Love Gone (4 page)

CHAPTER 5

“Liam, could you do me a favor and get
the fire going in the living room, please?” She got her son up and
moving, albeit begrudgingly, it was clear he wanted to add his two
cents to this conversation, especially since his father had moved
off lecturing him and onto something else.

She could hear him in the next room
doing what she’d asked. Good. A nice bright crackling fire would go
far to chase this chill out of her bones and cheer everyone
up.

“Okay Faith, the boy’s gone. Now start
talking.” Mac was not fooled by her request. He knew there must be
a reason she wanted Liam out of the room before she discussed this
with him.

“It’s nothing really.” She started,
but he quickly cut off her protest.

“Don’t start it like that Faith. I can
tell something spooked you. Was it this girl, like Liam
said?”

“Maybe,” she conceded. “There was
something about this girl Mac. Just something not right about how
she reacted and the way she looked. Liam could see it
too.”

“Did she hurt you? Touch you in some
way?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” she
assured him. “It’s not that she was physically violent or anything,
but she did seem really upset when we hit her.”

“Well maybe she was worried about her
car, or her insurance or her parents or something?”

“Of course there’s that. All those
things are concerning to anyone, but it wasn’t just the accident.
It seemed like something else was underneath it all. She was scared
when I suggested that her parents might want to talk to me. And she
lied about her name Mac. I know she did. It was just weird all the
way around.”

“And her eyes mom,” Liam called from
where he was fanning the fire in the living room. “Don’t forget how
creepy her eyes looked. And she told you to fuck off!”

Faith rolled her eyes. So much for
sending Liam out of the room to take him out of the conversation.
Mac smiled up at her. Boys would be boys. Trust his son to add some
unintentional humor to the situation. Maybe he wasn’t as different
from Mac as he seemed.

“Language Liam!” Faith called to
him.

“Mom!” He protested, “I was just
repeating what she said to you! Dad should know how rude she
was.”

“Okay thanks hon, I’ve got this
alright.” She said, “Why don’t you go back to your room and keep
working on your homework. We’ve got about 30 minutes before
dinner.”

“Whatever,” she heard him say as he
shuffled back down the hall toward his room. Typical teenage
behavior. She was glad he didn’t seem to be feeling too hurt or
guilty over what had happened.

“Anyway,” she continued when she heard
his door slam shut with a bang. “He’s right. She did swear at me.
Took me by surprise I can tell you that. The girl is a little older
than Liam, imagine how surprised I was to hear that from a kid her
age. From anyone really, but especially not from this little slip
of a thing.”

She gave his shoulders a final rub and
kissed the top of his head before walking back into the kitchen to
pour herself a glass of wine to sip as she finished cooking their
dinner.

“Another beer?” She called as she
pulled the bottle of wine out of the fridge where it was
chilling.

“No changing the subject,” Mac called
back. “What else did this girl say to you?”

Faith was thoughtfully silent as she
filled her glass and replaced the bottle in the fridge.

“It’s not so much what she said or did
as the way she was. The energy around her. I know that sounds
silly.”

“No it doesn’t darlin’, I think you
can tell a lot about someone by their auras. The vibe they give
off.” Mac told her as he got up to grab another beer out of the
fridge.

She punched his arm playfully with a
tiny fist. “Now you’re just making fun of me.”

“No, truly, I understand what you’re
on about. There’s a saying in Ireland: For Whom Ill is Fated, Him
It Will Strike.”

She just looked at him nonplussed. Mac
always had an Irish saying for everything. Either it was from his
mom or his pappy or just a general Irish piece of wisdom. He always
had a saying that he felt fit an occasion perfectly, but it was
rare for anyone else to understand what they meant or how they fit
the situation. This was no different.

“What on gods green earth does that
mean Mac Byrne?” Faith teased him as she sipped her wine and
plunged her hands back into the breading she was using to coat the
cod fillets.

“It means, darlin’, that some people
just walk around with a dark cloud over them and generally that
dark cloud is hanging around because it’s getting ready to strike.
Best to give those people a wide berth, in my
experience.”

Faith considered this thoughtfully as
she poured a small amount of oil in her frying pan.

“Yes, this girl, Emily, or so she
said, definitely had a darkness around her, but it was more than
just a dark cloud of ill luck or something. It was really…oh I
don’t know. It sounds silly.”

“What is it Faith?”

“Well,” she started, turning to face
him while the first fillet started sizzling in the pan behind her.
“She just seemed evil. Yes, that’s it. Just plain evil. No other
way to put it. She got close to me and said that Liam and I should
be careful, and it was all I could do not to push her away and
start running. Know what I mean?”

Before Mac could answer, the doorbell
rang.

Her stomach leapt in fear at the
unexpected sound. Her eyes flew to meet Mac’s and he looked down at
her, uncomprehending.

The doorbell rang again. Insistent, as
if the person on the other side of the door knew that they were
unwanted in this house, but they didn’t care, they were determined
to be let in.

“Are you expecting someone?” She asked
him, almost whispering.

“No.”

“Mom?” Liam called from his room down
the hall. “Is there someone at the door?”

“Stay in your room Liam,” she shouted.
Why had she said that, she wondered? It was just someone at the
door. Maybe someone lost or one of the neighbors returning
something they’d borrowed or stopping by to invite them somewhere.
They were a close knit block and it wasn’t unusual for one of the
neighbors to stop by unexpectedly without a phone call. This was
Alaska, not New York. Neighbors were friends here. But still, the
bell had spooked her.

“Listen, you stay here,” Mac
instructed her. He didn’t look all that confident himself. “I’m
just going to go see who that is.”

She fought the urge to hold him back.
Keep him with her and just ignore the bell.

“Okay, thanks honey.”

