He thought she might rematerialize at the Dunkin’ Donuts across from the rink, always mobbed with high school kids on weekend nights. He even hung out long after his friends left. But Brianna never came, and his cell phone battery died, because of course he’d forgotten to charge it. He was forced to walk all the way home alone in the dark and pouring rain.
A local cop, there getting coffee, did offer him a ride as he left. “You’re Braden Mundy’s brother, right?” he said.
“Yeah. How do you know him?”
“We were Eagle Scouts together. I graduated a year ahead of him. And I had your mom as a teacher, too. Come on, I’ll give you a lift home.”
Mick had momentarily hoped his perfect brother might have had a run--in with local law enforcement at some point in his otherwise charmed hometown life. He turned down the offer.
He regrets it now.
It’s not that he isn’t perfectly capable of making the walk. He’s jogged it a million times. But that’s always during the day. Even plugged into familiar music on his iPod—-which wouldn’t make Mom happy—-he’s a little unnerved now that he’s left the brightly lit village streets behind. He jogs up the last stretch of Riverview Road toward home, past the scattering of neighboring houses, all of them set back from the road, windows darkened at this hour.
It must be nice to live in town, closer to the school and civilization, not to mention the Armbrusters’ house on Prospect Street.
Not that he’s afraid, isolated out here in the middle of the night, but still . . .
Okay, maybe he’s a little afraid.
When Mom texted him on the way home from dinner earlier, he assured her he’d have a ride home later. It hadn’t been a lie—-not then. He was planning to leave with his friends. He still could have called home and his parents would have come to get him, but if Brianna showed up late after all, he didn’t want her to see him getting into the family minivan on a Saturday night.
He told his parents not to wait up. Dad will anyway—-or at least he’ll be dozing in the living room in front of the television. Mick is hoping that’s the case tonight.
This isn’t the first time he’s gotten home late, and he knows from experience exactly how to get away with it.
He turns off the music and removes his headphones. Now he can hear the rain dripping and the accelerated rhythm of his own breathing and his feet crunching through the last of the fallen leaves, and . . .
And something rustling in the bushes.
Spooked, he’s tempted to dart up onto the porch. The light is on there, and that’s the door he’s supposed to use when he comes in at night.
But if he does, Dad will hear him and he’ll be in trouble.
Reminding himself that the rustling is probably just a raccoon or maybe a deer, as opposed to a bear or a psycho killer, he slips around to the back. Even if that door is locked—-it usually isn’t—-it’s far enough from the living room, where his father and Doofus are undoubtedly snoozing, that they won’t be awakened by the sound of a key turning, the creaky door, and footsteps.
Tonight, he finds the door locked. It has been all week, he’s noticed, ever since Mom got that weird package. He’s barely given that a passing thought, but now he realizes that she hasn’t been her usual talkative self when he’s seen her—-which, granted, hasn’t been much.
Having forgotten to carry his key tonight, Mick retrieves the one they keep hidden under a planter on the back step.
He unlocks the door, puts the key back, and steps inside out of the wet chill at last. He carries his sopping sneakers as he tiptoes across the floor. The house is hushed and dark, other than the glow and volume of the television spilling into the foyer. No snoring, but he does hear a momentary jingle of Doofus’s tags.
Ordinarily on a night like this, Mick would be glad that Doofus lacks even the slightest canine instinct to investigate the fact that someone has just entered the house. Still skittish from the desolate walk home, though, he finds himself wondering . . .
What if that someone wasn’t me?
Yeah? Who else would it be? A psycho killer? A bear?