The Vicious by Joely Sue Burkhart

Author:Joely Sue Burkhart [Burkhart, Joely Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joely Sue Burkhart

5

The police officer who’d responded along with the ambulance for the heart-attack customer insisted on escorting me home.

Maybe because I kept staring into space and losing time. He wanted me to go to the hospital to be checked for shock, but I told him I couldn’t afford it. Which was true, but mainly, I didn’t want a doctor asking questions I couldn’t answer.

When exactly did you die, ma’am? When did you notice that you stopped breathing and didn’t have a heartbeat? How many hours passed until you woke up again?

“Here you go.” Officer Coleman pulled his squad car over to the curb and looked up at my dark apartment building. “I’ll walk you in.”

Numb, I waited for him to open the car door for me. This wasn’t the best part of town—that’s why I’d almost been able to afford it. Any other time, I would have been grateful for someone to bring me home after dark. But something nagged at the back of my mind. Insisting that I should be alarmed.

I was just too tired and shell-shocked to remember what it was.

I looked around, checking for the three skull-faced men. Maybe I’d lost them. Could ghosts keep up with a car? But if they were ghosts, wouldn’t they have been stuck in my apartment building, rather than following me to work?

I trudged up the flight of stairs with the officer right behind me. As I stepped off onto the second-floor landing and rounded the corner, it finally hit me like a ton of bricks. I jerked to a halt so quickly that he ran into me with an oomph.

My apartment. The busted door. The blood.

How the fuck was I going to explain that damage to a police officer? Especially when he’d been called to my place of work this afternoon because a patron had dropped dead of a heart attack? Even a medical emergency would start to look suspicious if he saw all the dried blood on the carpet.

Even if it was my own.

“Uh, this is fine,” I said hurriedly, turning to smile at him too brightly. “Thank you for bringing me home.”

Officer Coleman must be good at his job. His eyes narrowed at my sudden eagerness to get rid of him. “I said I’d see you home and inside, safe and sound. This isn’t inside yet, ma’am. So you just go ahead and unlock your door, so I can make sure you’re safe.”

I couldn’t protest without raising his suspicions even more. Stomach churning, I stepped aside and pointed down the hallway. “It’s 2B.”

I’m going to jail. Or at least the mental hospital. He’ll take one look at the broken door and all the blood…

“2B or not 2B, that is the question.” He held his hand out, and I stared at him blankly. “Your key?”

Why would he need the key when the door was busted off its hinges? I dug into my apron pocket, trying to remember where I’d stuck my key. My jeans pocket. Finally I found the lone key and pulled it out.

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