She stood frozen against the counter,
listening as Mac walked down the hall, past his son’s room, and
opened the door.

“Can I help you?” She heard him
say.

She couldn’t hear the other person.
Could only make out a very faint response. Nothing that told her if
it was a female, a male?

“No, I don’t think that would be a
good idea,” she heard Mac say. Louder this time. He sounded upset.
Oh god, what was happening?

She slipped out of her heels and
padded silently around the corner of the kitchen into the hall.
From her vantage point, she could see down the length of the house.
Behind her was the living room where she could feel the faint heat
of the fire, really crackling now, Liam had done a good job getting
it started. She could see Mac’s broad back as he stood in the
doorway, blocking whoever was standing in front of him. She leaned
forward slightly, straining to hear the other person. Could it
actually be Emily? Here? At her door?

Before she had another chance to hear
a response she heard a scuffle outside on the porch. A grunt from
someone standing away from the door and then a squeal like a little
girl had been violently pushed and fallen with the wind knocked out
of her. Mac roared with rage and suddenly she saw another man
standing in the dark outside space framed by her doorway. He was
pushing at Mac and grunting in an almost unearthly way. He was
trying to push his way into her house!

Stunned she wasn’t sure what to do.
She was frozen. Then she heard Liam’s door opening. Of course he
would be confused about the noise, he would try and help, she had
to protect her son. With no regard to her own safety she rushed
down the hall, behind Mac and slammed into Liam’s room, knocking
him over as she pushed her way in and locked his door behind
her.

“What is it? What the hell is going on
mom?” Liam struggled to get up off the floor where he’d fallen
after she pushed into the room.

“Shhh!” She waved him back with her
hand as she pressed against the door to hear what was happening.
“She was frightened, but she wasn’t sure how frightened she should
be. Mac was a big man and he’d been in a lot of fights growing up
and as an adult. He was a fisher. He’d been a fisher on some of the
roughest crews in Boston, Maine, and now Alaska. He was a
supervisor on the boats now and that meant breaking up fights and
keeping other men in line, sometimes with his fists. Mac would want
her to protect their son and their unborn baby. He would take care
of them.

She could hear Mac fighting with that
strange man. She could still hear those gut twisting grunts, and
every time they got a little too close to the door they were hiding
behind she felt her stomach twist a little harder. What was
happening?

“Liam,” she whispered. He rushed over
to the door where she was crouching, one hand on the door knob. “Go
look out the window. Carefully! See if you can see anyone out
there? A car or anything?”

He ran over to his window to check
things out. Watching him she prayed that he’d see a neighbor
looking curiously out a window or that one of his friends might
decide to stop by. Anything or anyone that might be able to help
them right now.

“I can’t see anything mom,” he
reported back, trying to stay as quiet as she’d been. “There’s no
one else out there.”

She had a decision to make. She could
either tell her son to climb out his window and run to one of the
neighbors for safety, or she could make him hide in his closet or
under his bed while she went out and tried to reach the phone to
call the police.

She closed her eyes and prayed for
wisdom or a little of the sight Mac boasted about. She didn’t know
what to do. She didn’t know.

“Run Liam,” she heard herself say,
almost without realizing that she’d spoken out loud. “I need you to
run.”

“No mom! I’m not leaving you!” Her
brave son left his post at his window and rushed back to her side.
“No fucking way am I leaving you and dad!”

“Liam,” she shook him with
frustration. “We need your help. We need you to go to one of the
neighbors and call the police. I don’t know what’s happening. I
don’t know who’s out there.”

“Come with me,” he pleaded like a
little boy. “Please come with me. Don’t stay here. Let dad handle
it.”

“I can’t baby,” she stroked his cheek
even as her gut twisted with fear again as she heard the inhuman
grunting noise outside the door again, and was that the sound of
Mac gasping in pain?

“There’s no time Liam,” she urged him.
“Your dad needs our help right now, please go.”

His blue eyes, so much like his
father’s, stared at her in fear. She pushed at his shoulder, nodded
at him to get going. He tried to act like a man, but he was just a
little boy. She had to get him out of here, if there was a chance
she could get him away from this terror she had to take it. She had
to make him take it.

Screwing up his courage he slid away
from her. It’s just like a video game he told himself. A video game
with the goal of getting from one level – the house – to the next
level – the neighbors house – and beating the bad guys in the
process. Nothing but a game, he repeated. You can do this man, he
encouraged himself. Silently he slid the window up and worked at
the screws holding the screen in place. C’mon you mother fucker, he
cursed it under his breath, half expecting his mother to hear him
and remind him to watch his language.

Glancing at her over his shoulder he
could see that she was a long way from caring about his swearing
right now. He could see her with ear pressed against the door, her
hands clinging to the knob, body pushed against the door to stop
anything or anyone from trying to get in. To get at him, he
realized. His mom was prepared to stop anyone from reaching him,
even if it meant that they would have to go through her to get to
him. He couldn’t let her do that. He had to get help.

He directed his fury at the screen and
the rusty screws stubbornly stopping him from jumping out and
getting help. He pulled at them and he could feel them cutting into
his fingertips, making them bleed against the screen. Wonder if
I’ll have to get a tetanus shot he thought, and then cursed himself
for thinking so crazy. Who gave a fuck if he got tetanus if they
were all killed by the crazy motherfucker fighting with his dad in
the hall right now?

He kept pulling at the screws, willing
them to let go. Finally one released. Then the other. It was
enough. He shoved his fist through the opening the two missing
screws made. He forced the screen to bend and as it did it made a
horrible, loud screeching sound. He froze. Looked at his mom. She
had her finger to her lips, urging silence. For one horrible moment
they both stood in place, waiting to see if there was any change to
the sounds of battle on the other side of the door.