Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [94]
Now she could take a look at the door around the front. She rounded the corner and stopped with icy awareness. Someone had wedged a two-by-four against the door, effectively locking it in place. The board was wedged so tightly that she finally had to kick it out with her foot. She ran inside and grabbed her equipment, tossing her arrows into the quiver. Slinging the bow over her arm with its bag dangling from her hand, she jogged to the truck.
It was Peter, she was sure of it. He’d come back after months of silence. If she’d had any doubts, when she opened her truck door, she saw a pile of neatly sawn arrow pieces stacked in a row on her dash. Rocky felt like the top of her head had opened, and the icy Atlantic water had filled her spine, grabbed her intestines and held them in a frozen fist.
How long had it taken her to get out of the building? Night was closing in, but the sky was clear and she could still easily see the outline of the nearby dock and leafless bushes.
He was bold, and somehow he knew everything. He knew where she was and he knew that she’d gone to Liz’s house in Orono and talked to the carpenter remodeling the house. She should have listened to Hill; Peter was not going to go away without Cooper.
She had spent about thirty minutes getting out of the boathouse. That meant Peter had a thirty minute lead on her. He must think that he had plenty of time to go get Cooper. He had been waiting for the perfect time and he had taken his obsession to the next level. The dangerousness of his actions registered deep in her abdomen.
Thankfully, Cooper was with Tess at her house. Rocky got in the truck and slammed the door. She did not take the time to struggle with the old seat belt. She fishtailed out of the gravel drive and headed to Tess’s house. Once she got there she’d call Isaiah and let him know that Peter was on the island and that he had tried to trap her in the boathouse. He’d never make it off the island; they’d stop him at the ferry.
In five minutes Rocky was in front of Tess’s house where the faded prayer flags snapped in the wind. She jumped out and even before she got to the door, she saw the piece of paper attached to a clip. It said, “Rocky, I’m taking the big guy to your house. Feeling sick, heading to Portland.”
Rocky felt the steady click, click, click of bad-luck dominoes falling over and she desperately needed to stop the fall. If Tess was already gone and had left the dog, then Rocky might be too late.
She got back in the truck and drove the two miles to her house. She passed one teenage boy on a bike, dressed completely in black and she almost hit him. She rolled down the window and shouted, “Get a light!” She passed Melissa’s house and a warm, yellow light spilled from the windows. She wished that the dog warden’s truck had a siren or a flashing light. No, she didn’t want Peter to know that it was her. She pulled the truck as close to the house as she ever had, challenging the recent thaw and fresh mud.
She was out of the truck before it completely stopped. She heard Cooper barking in the house. He was still there, the dominoes could stop falling. But his bark was different. Rocky had only heard him bark like this one other time, with this explosive, split-open-the-sky sound.
“Cooper, Cooper, it’s me,” she said as soon as her feet hit the deck. She pushed open the door. Cooper stopped barking long enough to greet her, but he was clearly alarmed. His black ruff was raised along his back and he turned his head as if he heard a sound on the ocean side of the house. He boiled up a growl that raised the fine hairs on Rocky’s arms.
What was the other sound? Rocky turned, followed the soft noise, and pushed open the bathroom door with the tip of her shoe. Cooper faced the kitchen windows, pulling his lips up, revealing the full danger of his teeth.
Rocky saw the small boots first, the legs folded on the floor, then she saw Tess’s body heaved against the bathtub.
“Tess!”
She put her hand on Tess and the woman immediately