Читать книгу Cruel - Jacob Stone - Страница 20

Chapter 12

Los Angeles, the present

Lori Fletcher lay curled on the couch watching one of the recent Furious movies and fighting to keep her eyelids open. She shouldn’t have been struggling so hard to stay awake. It wasn’t that late, and all the noise and action and Vin Diesel’s biceps should’ve been enough to keep her from drifting off. But it had been an emotionally wrought few weeks—really a rollercoaster swinging her from the depths of despair as she was convinced that an unknown boogeyman was going to get her, to feeling safe after she adopted Lucky. While she might’ve been sleeping soundly once that big galoot came into her life, she also had to make up for many troubled nights before that. Exhaustion overtook her. The last snippet of the movie she remembered were cars being airdropped into the Caucasus Mountains, and then the world faded on her.

The next thing she was aware of was a hellacious racket, something much louder than the Furious movie still playing on the TV. In her semi-conscious state, all she could think was that a wild beast had gotten into her apartment. As she became more awake she realized the noise was coming from Lucky. She nearly fell off the couch as she stumbled to the source of the noise, her heart jackrabbiting in her chest.

Sure enough, Lucky barked with such violence that he was nearly frothing at the mouth, hackles raised along his spine. For all the good it would do, since the dog outweighed her and was powerful enough to drag her wherever he wanted to go, Lori clicked the leash onto his collar and swung the door open. He is out there and Lucky will tear his throat out! But there was no one in the hallway other than Mrs. Granauche from two doors down, who had stepped out of her apartment and was giving her a sour, accusatory look. Lori had convinced herself that when her boogeyman came he would bring a stench of death with him, but there was nothing other than a jasmine scent that must’ve come from Janice Howell, who lived in the neighboring apartment.

Mrs. Granauche, a seventy-two-year-old widow, complained that the dog’s late-night barking had woken her. Lori apologized profusely and promised it wouldn’t happen again. Mrs. Granauche grudgingly accepted this and disappeared back into her apartment. Lucky, for his part, stood in the hallway sniffing, his barking having turned into a low, rumbling growl.

“What was it?” Lori demanded.

The dog fixed his yellowish-red eyes on her and whimpered.

She wanted to take Lucky outside to see if he could sniff out whoever it was that had set him off, but she didn’t have her keys, so she had to first run back inside to get them. Once she had her apartment locked up and secure, she brought Lucky to the elevator. The dog was still sniffing in the air as if he were trying to pick up the scent of what had spooked him so badly. He continued making his aggrieved rumbling noises as they rode the elevator down to the lobby.

Once she got him outside, the dog stood sniffing in the air, searching for a scent he couldn’t find. She lived in a residential area, and at that hour there were no pedestrians walking about and no cars driving away. If it was her boogeyman who had upset the dog, he had since disappeared. It occurred to her then that Lucky might’ve only had a nightmare. After all, he had his own baggage, and God only knew what abuse the poor thing had suffered before ending up at the rescue shelter. Lori stood silently as she scratched the dog behind his ear and studied him.

“Is that what happened,” she asked, “you had a bad dream?”

Lucky sneezed, the action loud and violent.

“Or maybe something in the movie spooked you? What was I thinking playing anything called Furious after what we’ve been through?” She watched as Lucky looked at her with utter befuddlement, as if he had no idea why he had gone Defcon One minutes earlier. “What do you say we go for a long walk? See if we can rid ourselves of these bad dreams?”

Lucky sneezed again, this one seemingly an agreement to her suggestion.