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“You know,” Ben counseled, using a tone that had often been adopted by their mom, “responsibility can be both a blessing and a curse, especially when you use it as a crutch.”
“Wise words from my baby brother.” Bunny smiled sadly. She stepped into a hug, squeezing him tight.
“Common sense,” he countered, squeezing her right back, “from someone who cares about you running yourself ragged.” They pulled out of the hug, and he dipped his head to look into her eyes. His face was serious, his green eyes clouded with concern. The streaks of silver in his light brown hair were a stark reminder they weren’t getting any younger. Thank God she took after their mom in the hair color department. Blonde was way better at disguising grays.
Ben wasn’t done lecturing her. “Promise me you won’t take any more extra shifts this week, okay? You need some rest, and some time to grieve.”
Bunny gently shook him off. “I’ve grieved plenty.”
He didn’t seem convinced but backed off anyway, knowing when he was beat. The Major stubbornness was legendary, and generations of it had all come home to roost in Bunny. “Just… take care of yourself. Okay?”
“Yes sir,” she promised, pressing a light kiss to his stubbled cheek. “Charge your cell. I’ll call you.”
“See you do,” Ben teased, watching her walk away. “Else I’ll have to come down to Atlanta and put myself in the ER just so you have to see me.”
She smiled at his joke, letting his love wash over her for a second before she waved. “Bye, baby brother.”
“Bye, Bun.”
As soon as she had turned her back on the funeral, the numbness returned. She felt it flood back in as she walked, tearing down the sandcastle of snark and self-preservation she had built around her. The more she felt her composure crumble, the faster she walked.
Her car was on the other side of a copse of oak trees, parked just outside the cemetery gates. Bunny had bought Morticia seventeen years ago from a funeral director who used to service the hospital before he’d sold his business to move out west. The immaculate black paintwork would have been miraculous enough, but the white accent on the tail fins and white-walled tires really added to Morticia’s appeal. Bunny loved Morticia.
Only a hundred more steps until she reached the inner sanctum and could shut the experience of the funeral out of her life for good. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight. Ninety—wait.
Bunny tried to walk quietly on the gravel walkway of the cemetery, straining her ears to pick up the sound she’d thought she heard.
She spun to glance over her shoulder on instinct, expecting to see Ben coming to give her one last piece of cheek before she escaped. But it wasn’t her brother following her.
The man in black who had been standing under the tree came out of nowhere, his long legs propelling him along in her wake. He was staring at her, and he moved with a kind of intense purpose that reminded her of the way a black panther stalked its prey. The thought sent a chill down her spine, and she picked up the pace, her heart skipping a beat when she heard him start to move more quickly, too.
Holy shit.
She didn’t care about logic or pride. The rest of the funeral-goers were too far away for her to call out to, and the man in black was between her and the gravesite anyway. Without a care for anything else now other than her safety, Bunny broke into a run, praying as she did so that he was a figment of her imagination; that the man would continue walking along at his oddly brisk pace and frown at her strange behavior.
But he didn’t. She heard him start to run, too, gravel crunching under his heavy boots as he pursued her. She gulped deep, panicked breaths as she ran, trying to keep herself from tiring and give herself the best chance of reaching the safety of her car. Her tiny ornamental purse—just large enough to house her keys, cell phone and credit card—swung from side to side like a medieval mace as she ran, making it impossible to retrieve her phone to call her dad or Ben.
A crow’s loud, brassy shriek tore the air, echoing across the barren space between the last of the tombstones and the wrought-iron gates of the cemetery. It sounded so close and so furious that Bunny gasped harshly, then coughed, before looking around to see where the sound had come from.
The man in black was ducking as he ran, arms shielding his head as he was dive-bombed by an impossibly large crow. It flew directly at his face, wings flapping and talons flashing in a full-on attack. He yelled something and began to beat the air with his arms, hoping to drive it away, but it evaded him and dived again.
She wasn’t about to look a gift crow in the beak. Bunny focused on the path to her car and doubled her effort, using the opportunity as wisely as she could. She fumbled in her purse for her keys as she ran, trying to keep a cool head. She couldn’t hear the crow anymore, but that didn’t mean the man in black wasn’t still fighting the creature off. Drawing in ragged breaths, she reached Morticia and tried to stop her hand shaking long enough to get her key into the door.
And then she saw the man in black running through the gates. He almost skidded to a stop on the sidewalk, saw her standing at the driver’s side door of her car, and then lurched forward again.
A thrill of panic jolted through her as she ripped open the door and threw herself behind the wheel, turning over the ignition and taking off in first gear before she’d bothered to put down her purse or put her seat belt on. She peeled out of the parking space and down the street just as the man reached her, flattening the gas pedal to speed away from the mysterious and obviously dangerous man who had absolutely just chased her out of her mother’s funeral.
She chanced a glance in the rearview mirror as she floored it down Lee Street. The man—who had just been standing in the middle of the road—was now gone. Bunny tried to see if he had stepped back up on to the sidewalk, straining her eyes as she got farther and farther away.
Crack!
The crow hit the driver’s side window with its beak, making her scream as it swooped away again. She swerved, her head spinning, before she somehow managed to correct the car and stay on the straight and narrow. Rattled to her core, Bunny reasoned that a speeding ticket was the least of her troubles. She turned Morticia left onto Mosswood’s Main Street and floored it all the way out to the highway.
Her heart raced ahead of her as she nudged Morticia faster and harder. What the hell was that guy doing, chasing after her like that? And more importantly, why?
