Eyes wide, Sherry moved back, away from the door.
Jules reached for her phone, but her hand brushed her pocket-less uniform skirt. “Shoot.” The word sounded so insufficient for the situation that she almost laughed. Her phone was in the back, and she didn’t have Theo’s number memorized yet. “I’m going to call 9-1-1 on the diner phone.”
She took a step toward the counter when a loud crack made her spin around. Norman had a brick in his hand, and he was swinging it toward the large window. As it connected, Jules let out a shriek, her gaze locking on the small crack that had formed under the blow. How long could the window hold up against his assault? He hit the glass with the brick again, and the sound snapped Jules out of her paralysis. Whirling around, she ran for the phone.
Grabbing the handset, she started to dial when a smashing sound made her jerk, her fingers mashing too many of the wrong buttons. Her gaze flew to the window, but except for a few cracks, it was in one piece. The shades on the door rattled, and Jules realized with dawning horror that Norman had broken the glass in the door, and he was shoving the shades aside so he could reach for the dead bolt.
She couldn’t look away from that groping hand, rainwater diluting the blood oozing from multiple small cuts and running over his fingers. He gripped the dead bolt, and Jules knew a 9-1-1 call wouldn’t help them. The police couldn’t get there in time.
Dropping the phone, she ran for the kitchen door. “Sherry! This way!”
There was no response, no sound of running feet behind her, and Jules turned. Sherry was unmoving, frozen in place between two diner tables, watching as Norman unlocked the dead bolt. Reversing her steps, Jules ran toward Sherry, intending to grab her and haul the woman into the kitchen and to the back door. It was their only chance to get out of there, to get away from Norman.
She was only ten feet from Sherry when the door opened and Norman stepped inside. His jacket hood shadowed his features, turning him into a nightmarish figure, and Jules couldn’t hold back a cry.
Finally, Sherry moved. Lifting her right arm, she aimed a black pistol at Norman and pulled the trigger.
The blast was loud, so loud that all the other sounds went quiet for a moment. Jules skidded to a stop, turning her head from Sherry to Norman’s form sprawled on the floor. Shock kept her brain from understanding for several seconds. When comprehension finally started seeping in, she was torn between checking on whether Norman was dead and running just in case he wasn’t.
Running won.
“Sherry,” Jules said, her voice echoing strangely in her head. “Let’s go. We need to get help.”
Sherry finally turned, arm still outstretched. Staring at the gun that was now pointed directly at her, Jules stopped breathing. “No. We don’t. Norman’s been a pain in my ass since he came to town, always butting into other people’s business. I thought planting explosives in your barn and pinning it on him would finally get him out of my hair, but here he is again.” She shot his crumpled form a quick, disgusted glare. “Interfering bastard.”
“What?” It was a stupid thing to say, but it was the only word Jules could force past her lips. Sherry’s words weren’t making any sense. Nothing was making any sense. Sherry blew up their barn to frame Norman? What was happening?
“Please close the blinds.” Sherry smiled, a friendly, completely nonhomicidal smile that made everything even more disorientating.
Jules could only stare at her. It was hard to believe it was real. In fact, it was hard to believe the whole morning was real, that she was standing inside a cozy diner with the rain pattering on the roof and a possibly dead guy lying on the floor and a woman she was starting to think of as a potential friend pointing a gun—a gun!—at her. It seemed more like a dream. Jules waited to be woken by one of the kids or a sound or just her own fear, but nothing changed.
She was still standing in the diner, Norman still bleeding by the door, and Sherry still had her gun.
“Didn’t you hear me?” It was strange. Even though Sherry was holding a deadly weapon, her voice stayed sweet and even. It was Jules whose thoughts were verging on the hysterical, while Sherry sounded perfectly reasonable. “Please close the blinds.”
Perfectly sane.
Numbly, with hands that shook, Jules walked to the window and dropped the blinds, turning the slats so they completely covered the window. She considered trying to leave them partially open, so someone could see in if they happened to be walking by at four thirty in the morning, but there was no way to conceal it from Sherry, who was watching her intently from just a few feet away.
So she closed the blinds, hiding the two of them from the outside world.