Cold Hearts(19)
* * *
By the time Trina came home from work, Trey had already briefed her on what was happening, so when she saw a van from a security company parked in the yard, she wasn’t surprised.
She walked in just as the tech was finishing the last of the installation. He gave Trina and Betsy instructions as to how the system worked, and showed them how to install an app on their phones that would arm it or turn it off no matter where they were. Then he gave them his card as he left.
Betsy looked at the keypad like it was a bomb and walked off without comment.
Trina armed the system and went to change clothes.
* * *
Reece Parsons woke up with a headache and found the note from Louis about their mother’s imminent arrival, which made his headache even worse. Even after taking pain pills, he wasn’t able to go back to sleep. He was aware when Louis came home from work, and got up to confront him about their mother’s plans. That caused an argument, after which Louis made himself scarce.
Reece thought of his brother’s constant retreat from life as hiding and was thankful he wasn’t made that way. He went after what he wanted with no apologies to anyone. Right now he was standing at his bedroom window watching sundown with a hard-on. It was a sign that he’d made his decision. Melissa Sherman was under his skin and he wanted more. But right now Bobo was dancing around his feet, ready for their evening walk. He sighed. First things first.
“Come on, buddy, let’s get this over with. Daddy has a date tonight.”
He noticed Louis had picked up a bucket of fried chicken, and he grabbed a drumstick as he left the house with Bobo prancing around his heels. He ate as they walked, anticipating new adventures. Tonight he was getting inside her house and then inside her pants, but not until he was sure she was asleep. He knew the layout of the house from prior visits, when he’d scouted the perimeter. All he needed was some cooperation from the weather, and from the looks of the gathering clouds hiding the half-moon, that just might happen.
* * *
Lissa had been glad to get home from school that afternoon, but the moment she’d walked into the house her thoughts had gone immediately to what her parents had done to her relationship with Mack. She’d been trying to think back to what all they’d said and done that night. She remembered them coming into the ER angry. They weren’t sorry she was losing the baby and kept saying it was God’s way of fixing what had happened. She remembered her mom and dad fighting, and her mother saying it was all Mack’s fault and this was her chance to start over.
She’d been in so much pain and so scared, and hearing them talk like that had been shocking. All the years they’d been dating, she’d never once heard them say anything bad about him, and now they were acting like he’d turned into the devil. At one point she had stopped her dad in the middle of his rant and told him to shut up, that Mack hadn’t forced her to do anything, and that she’d been as willing a participant as he was. After that, they had moved her into a room in the birthing wing of the hospital, and while her mother had gone with her, her dad had never come back to see her there.
Despite all that, it was still staggering to her that they’d purposefully lied. The only possible reason was that they’d wanted to make sure she and Mack didn’t resume their relationship and, thanks to misunderstandings and gossip, it had worked.
She felt guilty it was her parents who’d done this, but at the same time she was still a little pissed off that Mack had ever thought she wouldn’t want their child.
With great effort, she pushed the mess to the back of her mind and began working on lesson plans for the week while keeping an eye on the weather report.
As the afternoon faded into darkness and it began to rain again, she sighed. It meant another recess indoors tomorrow. Even if the storm passed on before morning, the ground would be too muddy for kids to play outside. She had some craft supplies on hand, and a couple of DVDs to pass the time.
Something rattled outside the window, which made her jump, but when she looked out all she saw was the for-sale sign from the house next door blowing down the street.
* * *
Reece Parsons was standing up against the back wall of the storage shed next door, taking shelter from the wind and rain. It had come up unexpectedly, and he was damn cold. He wished now that he’d gone into Louis’s closet and borrowed his parka, but then Louis would have gotten all wound up about not getting it dirty. Louis was a pain in the ass and had more hang-ups than a 911 operator, but he was his identical twin, even though DNA was all they had in common.
