Run to Ground(25)

“Ju-Ju?”

Sam’s serious tone made her focus on him. “What is it?”

“I w-want it. P-p-please.”

It took her a second to realize he meant the attic, rather than the old globe. She’d already mentally assigned the room to Ty and Tio, since they’d always refused to be put in separate rooms, and she wasn’t sure if there was a room on the second floor that would fit both of them. A single glance at Sam’s tight expression and clenched fists was enough to immediately change her mind. “Okay.”

For a long moment, he watched her warily, studying her face as if to make sure she was serious. Eventually, his shoulders relaxed slightly. “Thanks.”

“It’s going to be freezing in the winter and broiling in the summer, you know,” she warned.

His almost-there smile was back. “I kn-know.”

“I have no idea how we’ll get a mattress up those steps.” The thought reminded her of all the things they would need to get that day. Thunder, louder than before, crashed, sounding as if it was right above them. In the crackling silence following the boom, there was the tinny sound of a doorbell.

They all froze—none of them even breathing—until lightning lit up her siblings’ faces, the stark light emphasizing the terror in their expressions. The sight reminded Jules that she was the responsible one now, the one who had to pretend not to be scared out of her mind that the cops were at the door, ready to break in and grab the kids, to drop them back into Courtney’s clutches.

The horror of that thought snapped Jules out of her temporary paralysis. “Everyone stay up here. No, wait.” There were no exits on the third floor. Jules made a frantic mental note to install some way to escape from the attic in the near future.

If she was hauled off to jail right now, though, that wouldn’t be necessary.

Wrestling her panicked thoughts back under control, she took a deep breath and let it out in a shuddering exhale. “Okay. Head for the kitchen and out the back door to the barn. Y’all can hide in there—or behind there, if it looks like it’s going to fall down on your heads.” She met Sam’s frantic gaze and tried to force a smile. “Maybe it’s just the welcome wagon.”

The doorbell rang again, longer and more insistently that time, and Jules started down the narrow stairs, her heartbeat hammering in her ears. The kids followed her, their tentative footsteps a heartbreaking contrast to the pounding joy they’d shown running up them just minutes earlier.

Did I do the wrong thing? Jules wondered as her teeth found a raw spot on the inside of her lip. The physical sting wasn’t as painful as the rush of guilt. She’d taken her siblings from a life of affluence, and in exchange, forced them to live in fear, always hiding, always having to look over their shoulders.

“I don’t want to go back,” Dee said in a tiny voice as they descended the stairs to the main level.

“You won’t.” The resolute way Sam said the words, without a stutter, erased Jules’s doubts. Courtney might’ve been able to give them material things, but they’d have a better life with Jules, even if it was a life on the run.

At the base of the stairs, Jules turned toward the front door and then paused, looking sternly over her shoulder at the scared-looking group. “Whatever happens, you stay hidden. Got it?”

The younger three nodded, looking worried, but Sam sent her a tight-lipped frown that promised nothing. The doorbell rang for the third time, and she waved them toward the kitchen. Only when they disappeared through the doorway did she start to walk toward the front door, each step slower than the one before it.

The dirty, stained-glass panel running the height of the door revealed just the vaguest of outlines. Jules could tell that whoever was out there was big—very, very big. She hoped the dim interior of the house hid her from whatever giant lurked on the porch, waiting for her to answer.

Taking a deep breath, she let it out as she stretched up onto her tiptoes so she could see out of the peephole. Jules blinked, her lashes brushing the door, and the figure on the porch came into wide-angle focus.

She stopped breathing, stopped thinking. All she could do was stare. The cops were here. She’d barely gotten the kids to their new home, and she’d already failed her siblings. Her knees went watery, and her vision was strange, putting a gray film over everything, including the officer’s nightmarish face, distorted by the peephole glass.

The world rocked a little, and she had to take a step back to catch her balance, cutting off her view of the cop.

This is it, she thought. Nausea flooded her, and she swallowed hard. Her brain spun with images of jail and the kids going back to Courtney…