Growing and Kissing (22 page)

At ten, I called home to say goodnight to Kayley.

By eleven, the traffic noise outside had stopped and the house was deathly quiet.
This is fine. I’ll just sleep.

At midnight, I was still lying there staring at the ceiling, willing the hours to pass, my body wracked with tension.
How does Sean do this?
I kept expecting to hear footsteps outside or the sound of breaking glass.

I thought about running for the car
.
I could be home in ten minutes, back to my safe little burrow. I could apologize to Stacey, hug the sleeping Kayley and everything would be great.

And the weed would be sitting here undefended. What if someone was sitting out there
right now
waiting to see if I left? What if me being here was the only thing stopping them?

I lay there for another few minutes, my mind switching back and forth. And then I heard the noise, faintly at first, so faint I couldn’t make out what it was. A rising and falling tone. I scrunched up my forehead, listening as it got louder. Wait...it wasn’t...no…

Shit!

Sirens.

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.

Louise

There were two of them and the first thing I realized was,
they weren’t surprised to see me.
They grinned when they saw my face. They weren’t expecting the house to be empty and they weren’t expecting Sean.

“Who—” I started.

One of them stepped forward and shoved me hard in the stomach. I folded at the waist and staggered back, winded, catching myself against one of the tables. My eyes were on the floor as I tried to heave in air, but I heard the two of them stroll in and shut the door behind them.

“Jesus,” said one of them. A heavy accent I didn’t recognize, vaguely European. When I managed to look up, they were looking around at the plants in wonder. “So that’s what he’s doing.”

I had no idea what was going on. When they’d pushed their way in, I’d thought they were there to rob us, but they sounded surprised. If they hadn’t known this was a grow house, why were they here?

I finally managed to straighten up and get a better look at them. Two men, bulky with muscle, both with shaved heads. One of them pulled out a knife—a huge, ugly thing with a blade as long as my hand.
Oh Jesus!
“Who are you?” I croaked.

“We know your boyfriend,” said the other man. “He paid us a visit. So now we’re paying you a visit.”

I swallowed. “He’ll be back. He just stepped out.”

One of them shook his head. “He hasn’t been here all night. We’ve been watching this place. Would have been in here an hour ago, if the fucking cops hadn’t showed up.”

Oh Jesus.
I’d had the police there. I’d had the police
right there
at my door and I’d wished for them to leave. My stomach turned. This was the world I’d chosen. I was a criminal, now, and the police don’t protect us.

Sean’s words came back to me:
what would you do, if someone broke in?
My plan seemed so stupid, now. The knives and the baseball bat were in the far corner of the room, where I’d thrown them.
Idiot!
And the men were looking at me in a way that made my skin crawl. When I’d bedded down, I’d kept my top and bra on, but it had been too hot for jeans so I was standing there bare-legged in my panties. I swallowed and looked around at the plants. “Take them,” I said. “Take everything.”

They laughed. And that’s when I realized they weren’t interested in the weed.

They were there for me.

Sean

It hadn’t taken as long as I’d thought. She hadn’t needed me to stay the night. A little after one, I was ready to go back to the grow house. I shook my head tiredly. All that arguing with Louise, and I’d be there most of the night anyway.

I hadn’t had a chance to eat since lunch. I figured I’d grab a pizza on the way and eat it when I got there.

But on the way to the pizza joint, something nagged at me. That argument with Louise...she wouldn’t normally give in that easily. The girl was stubborn as hell.

At the next intersection, I changed course and swung by our apartment block. Louise always parked her rusty old Japanese car in the same place.

But tonight, it wasn’t there.

“Shit,”
I muttered, and drove straight for the grow house.

Louise

There was nowhere to go. There were only two doors and two of them—a man was always between me and escape. We’d taken out all the walls so I couldn’t run for a bedroom and lock myself in. I backed away across the huge room, but every time I took a step, they took a step.

“Please,” I said, my voice shaking. “Please!”

They weren’t even running. They knew they had me trapped and they were taking their time, enjoying the game. “He wrecked our grow house,” said the taller of the two men. “Destroyed it. So we’re going to destroy
you.”