was almost home, just turning onto her street, so she just waited until she was in her driveway and parked to get the doggy saliva out of her ear.
“Thanks a lot, Fred,” she muttered, shuddering as she dried her ear then reached for her purse. She got out, let Fred out, not bothering with the leash since he was sure to be focused on dinner and not on any rogue squirrels who might be lurking. He barked, and she kept muttering, grabbing a grocery bag with some prepacked salad and store-bought chocolate cake, “Hold your horses, bud. I’ll be right . . . there?”
Finishing on a question came from the fact that the front door was open, and Fred had let himself inside.
She smiled, hurrying to the porch, thinking that Ben had beaten her here, and since she’d given him a key a couple of weeks before, he’d let himself in, too. Fred was probably excited to see him, and—
Another bark.
This one deeper. Not a friendly one.
Her eyes flicked to the driveway, to the street, across it, realizing that she didn’t see Ben’s car anywhere.
Fred barked again and then she heard a sharp, “Shut up!”
And then . . . a yelp.
She ran inside.
As stupid as it was, she ran inside her house. Because Fred had yelped, and she couldn’t leave him to be hurt and . . .
She dropped her purse on the entryway floor when she saw who was there.
Jeremy. Rifling through the drawers in her kitchen.
Fred had backed himself into the corner, his teeth bared, and he seemed to be favoring one leg awkwardly.
And Stef saw red.
“What in the absolute fuck are you doing here?”
Jeremy stopped, turned to face her. “Where is it?”
She stifled a sigh. Were they really on this merry-go-round again?
“How did you get into my house?” she asked, carefully moving so that she put herself between Jeremy and Fred.
“Where is it?!” Jeremy screamed.
He looked unhinged, dark circles beneath his eyes, his cheekbones sharply pushing against pale, clammy skin, the stubble on his jaw patchy and overgrown.
Fear clamped a heavy hand on her shoulder.
He might hurt her, she suddenly realized. He might actually be capable of physically hurting her.
She’d never seriously considered that possibility before.
The truth had her pulse speeding until it was a rapid drum against her veins, her vision hazed and narrowed to the man who returned to searching through drawers, yanking one open and then the next, rifling through them, dropping the contents on the floor. She reached in her pocket for her cell, unlocked it as she asked, “Where is what, Jeremy?”
Another drawer’s contents hit the floor, this one with silverware. It clattered deafeningly, forks and knives and spoons scattering in all directions. “You know,” he muttered, moving to the next, dumping her towels out of it and yanking another open, nearly ripping it from its slides. “You damn well know.”
Something snapped inside her. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”
It was a mistake, that.
She’d snagged her phone, but hadn’t unlocked it, hadn’t dialed 9-1-1, or just grabbed Fred and got out. Then she’d yelled, loud enough to gain Jeremy’s unhinged focus.
His deadly focus, if the gleam in his eyes was any indication.
He moved toward her, kicking his way across her belongings—a spatula going one way, several forks another, her turkey baster bouncing off the toe kick of the cabinets and skittering across the floor.
And he didn’t stop moving, not even as he closed the distance between them, as Fred growled, as he grabbed her arm, yanked her to the side, and pinned her against the wall so quickly that her ankle exploded with pain. “Where.” His fingers dug in hard enough to make her cry out in pain, her hand spasming, and her cell phone falling to the floor. “Is it?”
“I don’t know—”
She didn’t finish the rest of the statement because as suddenly as he’d cornered her, he was gone.
Just ripped away like the wind stealing a hat on a gusty day.
Ben gripped Jeremy by the throat, his face in a rage that was far scarier than Jeremy’s, something that any sane person would see.
But Jeremy wasn’t in his right mind.
He was gone to the anger, struggling against Ben’s hold, even as Ben leveled a left hook at his face.
The sound was . . . gross. A crunching noise, blood immediately bursting from Jeremy’s nose. It dripped down his chin, stained the front of his shirt, then more blood as Ben wound up and punched him again.
And again.
And again.
Until