Page 23 of The Auction
We had no fewer than three streaming channels that he paid for. Although I wasn’t sure why he bothered, since he mostly did this exact same thing every night.
Normally, I would kick the couch a few times to startle him awake. Then urge him to go on back to his bedroom, which he always did. Probably because he knew he’d get a better night’s sleep stretched out on his king sized mattress than on the couch that was too small for his big ass body.
It wasn’t all out of the goodness of my heart. Becausethat was something he’d been right about, too. He was capable of significantly more work than Herb had been. Even before Herb got sick.
Tonight, however, I didn’t have the heart to wake him up. He wasn’t dozing, he was full on asleep. If he woke up in the middle of the night, he could take himself to bed, or just roll over on the couch.
His choice.
I dropped a quilt, one I used to pretend my mother handmade before she left, but was pretty sure Herb picked up at a craft fair in town, on top of him and went upstairs to my room.
The first thingI felt when I woke up was a large hand over my face. Covering my mouth and nose so I could barely breathe.
“Shhh,” Creed whispered above me in the dark.
Fuck. Me.
Seriously? He’d waited weeks to kill me? Why now? Why hadn’t he done it the night of Herb’s funeral and put me out of my misery?
Instead, just when I’d started to let my guard down, he attacked.
I clawed at his hands with my nails. That’s when I heard his voice in my ear. The smallest sound, like it was barely air.
“We’re under attack. Follow me.”
He pulled his hand away from my mouth, but shoved it in the collar of the t-shirt I’d worn to bed. He dragged me off the mattress and I barely had a chance to find my feet, before he had me plastered up against his bareback with one arm. My hands had no other place to go than to his shoulders.
His other arm was straight out in front of him with a gun, I didn’t know he owned, in his hand.
As if what he’d said had been true, and we were under some kind of attack, he moved to the doorway of my bedroom in a low crouch and scanned the second floor landing. He turned to look at me and made a gesture with his hand that I had absolutely no fucking clue what it meant.
Was this a joke? Some delayed payback for the taco casserole?
But then he was moving again, down the stairs in this snake like way that was almost fluid. Wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs, so he must have gotten up from the couch at some point to undress. I could see how each muscle in his body was tensed and ready for some type of threat.
Of the two of us, I was the only one making any sound. The creak of my footsteps on the stairs. The harsh breathing behind his back.
He was absolutely silent.
Who the fuck did he think was out there?
We were on a farm in the middle of nowheresville Montana. There hadn’t been a reported burglary in these parts in probably decades, mostly because we all knew each other. So it would be real easy to spot a stolen item if it showed up at one of our neighbors.
Creed just continued to move through each room of the house.
Gun first, us second.
But there was nothing. No light. No sound. No intruder.
“Creed,” I whispered. “Are you-”
He whirled around and made a cut motion over his throat.
Okay. Even I knew what that meant.
Again he bent down low, his hand cupping my ear. “They come for what’s mine and I’ll kill all of them.”
I nodded. Sure. Sounds cool. There was only one problem with that.
