Don't Let Me Die: A gripping psychological thriller Page 12

  “Asshole,” he lets out. “What is with that guy?”

  “Don’t worry about him,” I say. “He’s probably just overworked, you know?”

  Darren shakes his head. “We’re all overworked. Doesn’t mean we can be like that.”

  I say nothing and let him continue to mutter away. He needs to get everything off his chest.

  Over the next few hours, we grab some lunch and decide to leave the hard copies for another day. They probably won’t make an ounce of difference to the police, anyway.

  With food in our systems, we make our way to Frank’s school for his game. When we arrive, I think about the conversation I had with Miss Cantin. I haven’t told Darren about it with everything that’s going on. I figured the last thing he needed to stress about was Frank’s grades and behavior.

  The game gets underway twenty minutes after we arrive. Frank is practicing when we take our seats and is trying to concentrate. We don’t bother him before a game, but make as much noise as possible to support him once the first whistle blows.

  Frank isn’t short for his age, but he’s nowhere near the height of the tall kids in middle school. Because of this, he is a fantastic point guard. I don’t know much about basketball to understand exactly what his role is, but his shorter height combined with his nimble speed allows him to steal the ball from the bigger kids and move the action in the right direction. He often sinks about a quarter of the baskets his team scores during a game.

  The game is neck and neck the entire time, and the score is tied when there is less than a minute to go. Frank’s team is on the defense and could lose at any second. Darren and I are on the edges of our seats. I feel like I’m in the game along with everyone else in the small stadium.

  A player on the opposite team is driving the ball in to take a shot when Frank steals it from under him. We all go wild on both sides, cheering and yelling at the same time as Frank charges off and away from the pack to make a perfect layup without any defense to slow him down. Darren and I leap to our feet in celebration as the clock runs out a few seconds later.

  Frank’s teammates jump all over him and hoist him half into the air as the opposition stews in defeat. I can hear curses from the other side’s family members, while our team praises the hell out of Frank. I guess it’s hard for parents not to become involved.

  When Frank heads over to us, Darren gives his son a big hug and congratulations. “That was incredible.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Frank says as Darren ruffles his hair.

  “Come here,” I say as I open my arms wide and give him a cuddle whether he wants one or not. He tries to push me back at first but allows me this one moment of physical contact. His sweat instantly sticks to my clothing, but I don’t mind. This is the best interaction we’ve had all week.

  After the game, we take Frank out for an afternoon slice of pizza before he heads back to his friend’s house for the night. Darren and Frank go over the highlights of the game as we eat, while I listen contentedly. Despite Frank’s team not having much chance of getting into the finals, the victory feels like the greatest win of the season.

  I sit back and soak in the good feeling our little family outing has generated within me. The smile on my face soon fades as the realities of the week come flooding back into the forefront of my mind. I try not to imagine what Karlo will do next to make us feel unsafe in our own town.

  Twenty-Eight

  Four hours later, Darren and I head out to the movies. It feels like forever since I did anything with my husband. Even though Frank is old enough to stay home by himself for a few hours or hang out with some friends, we rarely spend any time alone anymore. The business takes most of Darren’s spare energy, and my job and running the house stops me from making much effort. We had fallen into a rut of our own creation that was only growing deeper by the minute.

  We enjoy a lighthearted comedy at the mall and get out of the movie theater at around ten.

  “What do you want to do now?” I ask Darren.

  He gives me a grin and pulls me in tight like we’re a couple of teenagers. “I think we should head home and go to bed.” He raises his eyebrows at me before kissing my neck. I throw my head back and giggle a little, loving every second of the attention. His idea is a perfect one. We both need to relieve some stress.

  We rush out to Darren’s truck, excited to get home. He drives like the world is about to end and gets us back to the house in record time.

  We push our way through the front door and continue where we left off, kissing each other with genuine passion instead of the usual business-like greeting we give one another most days. Darren’s keys and my handbag hit the ground where we toss them, as do our shoes and the rest of our clothes in the form of a trail. We’ve got all night to make as much mess as we’d like to. Frank won’t be back until late morning.

  As we make our way to our bedroom upstairs in nothing but our underwear, we both hear a loud bang come from outside. More specifically, the noise comes from our backyard. I instantly think about the other day, when Bessie kept barking at the fence, and realize that disruption could have been Karlo.

  “What was that?” I ask, breaking off our kiss.

  “Probably just the wind or something.” Darren goes back to kissing my neck, ignoring whatever it was. I join him and find myself on our bed a moment later, ready for my husband to make love to me in a way we haven’t done in far too long. As he crowds over the top of me on all fours, I feel my skin prickle with anticipation as Darren lowers his face down to my chest and kisses me. I reach around to unhook my bra, but Bessie’s bark stops me.

  “Ignore her,” Darren says. “She’s yapping at what we heard a second ago.”

  I can’t ignore it. Bessie sounds distressed. Her barking doesn’t stop. Instead, it gets worse. “Darren,” I say, stopping him from going any farther. He looks beyond frustrated.

