LOUISE
People talk about the paralysis of fear. I know now what they mean. I sat bolt upright on the mattress and then froze there, listening, as the sirens came closer.
Run, I thought. There was still time. I could run for the car. If I left right now….
But I didn’t run. I sat there, digging my fingers into my knees, praying that I’d hear the sirens change in tone as they turned off down a side street. But they just keep coming.
Run! Too late to get the car started and out of the garage, now, but I could run out of the front door and be walking down the street when they got there. My house, officer? No, not mine, I was just out for a walk. I don’t know who lives there.
But my car was in the garage. The house was rented in my name. Even if I was gone when they got there...the fear clutched at my stomach, freezing liquid lead. This is not happening, this is not happening….
The sirens entered our street, so loud that I couldn’t think. All the windows were covered with Sean’s fake walls, but there were enough tiny cracks that the darkened room still lit up with red and blue flashes.
Run! Out of the back door and hope they haven’t surrounded the house. Get a good lawyer. At least I’d have a chance! But by then it was too late: the lights got brighter and brighter, the sirens hurting my ears. They’ll go past. They’ll go right past and it’ll all be okay—
Tires screeched, right outside, and the sirens went quiet. The whole room was alive with moving, fan-shaped red and blue patterns as the lights bathed the front of the house.
Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Car doors opened and slammed outside. Voices. Radio crackles.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Mom! How had everything gone so wrong? I was just trying to save Kayley! Now I was going to jail and Kayley was going to die scared and alone.
Footsteps. I tried to convince myself they weren’t coming my way.
Three heavy, authoritative bangs on the door. “LAPD!”
I looked around in horror at the knives and baseball bat around me.
If they kicked the door down and saw this, they might shoot first. “Coming!” I yelled, and threw the weapons into the far corner of the room, under a table.
Then I ran to the door, undid the locks and opened it, ready to face my fate.
A dark-haired young cop stood there, his gun drawn. “Ma’am? We have a situation out here. I want you to stay in your house and keep away from the windows.”
I just blinked at him.
“We have a suspect on the loose in this street and he’s armed. Just stay indoors.” And he raced off down the path. Across the street, I could see more officers knocking on other doors.
I slammed the door, put my back to it and then slowly slid down until I was sitting on the floor.
I could barely breathe. I’d come so close to being caught.
If I’d opened the door a few inches wider, if the lights had been on, if the breeze had been different and the cop had smelled the weed.
... And there were still tens of cops out there, just a few feet away.
I sat there in the darkness, every muscle and tendon in my body tight with tension.
Every footstep on the street outside might mean another knock at the door.
Every murmur of one cop to another transformed in my mind to do you smell weed?
What if the filters Sean had fitted didn’t work as well as he thought?
After an hour, the cops found their man, hiding behind some garbage cans in someone’s backyard. They left without a single shot being fired. I finally slumped in relief, a limp, exhausted wreck.
Minutes after the sirens had died away into the distance, I heard the rumble of an engine outside and then footsteps. Sean! He’d come after all. He was going to be mad as hell when he found me here, but I was so glad to see him, I didn’t care. I was going to throw my arms around him and—
I pulled open the door to greet him.
It wasn’t Sean.