The words rang hollow in Jesse’s heart. He hadn’t done a very good job up to now, from what he’d heard. The old traps still lay ahead of him. When his friends began to come back around and he started visiting his familiar haunts, would the hedonistic Jesse return? The one who cared nothing about anything other than his own wants and desires?
He sure hoped not. This mission of self-discovery was turning into a horror show, and he was the star.
Murder-suicide. Could he really have been capable of killing Liam? Jesse feared the answer might be yes.
Thirteen
Her friends were gone, and the house felt too empty. Alanna paced the drawing room carpet and glanced outside from time to time. She was bored, that’s all it was. Liam used to entertain her in the evenings with his giant bubbles. Or they’d go to the gym and work out. She wasn’t used to such solitude.
The dog. She’d forgotten to take food to Prince. She went to the kitchen and rummaged in the fridge for leftovers. A container held the last of some roast chicken. Perfect. She carried it out the back door. A security light illuminated the garden and revealed the vast expanse of grass.
“Prince!” she called. She should have brought a torch. Did the dog even know his name? She heard a meow behind her. “Pussy,” she coaxed. “Here, pussy.” A tiny kitten approached her. She held out a morsel of food for it, and it nibbled from her fingers with sharp teeth. “You’re wet.”
The kitten was drenched as though it had been in the lagoon. It complained plaintively and accepted another bit of food. Alanna saw a movement from the end of the garage. “Prince?” She held out a piece of chicken in that direction. “Come get your supper.”
The skinny setter crept across the grass on his belly. His tail gave a tentative wag. Inch by inch, he approached her. Alanna barely breathed, afraid of causing him to bolt. He reached her and she laid the chicken on the grass, where he gobbled it up.
She touched the top of his head, and he flinched but didn’t pull away from the food. His skin quivered as she petted him, and she saw the tension gradually ease from his body. “Poor love. No one will hurt you here.”
Prince finished the chicken and lay quietly under her hands for several long minutes before he licked her fingers, then rose and slipped back into the night. She’d made progress. She stood and wiped her hands on her jeans.
The kitten still rubbed against her ankles. She scooped up the half-drowned scrap and cuddled it. It licked her chin and she carried it with her across the grass to the path around the lagoon. If she stayed on the path, she wouldn’t have any run-ins with the alligator.
Her bare feet hit a pebble on the flagstone and she winced, then put down the kitten to brush the rock off her foot. The kitten hunched at her feet and cried. “What’s wrong, little one?” She scooped it up.
She heard a splash in the lagoon and a loud meow from a different cat. Aiming her light through the gloom, she saw a white feline head above the water swimming furiously toward shore. A figure ran from the lagoon. Man or woman, she couldn’t tell, but she suspected whoever it was had launched the cat into the water.
The cat yowled, and the note of despair in its cry galvanized her into action. She gasped and ran for the water. Was throwing the cat into the lagoon a deliberate attempt to feed it to the gator? She glanced around for the sinister reptile but saw nothing. The cat screeched again, and it turned a plaintive gaze toward her. Surely she could save the poor thing. She dropped the kitten to the ground and rushed to save the other cat.
Wading into the water, she felt along the muddy bottom with her toes. Ick. The gooey stuff clung to her feet. She listened for the horrific roaring she’d heard last night, but only the sound of tree frogs and crickets echoed around her. Her outreached hands touched the cat, and it practically climbed her wet shirt.
Alanna clutched it close and began to wade back to the shore. She heard a sound that made her mouth go dry. A rustle, then a loud splash. She glanced back to see eyes shining above the surface of the black water as the gator swam toward her.
The shore was still five feet away, and the muck on the bottom of her feet weighed her down like an anchor. Her pulse raced. What had she been thinking? She carried precious cargo—Liam’s child.
She tried to move faster, hindered by the fact that she was clutching the cat. She spared another glance behind her. The gator was three feet away and gaining fast. She thought to hit it with the torch but knew that would do little good. All she could do was try to put one foot after the next in the muck and get to shore.
She saw Barry at the edge of the water. “Barry, help me!” Her shaking hands dropped the light. It sank into the dark waters.
“Hurry, Alanna!” He tossed something white toward the gator.
At first Alanna was confused, then she remembered that he fed the gator marshmallows. She moved as fast as she could. There was no time to look back. If she wasted a split second, the gator would take her in its jaws.