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This time, a faint click answered his call. Bear whipped his head around. Harris stood. The dog mirrored her. Apollo skittered behind the couch. Everyone took a collective breath and held it, listening. Waiting.
It could’ve been the house settling. Or miscellaneous item shifting. Or the back door opening.
The seconds ticked by. Harris’ lungs were burning, but she didn’t dare breathe lest she miss some other sign of an impending attack. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she let the air in her lungs escape. And a floorboard creaked.
It didn’t sound out of the ordinary. Cassie’s house was old. It popped and groaned sometimes. Goosebumps erupted across Harris’ skin as she remembered Cassie’s stories of visiting specters. Was her house haunted? Was Harris about to get her first glimpse at a ghost?
She unholstered her weapon. The movement made Bear’s fur stand on end. A growl emanated from his throat. His hackles raised reminded Harris he was a formidable animal. Not that it would do much good if it were a ghost. She’d probably end up paying for a new wall in an attempt to see if bullets would slow it down.
Bear took a step forward, the growl still in his voice. She wanted to avoid making a phone call to tell Cassie her dog had died on her watch. Harris looked down at Bear. “Sit.” He only hesitated for a moment before he complied. “Stay.”
The dog whined, but Harris ignored him. She crept forward, her gun pointed to the ground. She hadn’t heard another noise since the second creak. Maybe the house had settled, content with its new position. Or maybe someone had realized they couldn’t walk through the house without alerting its inhabitants to their presence.
There was a back door to a small fenced-in yard. She had made sure she locked it after taking the dog out that morning, but she hadn’t checked it since then. Harris usually let Bear out right before she returned to work from her lunch break. She still had ten minutes left.
Harris turned the corner into the kitchen. She raised her gun to a forty-five-degree angle. It would take a split second to lift it to center mass and squeeze off two rounds. But that was only if her life was in immediate danger. She didn’t want to risk blowing the head off someone who’d made a poor decision to rob a house. A thief was not always a murderer.
A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed Bear was sitting where she’d left him. Apollo was still hiding behind the couch. She couldn’t blame him. He’d done his job and alerted them to someone—or something—at the back of the house. Now was not the time to be a hero.
Harris stepped forward, and a floorboard creaked underfoot. It was as loud as a gunshot, and she winced as if someone had fired a weapon. The other sounds had been farther away when she heard them, which meant if someone was in the house, they hadn’t made it this far. But it
also meant they now knew she was coming for them.
Rather than delay the inevitable, Harris took three quick steps forward. She cleared one bedroom and moved on. The next step was to choose between the second bedroom and the bathroom. She picked one. Decided to take her chance. Bedroom first. Then bathroom.
She entered Cassie’s room and swung her gun from right to left. Checked behind the door. Nothing. Pulled open the closet and took a sharp step back. Nothing. She risked making herself a target by lying prone on the floor to check under the bed. Nothing there either.
When she stood, a shadow shifted in the doorway. For a second, she thought she was staring into the pale eyes of a ghost. Then reality hit her. It was a man, solid and real, wearing a ski mask and a dark track suit. And he was holding a knife. One moment, he held it above his head, and the next, he let it fly straight at her.
Harris dodged the knife, which bounced off the wall and hit the floor next to her foot. By the time she righted herself and aimed her gun at the intruder, he had already vaulted over the bed. As he cleared the space between them, he raised a knee and crashed into her, sending her flying into the wall. She felt it give beneath her weight. Her vision went fuzzy at the impact.
The man was on her before her eyes could refocus. He bent her hand back until she dropped the gun, then he wrapped both hands around her neck. She didn’t try to peel them away. She delivered two swift blows to his right side, then brought her knee up to his groin. He grunted and his grip loosened enough for her to drive her fists through his arms and break out of the hold.
She gasped air into her lungs, but the reprieve only lasted a second before the man tackled her to the ground. The carpet fibers scratched her face as she turned to look for her gun. It was out of reach, halfway under the dresser. The blade of the knife, however, was inches from her eye.
The man saw it a split second before she did. He wrapped his fingers around its handle and struck fast. She moved her head to the side right before the knife tore through the carpet and hit the hardwood floor below. The man pulled it out and brought the blade down again, but Harris was ready. She grabbed his wrist and stopped the downward momentum, the tip of the knife inches from her face.
She tried bucking him off her, but he weighed at least a hundred pounds more than her. If she could get her knee through his legs and against his chest, she’d have a better shot at getting away. But she wasn’t sure if she could do it before the strength in her arms gave out.
Harris sucked in as much air as her lungs could take. “Bear,” she yelled. The strength of her voice made the man flinch. “Come.”
Nails skidding across hardwood floors. An inhuman growl growing louder with each passing second. A blur of brown and black fur leaping across the room. Teeth sinking into flesh. A howl of pain and a string of curse words.
It gave Harris enough time to wiggle out from underneath the intruder and reach for her gun. When she spun around, she took aim and fired a shot, hitting his shoulder. The crack of gunfire made Bear let go, and the man took his chance to kick the dog as hard as he could in the side. Bear yelped and skidded across the room. Harris took aim again, but her next shot only found drywall. The man was already sprinting toward the back door.
Bear got to his feet at the same time as Harris, and the two followed the man through the house. He banged the door shut behind him just as Bear leaped at his heels. The dog crashed against it, and Harris had to push him out of the way to open it again. By the time they made it into the backyard, the intruder had jumped the fence and escaped.
Bear barked until she dragged him back inside by the collar, locking the door behind them. Then she checked every room and every point of entry until she was sure no one else was in the house. She used the last remaining drops of her adrenaline to check on Bear. His ribs were tender, but he didn’t bite her when she ran her hand along his sides. She grabbed a napkin and wiped blood from his mouth, folding it over and tucking it into her pocket.
Only when she was sure the intruder wouldn’t return did she allow herself to sink down into the middle of the kitchen floor in relief. She holstered her gun and laid back, arms splayed to her side. Bear sat guard at her feet, his ears swiveling like satellites and his eyes fixated on the back door. Eventually, Apollo emerged and crawled onto her chest, purring and nuzzling her chin with his nose.
16
Cassie hung up the phone with Harris, dizzy with relief. She could hear her blood pounding in her ears, and the hospital lobby swam in front of her eyes as she blinked away the tears that had formed. Everyone’s okay. Everyone’s okay. Everyone’s okay. She kept up the mantra until she found a chair to sink into.
“Cassie?” Jason’s voice felt like it was at the other end of a train tunnel. Her heart was the whistle that warned of imminent danger. “Cassie, are you okay?”
“Everyone’s okay.” She looked up at him. Her eyes felt like they could pop out of her head at any minute. “Everyone’s okay.”