  “What?”

  “We need to see what’s wrong with the dog. Then we can come straight back up here, I promise. Believe me, I want this more than anything in the world.”

  “Okay,” he says as his head hangs in defeat. He climbs off me and helps me up. We both collect our clothing as we head downstairs and throw it all back on in a hurry.

  Bessie keeps barking, refusing to stop. She almost sounds like she is trying to warn something to move away from our house as I hear her backing up toward us.

  “This had better be good,” Darren says as we charge for the back door. When we get there, he unlocks the deadbolt and yanks it open.

  I peer over his shoulder to find nothing but a snow-covered yard and Bessie barking her way back toward us.

  “Bessie,” Darren yells, “shut up.”

  She whimpers a little at being told off but pushes through the punishment to continue barking. Whatever has her spooked is too threatening to ignore. The thought sends a shiver down my spine worse than the cold air outside.

  “What is she barking at?” Darren asks out loud as he walks out and down the two steps to the concrete footpath. “There’s nothing out here.”

  That’s when I spot them: two eyes half glimmering in the night through some bushes, reflecting the moon. A man is staring at us over the tall fence from the corner where Bessie was barking the other day.

  “Darren,” I manage to say as I tap his arm over and over and point him toward the eyes.

  “What the fuck?”

  “It’s a man, watching us. We should call the police.”

  “Forget that,” Darren mutters. He steps farther into the yard and starts yelling. “Hey, you. What the hell do you think you’re doing out here? This is private property.”

  I have to give Darren credit as he stomps straight up to the man peeking in over the fence with confidence. Back when we were first dating, Darren didn’t take crap from anyone. If another man gave me a hard time, he wasn’t afraid to put himself in harm’s way to defend me.

  Bessie gets more aggressive with her barking at the sound of Darren’s an
gry voice. She knows something or someone is threatening her family.

  For some reason, I feel their combined confidence and head out toward the person myself. I think of all the things I’ll say to this asshole for what he has put our family through this week. It isn’t until I hear Darren go quiet that I realize what we have been getting excited about.

  Sitting on a branch just beyond the fence is the neighbor’s cat.

  Darren recognizes it at the same time and turns to me with a chuckle. “It’s a goddamn cat.”

  We both laugh at our stupidity as the cat slinks away. Bessie stops her barking and trots back toward her kennel by the back door.

  Neither of us is wearing anything warm enough to be outside for more than a few minutes, so I gesture for Darren to head back inside.

  “I’m sorry,” Darren says.

  “For what?”

  We stop halfway to the door as he faces me and grabs hold of my arms. “For overacting like I do. With everything that has been happening, I feel so paranoid.”

  “It’s okay, honey. Let’s just get back inside.”

  We never make it that far, though.

  The back door to our house slams shut. The loud noise turns us sideways in an instant.

  I spin back to Darren and half choke on my words. “That couldn’t have been the wind.”

  Twenty-Nine

  We both run up to the door and try the knob.

  “It’s locked,” Darren says with a huff.

  “That can’t be,” I say. I left it unlocked. Our doors have a system that allows them to automatically lock from the outside if we press a button in before closing up. I swear I didn’t touch it.

  “You must have set it.”

  “I didn’t, though.”

  “Then what?”

  We both turn to the door and stare. I can tell the same thought has hit our brains simultaneously. Someone is inside our house. I step back without thinking.

  Darren speaks first. “There’s no way someone just crept past us and ran inside.”

  “They must have, though,” I say as I continue to inch away from the door. “There’s barely any wind out here.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense. Why would—”

  A slam upstairs startles us both, confirming there’s an intruder in our damn house.

  Darren remains confident on the outside as he clenches his fists, but I can still see his nerves coming through. He turns to me and says, “I’m going for the spare. Head to the neighbor’s house and call the cops.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue with me. I’m going to the other key so I can grab my gun out of the truck and—”

  “Please don’t,” I beg him as I take hold of his wrist. “You could get hurt, or worse.”

  He stops for a moment to think but shakes his head before turning to me again. “Go next door.”

  “No,” I say. “We do this together. You can’t stop me.”

  Darren closes his eyes for a few seconds while pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine,” he blurts out. “Just stay behind me the whole time.”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  Darren takes off slowly as we head for the gate. It holds a thick combination lock to keep anyone from accessing our backyard. Generally, we don’t bother setting it, but recent times have forced us to keep the gate secured.

  Darren enters Frank’s birthday into the dial and unlocks the shackle. He pulls it out of the door with care, then quietly opens the gate.

  We slip through and shut the door behind us, stopping Bessie from escaping. The last thing we need is to be chasing her around the streets while some intruder walks freely through our house.

  The thought makes me wonder if Karlo really is this stupid. Surely he wouldn’t sink this low to scare us? Sending threatening messages and taking photos from a distance is one thing, but breaking into our home while we are in the backyard seems a tad psychotic.

  I follow Darren as he heads for the spare key we keep under a potted plant by the front door. It’s not the most original hiding place in the world, but it does the job.

