Irons in the Fire by Bowen Greenwood

Author:Bowen Greenwood [Greenwood, Bowen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-10T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

The scream woke me up.

A woman in early middle age, her slightly graying hair cut short above her neck, stood in the open door screaming and staring at me. She wore blue scrubs, like a doctor or nurse.

She kept screaming.

It was taking me longer than usual to make the transition from sleep to full wakefulness. Part of that was how tired I had been when I laid down. Another part of it was that her screaming had my own synapses swimming in fear, and I couldn’t settle down and focus enough to even figure out where I was, what was going on, and who she might be.

Still screaming. But now also backing out of the room and grabbing for her cell phone.

That gave me focus.

I bolted out of the bed, threw back open the door she had just closed, and she screamed again as I came out. I hated myself for it, but I grabbed the phone out of her hand. Still nothing but incoherent screams from her.

“Mrs. Waverly! Calm down! I can explain! I’m no threat to you!”

Grabbing her phone away from her probably hadn’t exactly made that believable. She didn’t stop screaming.

I had lost track of how long that had been going on, but this was an apartment complex, and a cheap one at that. The walls were paper thin. The neighbors definitely heard all this screaming. It would only be so long before someone came to help her.

Regretting it bitterly, I pushed her aside and ran for the door. I kept running until long after my strength had given out.

***

I was afraid to go back into the forest. The cops had to be looking for me there by now. On the other hand, wandering the streets of my hometown when my face had been splashed all over every screen in the city limits felt too scary for me to do that either. Normally, the small-town feel of Hunter was one of the reasons I didn’t want to leave but when you’re trying not to be recognized, it works against you.

When I finally slowed to a walk after leaving Jaden’s screaming mother behind, my mind refused to slow down alongside my body. My thoughts raced from “Jaden’s never going to speak to me again” to “I have to keep my promise to her to investigate Art Keen.” And it was the latter that gave me the next step in my odyssey.

It was around 3:00 p.m. on a weekday. Art Keen was at work.

And I needed a place to lie low where I wouldn’t have half the town staring at me, wondering if I was that criminal they showed on the TV news. At Art’s house, I could kill two birds with one stone. I could maybe — maybe — restore some of Jaden’s trust in me after I got caught by her mother by doing what I promised her I would do. And at the same time, I could be out of the public eye.

I headed in that direction, all the time dreading my call from Jaden when she got out of school.

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