Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [30]
And what in the world was she doing standing in her doorway ogling a complete stranger when she needed to be… what, not paying bills?
Before she made an even bigger idiot of herself, she started to close the door, and then she blinked. Jeff had disappeared. She hadn’t seen a car, and she hadn’t even considered that he might be walking back to town, and now he was… gone.
Chalk it up to all the other weirdness.
Yeah, good plan, except that Jeff had accounted for almost everything. The dog, the grass stains, the blood.
But that didn’t explain why she’d drunk so much vodka that she couldn’t remember any of it. Or why they’d both dreamed the same thing.
Or what she’d done with the body of the dog—it had to have died, or she would have put it in one of the kennels next to the house, and they were empty.
At least the feeling that someone was watching her was no longer with her, but Cara still felt the unwelcome buzz of fear slithering over her skin. Something had happened last night to make her drink, but what? She’d never defaulted to the bottle, and if her father’s death and the night of the break-in hadn’t done it, nothing would.
She did her best to not think too hard about either the mystery of last night or Jeff and his incredible body as she cleaned her office. When she finished, she sank bonelessly to the couch, where the television was blaring the same old, same old. Mysterious diseases were cropping up like wildfires, water in at least four rivers and three lakes had become polluted with poisonous organisms, and six countries had declared war on each other, completely out of the blue. The United States government was trying to decide how involved it wanted to get, and the military was gearing up for possible deployment.
The world was going to hell in a handbasket, as her dad would have said, even as he packed his bags in preparation to move out with animal rescue groups to war-torn areas.
Slamming her hand down on the remote with more force than was necessary, she shut off the TV. She used to love the idiot box, had bought a top-of-the-line Sony theater system back when she still had money. And ambition. Almost everything in the house, in fact, was “the best.” Her drive to succeed and never settle had been a source of pride for her.
But all of that had died two years ago, along with the intruder.
Numbly, she plodded to her bedroom, where she curled up on her bed. The moment her head hit the pillow, sleep took her.
Help me!
“Hal!”
Cara shook her head. Rubbed her eyes. Wondered if she should be as aware as she was that this was a dream. Once more, she was floating around the dark basement with the caged dog, but this time, everything was more familiar. She even knew the pup’s name was Hal. Short for Halitosis.
Find me.
And again, the animal seemed to be one bark short of a dog. “I’ve found you.”
Hal’s red eyes glowed brighter, and his hackles snapped up. He looked like some prehistoric monster ready to tear right through the fabric of reality and destroy everything in his path. Go.
“I just got here—”
She broke off, dazzled by a bright light and the sudden appearance of a familiar blond man. When he saw her, his eyes went wide, and he lunged. His hand brushed her arm as she twisted away.
Go! If he catches you, you will be trapped here without your body. Go through the ceiling!
Without her body? Okay, that didn’t sound good. The world blurred and her body seemed to break apart as she shot upward and passed through stone, cement, and wood, and then suddenly, she was outside in the blinding light of day, and the house she’d just come out of was behind her.
Where was she?
She had to leap out of the way of a vehicle… a vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road. It had an odd license plate… She floated a little farther down the road to a sign that said Newland Park Drive, which told her nothing.
She continued along the sidewalk,