Louis worked with an entire school building of women and was scared of them all, while Reece was obsessed with the opposite sex and how many ways he could hurt or scare them, which was how he got off. He didn’t know why he was like that, but it was what made his dick get hard, and that was all that mattered.
He heard a dog begin to bark, but the property where he was lurking was unoccupied, and the oncoming storm had darkened the night sky, making him confident of his hiding place.
He was waiting for Melissa Sherman to go to bed, and as soon as the lights went out and he was certain she was asleep, he was going in. After that she was his for as long as he wanted, then he would slit her throat. It was a swift and silent way to get rid of a witness.
* * *
Mack was numb. It was after midnight, and he still couldn’t sleep.
Inadvertently, he’d hurt the only girl he’d ever loved and didn’t know how to fix it. He understood why Lissa would hate him. He pretty much hated himself. All these years he’d lived with unjust anger and wasted the years they could have been together.
He sat within the silence of his dad’s house, going over and over the sequence of events before something finally broke through his fog of self-directed anger and a thought occurred to him. If her parents had called him like she’d asked when she was in labor, none of the rest of this hell would have happened.
And then he got angry all over again. Why had they done that? They’d known that he loved her. The hospital could have called him, too. But then, as fast as his rage rose, it died. The hospital had done exactly what it was required to do by law and notified the next of kin, which meant her parents. Just because he’d gotten her pregnant, that hadn’t given him any legal rights. They hadn’t been married. That meant when it had come to the girl he loved and the baby they’d made, the hospital hadn’t owed him anything.
But Mack kept struggling with the truth.
Why the hell had her parents been so furious that they hadn’t even told him what was going on?
He and Lissa had been inseparable through all four years of high school and had made plans to go to college together. They must have known he would stand by her.
Why hadn’t they called him as she’d asked?
Were they punishing her or him, or both of them?
It wasn’t until the wind and rain began that he remembered he’d promised Lissa to help her set up security for her house. In the middle of the revelation about his father’s murder and learning about her miscarriage, he’d forgotten all about it.
He walked out on the front porch, looking up and down the street through the downpour, and thought about calling to make sure she was okay, but when he glanced at his watch and saw the time, he knew it was far too late to call. And there was no way he would ever get to sleep knowing that if anything happened to her tonight, he would not only have let her down again but put her life in danger.
He walked back into the house, got his all-weather coat and his car keys, got in the car and started back toward her house. He wasn’t sure what he would do once he got there, so he would play it by ear.
* * *
The thunder and lightning mingled with the noise Reece made as he broke the glass in the kitchen door. He was dripping wet as he thrust his arm through the opening in the broken glass and felt around until he found the dead bolt.
The glass crunched beneath his shoes as he let himself in and moved across the kitchen floor, leaving muddy prints as he went. Confident that the storm would continue to shield him from discovery, he didn’t even bother trying to mute his footsteps.
Lissa was sound asleep when she heard the sound of breaking glass. She sat up in bed, listening to the wind and the rain on the roof, and thinking a branch had fallen and broken a window. She jumped out of bed and quickly put on her house shoes in case there was glass on the floor. She was on her way out of her room when she heard footsteps, and then the distinct crunch of glass beneath them.
Her heartbeat skipped and then began to pound as panic followed. It had to be her stalker! The fact that he was inside the house sent her into flight mode.
She turned the lock on her bedroom door just as he entered the living room. She could hear his footsteps clearly on the wood, and when they became muffled, she knew he’d just crossed the Oriental rug.
Oh, my God, oh, my God.
Her hands were shaking as she grabbed her cell phone and headed for the window. Within seconds she was kicking out the screen and crawling out into the downpour, calling 911 as she went.
* * *
Reece knew which side of the house Lissa’s bedroom was on, and when he started down the hall, he was so excited he was shaking. He turned the doorknob to her room and was surprised to find it locked. Anticipation turned to anger as he kicked the door open and ran into the room. Moments later a flash of lightning revealed the empty bed. The open window and blowing curtains were a shock.