easy. She listened, though, and it sounded like they’d run the other way. Jesse waited a beat, probably hearing the same thing, before he tapped her arm and started moving forward.
They made their way through the house, golf clubs raised, the alarm still blaring, the dogs still barking, when they found the two intruders by the front door.
“It won’t fucking open!” one of them said.
“Don’t fucking move!” Lily-Grace thought she might be hearing things for a moment, but it was definitely Lilah’s voice coming from the driveway. The robbers kept scrambling, completely unaware that they were two seconds away from getting their heads bashed in, Arnold Palmer style.
“Man, open the fucking door. He didn’t pay us enough for this!”
Suddenly Jesse reached over and turned on the light. Both men jumped and turned around. One of them screamed as a metal baseball bat clinked loudly against the polished concrete floor. They were wearing hoodies and ski masks, but Lily-Grace could see that one of them was Black and the other was white.
“What are you doing in my house?” Jesse asked, his voice deep and menacing.
“Nothing, man. Nothing! This was a mistake!”
“Jesse!?” Lilah yelled.
“We’re okay!” he called back. “Stay where you are!”
“I got him!” she replied. Lily-Grace felt herself frowning. What the hell was going on?
“Kick me the bat.” The Black guy fumbled twice, but managed to get the toe of his sneakers under it and finally kicked it toward Jesse’s feet. Jesse bent over slowly and picked it up, then handed it back to her. Lily-Grace kept her eyes on both men as Jesse stepped closer, then pressed the four necessary numbers into the keypad on the wall, silencing the alarm. Then he nodded toward the larger of the two men, the white guy. “There’s the top lock there. Flip that, then walk outside nice and slowly.”
“Listen man! I said this was a mistake. We’re cool. Everything’s cool. We’re going. We have no problem here.”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Open the door and walk out slowly.”