  Darren retrieves the key and creeps up to the front door. We hear a loud bang upstairs. The noise gives him enough motivation to head inside to grab his car keys off the floor where he tossed them as we charged for the bedroom.

  “I’m going in,” he says to me as the front door unlocks. I stick as close to him as possible as we head inside. The house almost looks different with most of the lights off. We only switched on what we needed to move from upstairs down to the back door, so the kitchen light is off.

  Something breaks upstairs, followed by a thud.

  “What the fuck?” Darren whispers as he picks up his keys.

  “Let’s hurry,” I say.

  When we reach the kitchen, I spot my handbag sitting on the floor. I realize I’m going to need my phone that’s in the bag so I can call the cops. I take the whole bag, opting for silence over trying to fish around inside.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Darren says.

  We slink back to the front door while more noise comes from upstairs.

  We make it back outside and leave the front door open. Darren rushes down the steps and heads to his truck. I don’t like the fact that he’s been keeping a gun inside his work vehicle, but at this point, I can’t argue with the decision.

  He returns to the front door after silently opening and closing the truck. I use the time to fetch out my cell.

  “I’m going back inside. I want you to call the cops and tell them to get their asses here right now.”

  I nod sharply as my hand shakes uncontrollably. I struggle to unlock my phone and punch in the wrong three numbers.

  Darren grabs my hand and steadies my shaking. “You can do this. Just stay calm, okay?” He turns to leave.

  “Don’t go in there,” I say. “Let the cops handle it.”

  “No, I can’t. I won’t let some stalker come into my house and start trashing the place to scare us. I’m going to catch this prick for the cops. Now, make the call.”

  I hear myself sobbing as I enter the correct number this time. I put the phone to my head as the line rings. After only a few seconds, I’m connected to emergency services.

  Darren disappears into the darkness as I go through the process of getting the police out to our home. The operator tells me to stay calm and remain in a safe place until help can arrive. Her words sound like noise as I find myself going back into our house. I can’t let Darren do this by himself.

  I see him at the foot of the stairs. He sees me coming in and tries to wave me away. I shake my head and ignore his frustration.

  I move through the kitchen as he turns away and mutters to himself.

  “I told you to stay out there.”

  “I told you I couldn’t do that.”

  “Whatever,” he says. “Just stay out of my way. I might have to use this thing.” He holds up the pistol.

  “I hope not.” A second later, a thud hits the floor upstairs. We can almost feel it through the ceiling above.

  The noise hastens Darren forward. I follow.

  We creep upstairs as if we’re intruders in our own home. I know the police won’t be here in time to stop Darren from confronting our unwanted guest, so I try to formulate a quick plan in my head.

  I can’t sort my thoughts out, though. I feel like I’m heading into a trap, that a killer is waiting for me at the top of the steps. I can picture a loaded gun pointing at the back of my head, seconds away from splattering my brains all over the carpet.

  I don’t know why I am thinking about my demise, but before I realize it, we’re at the top. Darren sweeps his pistol left and right. The last noise we heard sounded like it was coming from our bedroom.

  Tilting his head toward the door we left open, Darren tells me he’s going to enter the room and face the man who has been tormenting us.

  We approach the half-open entry. We are both wearing slippers we keep stored by the back door that will be
ruined by the light snowfall outside. There wasn’t enough time to slap on anything better.

  I try to ignore the mess our slippers are making on the carpet and focus on what could happen inside our bedroom. Instead of some much-needed sex between a stressed-out couple, the room will now be the scene of something sinister. I can’t imagine any other outcome.

  Darren raises the pistol as we reach the threshold to our room. He keeps one arm free to push the door the rest of the way open. When he presses on the wooden material, it creaks and groans. The noise disrupts the quiet night air and makes me cringe with the thought that whoever is inside will hear our approach.

  There’s no turning back now.

  Darren enters the dark, gun first. He steps farther in and leaves my sight.

  “Darren, wait,” I say after him, so quiet I doubt he hears me.

  I try to follow him, but my legs freeze. I can’t seem to make them go another step.

  “What the hell?” I hear Darren say. “Bessie?”

  I let out a sigh of relief as I realize who had been making the noise. The dog had managed to find her way into the house. I go into our room with some confidence and take a seat on the bed. Darren is squatting down beside Bessie, patting her head.

  “You gave us a fright, girl. What are you doing in here, huh?” He turns to face me. “It was the damn dog. You’d better cancel the cops.”

  “Right, of course,” I say. With all the excitement, I remember they are still inbound. “I’ll cancel the call now. Hopefully, it won’t cause too many problems if I—”

  The back door opens and closes with a slam downstairs. Darren bolts past me and gives chase. Bessie rushes out after him, sensing danger. I follow them both, running downstairs.

  We both arrive at the door while Darren messes with the lock. When he unlocks the bolts and opens the fastest way out to our backyard, we see a figure climb and leap the back fence, only to disappear in the night.

  Our breathing is heavy as we stand there trying to process what has happened.