The dog hid under the table.
Rather than scare me, it just fueled by growing anger. “What the fuck is wrong with you? A woman died and got back up within an hour. No one else is worried about this?”
I did not ask What if they ALL start turning faster and faster? That was still too awful to comprehend.
He stared at me, the open hostility in his face a strange new thing. Last time I’d seen him this mad, our publisher had decide to cut advertising budgets again.
“You were wrong,” he said, the voice sliding from his lips as alien to me as this entire situation. “You fucked up. You were wrong, and if you get us thrown out of here…”
I seized upon the implied threat. “You’ll what? What will you do, Tony? Do share.”
“No, don’t share,” Dax said. “Let’s not share that.”
Tony snatched my arm too quickly for me to get out of the way. I heard Dax bellow, heard a chair go over as he stood up quickly. Then Tony was dragging me from the kitchen, out into the main entryway. We were outside and in the rapidly falling dusk by the time Dax caught up to us.
I only saw the blur of his hair as he slammed into Tony, who released me as he went over. The two of them landed heavily on the walkway, sending up clouds of ash. The dog came racing out a moment later, letting out a broken string of short, high-pitched barks nearly tinged with a whine. I had never heard her like this.
Like she’s crying.
“Stop it,” I said, not quite believing I was watching this unfold. Tony shoved Dax off him and tried to leap to his feet, but his bad leg only let him scramble.
Dax yanked him back down.
“Stop it! You are fucking idiots! Stop it!”
They both paused.
Evie whimpered pitifully and then rushed to the pair of them, nosing each one here and there and generally getting in between the two.
“You are upsetting the dog,” I said.
Dax sat down hard on the front walk and rubbed behind her ears. “It’s okay, little girl. It’s okay…”
This time, Tony managed to get to his feet. He paused to steady himself, arms outstretched in case the leg gave way.
Then he turned around and limped away from our house.
“And he never came back,” Dax muttered.
For the love of God, weren’t we past being drama queens about all this? I started after Tony, ignoring the bite of cold air on my bare arms and swiftly closing the distance between us.
“Vibeke, let him go! He’s pissed!”
I ignored Dax’s warning, grabbed Tony’s arm, and yanked with all my strength. He swung around, but his hand came up, clenching around my jaw and keeping me from speaking. I started to wrench myself away, but he jerked me close to him, put his lips against my ear.
“The house is bugged.”
I stopped moving. I wasn’t sure I could move.
“They are listening to everything. They already don’t trust any of us. You want to get locked up with Gloria and Vijay? We have to stay quiet. Respectful.”
He released me, and stepped back.
I heard footsteps approaching from behind me. Dax, followed by Evie; they stopped a few feet away. “Vibeke?” he asked warily.
“It’s cool,” I said.
“Put the dog back inside and lock the door,” Tony said. “We’re going for a walk.”
I don’t know how we ended up walking toward Norwall Park. We just did.
“He’s spying on us?” Dax asked, dismay clear in his tone. Neither of the guys said anything about the rather physical tussle they’d just engaged in. Maybe that was for the best.
Tony let us walk along for another few seconds before answering. “The dog found one, right after I moved in. She got into a fake plant and came up with it. I played dumb. Pretended to be annoyed with her and scooped everything back into the planter bowl. I made a point of looking around after that. They’re all over. The bedrooms, the kitchen…”
“The bathroom?” I asked.
He sighed.
Oh, great. Keller or one of his cronies was watching me shower. And use the loo. And brush my teeth. And…
The rage and shock passed through me quickly, giving way to something much like resignation. So Keller was watching me undress. Big damn deal. In the scheme of things that had already happened to me, one stupid little peeping tom just seemed…uninteresting.
I would, of course, separate his testicles from his body at my earliest convenience.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I whispered. “Why didn’t you tell us before we even moved in?”
“What could we even do about it? If we threw out or broke the cameras, they’d know. If we acted overly weird, they’d know. I kept waiting for you to come upstairs and try to complain about work or pastrami or something—I was going to write a note on the inside cover of the Mennonite book. I couldn’t do it downstairs, it’s too well covered.”
“So that’s why you kept going up there,” Dax said. “Shit. I thought you were just jerking off.”