Page 74 of Stay in Your Lane!

“He might just have rosacea.”

“He has a neon Coors Light sign in his front window.”

“Point,” Kyle agreed. “But that doesn’t mean he’s an axe murderer. Most alcoholics aren’t.”

“That whole setup screams ‘little old lady,’ which he definitely isn’t. And there’s an axe on the front porch.” It was missing half of its shaft, but you could still cut a bitch with that.

“Too obvious for a murder weapon, though. Nah. I think he’s a middle-aged guy who drinks because he lives with his mother and can’t stand it but doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

I was going to object to the sheer boringness of this idea when a tiny old woman with bright red hair and gimlet eyes hobbled through the front door and shouted at the man, who’d just started the old Buick in the driveway. “What’s she waving around?” I asked, unable to make out the object in her hand.

“Um, nail clippers, I think.” We both watched in silence as she berated her son—yeah, this was definitely her son—as he drove away, flinging the middle finger at the car before it vanished around the corner.

“Never mind.She’sprobably the axe murderer.”

“Maybe. That’s a shitty way to kill someone, though.”

I grinned at him. “You know this how?”

“I once cleaned up a scene where someone accidentally got themselves in the leg with an ax while they were cutting firewood. It was—” He paused and looked at me sheepishly. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

Did the sun rise in the east? “Tell me everything.” I might be bothered by guns, but I wasn’tsqueamish.

It was so easy to be with Kyle and the cats, I managed to forget for a while that we were hiding away from the world and not on vacation. Getting ready for bed made things strange again, but curling up next to Kyle in bed, even if it had a terrible mattress and smelled musty, was soothing in a way I could hardly ever remember feeling.

I was on the verge of falling asleep when the sudden, sharpbeepof a horn startled me back to fully awake. Why was someone honking their horn in a trailer park this late at night? Not just once, either. That was the prolonged honk of the very angry or very drunk, and it only cut off to be replaced by someone shouting indignantly.

“Mm, stay,” Kyle said muzzily as I slid off the bed.

“I’ll be right back,” I assured him. I needed a glass of water; I could grab it and satisfy my curiosity at the same time. I walked into the kitchen and felt around for the light switch, but didn’t find it. Whatever, I’d drink straight from the tap. I glanced out the window first, unsurprised by the sight of our drunk/axe-murdering neighbor pulled to a stop between our trailers, shouting at a broad-shouldered, vaguely familiar silhouette who held something up to the guy’s window.

The noise cut off, and so did my breathing.

He was displaying a badge. That was a cop.

What was a cop doing here? Had he followed the drunk in after catching him driving like a, well, a drunk idiot on the road? Was he going to arrest him? Ticket him, at least? Or was he going to…

Turn toward our trailer and…

Walk up to the door and…

I darted back into the bedroom as quietly as I could. “Kyle,” I whispered frantically. “Someone’s here.”

Kyle was instantly upright. “Who?”

“I don’t know. It’s a cop, I think, but I haven’t gotten any texts, have you?”

He checked his phone. “No. Not for a few hours. No one’s supposed to be here. Should we?—”

There was the faint rattle of someone trying the front door, which we’d locked. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit?—

“Quiet,” Kyle hissed, and I realized I’d been saying those parts out loud. “We need to get the cats and go!Now!”

“Go how? There’s no back door!”

“The window in the bathroom opens.”

The window in the bathroom…the half-sized, tiny-ass window in the bathroom that looked like it wouldmaybefit a cat carrier through it, much less an adult? I didn’t have a better idea, though.

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