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He so didn’t want to deal with this. He sighed and picked up the cordless phone from the holder on the wall.
“Who you calling?” said Calla. “You think the Merricks can help you?”
The Merricks were probably the last people who would offer to help him, but Calla didn’t need to know that. “No,” Hunter said. “I’m doing what you’re supposed to do when people break into your house.” When she raised her eyebrows, he added, “I’m calling nine-one-one.”
Her smile wilted around the edges. “Liar.”
He spoke into the phone. “I’d like to report a break-in at one-eleven North Shore Road—”
“Calla!” said the guy by the door.
“Hang up that phone!” she hissed.
“They’re still here,” Hunter said into the receiver. “They’re armed.”
Calla dropped the knife. “I’ll kill you, Hunter,” she seethed. “You know I can—”
“Please hurry,” said Hunter. “They’re threatening to kill me.”
A siren started wailing somewhere in the distance. The dark-haired guy grabbed Calla’s wrist and yanked. They bolted through the door.
Hunter set the phone back on the receiver. He’d never dialed at all.
That siren had been sheer luck.
What a mess. Hunter ran his hands through his hair. The length of it still shocked him every time. He hadn’t cut it in months.
The floorboards in the hallway creaked, and Hunter swore under his breath. He had no idea how to explain this. If he said someone had broken in, his grandfather really would call the cops.
After he’d been arrested for his involvement in the fire in the school library last week—a fire Calla had started—Hunter didn’t need any more interaction with cops.
Thank god the gun was still downstairs.
His grandfather stopped short when he saw the mess. It was too dark to make out his expression—not that Hunter wanted to try. The man was tall but lean and muscled from years of farm labor, with short gray hair and a permanent look of displeasure. He hit the switch on the wall, and the light made things look a hundred times worse. His eyes narrowed at his grandson. “You’d better have a good explanation.”
Like Hunter had woken up in the middle of the night and started trashing the kitchen.
But really, this was exactly how every conversation with his grandfather went.
“I didn’t do this,” he said. His father had never had much tolerance for attitude, so Hunter was well practiced in keeping it out of his tone. It had just never been this much of a challenge with his dad.
“Who did?”
“Kids from school. A prank.” He paused. “I’ll clean it up.”
“And you’ll pay for it.”
Hunter set his jaw, but didn’t say anything.
When he and his mother had first pulled up the driveway six weeks ago, his grandfather had watched Hunter climb out of the car, then said, “We’re not going to have any of your nonsense here, you understand me, boy?”
Hunter had turned to his mother, looking for . . . something. Direction, maybe. A cue for how to respond.
But his mother had already been crying on his grandmother’s shoulder. If she’d heard the comment, she didn’t acknowledge it. And then she’d allowed herself to be hustled into the house, to be comforted over tea.
While Hunter had been left to unload the car under his grandfather’s glaring eyes.
He’d learned pretty quickly to make himself scarce.
