The Influence(106)

She did not wake Ross up to tell him about the nightmare, nor did she mention it in the morning before he left for work, but its imagery haunted her throughout the day, and she ended up drawing a picture of it in her sketchbook.

Her telemarketing schedule was five hours today—from eleven to one and then again from five to eight—but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, so she sent an email to her group supervisor, begging off, pretending that she had laryngitis. Digging through the hall cupboard for the biggest towel she could find, she grabbed a bottled water out of the refrigerator and walked down the street to the beach, sitting alone on the sand staring out to sea. The sky was overcast, the water gray, her mood melancholy. The happiness and sense of renewal she’d felt since coming with Ross to San Diego was gone, and the phrase that kept repeating in her brain was chilling: Our luck has changed.

The cool breeze that ruffled her hair felt like something more than wind.



****



Ross came home early from work, in a bad mood—

Our luck has changed.

—and when Jill asked him what was wrong, he wouldn’t tell her. That was new. Until now, they had shared everything, had been completely honest with each other. She pointed this out, throwing in that she had also moved to a completely different state with him after dating for only a few weeks, and he apologized instantly. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“France rejected our new guidance system. That was supposed to be our big new market, and it’s why the company brought in all us new hires. They were certain it was going to fly.” He smiled wryly. “So to speak. But now there’s talk about a round of cutbacks, and since it’s last hired, first fired…” He shook his head. “I should’ve taken that job in Denver.”

“You still can, if worst comes to worst.”

“Those jobs are filled already.”

“But you have a new job on your resume, and—”

“Magdalena got me this job.”

She looked at him. “What?”

“You know it’s true. I was unemployed, unemployable in this terrible economy, and then I saw that monster in the shed and suddenly I had job offers galore. That’s not going to happen again.”

Our luck has changed.

She put a hand on his arm. “Maybe it won’t happen.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

They tried to make love that night, but he couldn’t get hard and she couldn’t get wet, and eventually they gave it up and went to bed.

Things should have looked better in the morning, but sleep hadn’t helped, and after Ross left for work, Jill signed in and started disrupting people’s breakfasts with her phone calls.

By lunchtime she was tired and cranky, and she was grateful when the doorbell rang, giving her an excuse to take a break. Putting down her headset, she walked through the living room, opened the front door…

And no one was there.

“Hello?” she said, stepping out and looking from the left to the right. There was no one in the small front yard or in the street. Trying to convince herself that it was kids playing a prank, she closed the door and locked it.

From somewhere in the house behind her came the light clicking sound of paws on floor, accompanied by the jangle of dog tags.

Jill was suddenly cold.

Puka?

No, it couldn’t be. He was dead and flattened and back in Arizona. Ross had thrown him in the garbage, and his body was either still there, rotting, or had been taken to the dump.

He was not padding around their rented beach house here in San Diego.

Something growled from down the hall.

That was it. She was out of here. Jill grabbed her purse, locked the front door and strode directly to the van. Parking in front of a 7-11 down the street, she took out her cell phone to call Ross. He wasn’t going to want to hear this, but he needed to know about it. His phone went straight to voicemail, but instead of leaving a message she clicked off and drove down to the complex of steel-and-glass buildings where he worked.

At least, that’s what she started to do.

But somewhere along the way, her goal changed. Why was she hurrying to warn Ross when she was the one being pursued? What she needed to do was get as far from here as quickly as possible and hide. Go someplace where no one would find her. Ross would be safe once she was safe—nothing was after him—and if she could ditch this whatever-it-was now, she would be free from it forever.

Jill was aware that her thoughts were not as clear as they should be, that something was wrong with her logic, but it didn’t seem important, was a trivial objection in the back of her mind. What was important right now was getting away from their house and out of San Diego, and she found a freeway heading east, took it and continued out of the city into the countryside. Buildings grew more spaced out, offramps farther apart. The freeway shed two lanes, became a highway, and somewhere in the mountains, she turned off on a side road. She had no idea where she was, but that was an advantage. It would make her more difficult to track.