Hobbled (22 page)

At the first window, Luke stared down at glimmering sparks of moonlight reflected off the water in the swimming pool. The outside lights were still off. The underwater lights too. The yard was pitch-black, the pool an empty black rectangle. No moving shadows passed across it. Just those tiny patches of reflected light, like shards of glass, glittering on the surface of the water. The neighborhood beyond Danny’s yard looked peaceful and still. There was no traffic on the street. Luke thought he must be the only person awake for blocks around.

He could not have been more wrong.

At the second window, Luke looked out at the opposite view of the city. Rooftops, chimneys, palm trees outlined against the star-spattered sky. A tiny red light blinked atop a tall antenna miles away, barely discernible in the nighttime haze. Closer in, there were porch lights burning here and there. Luke smelled wood smoke. Could someone really have set a fire in their fireplace in this god-awful summer heat? Maybe for romantic purposes? Luke smiled at the thought. He turned and looked at Danny, still splayed out sound asleep on the bed behind him. His bare skin shone like ivory in the moonlight coming through the window. Luke closed his eyes for the briefest of moments and remembered the taste of that skin against his tongue. His dick shifted at the memory. He stared at Danny for the longest time, then forced himself to turn away and let Danny sleep.

Reluctant now, since he had other things on his mind, sex being the most pressing, Luke moved to the third and last window in Danny’s bedroom. Holding the curtain aside with his hand, he looked out at the house he and his dad now called home. The house was shadowy and angular and looked kind of creepy sitting there all hunched over in the darkness without a light burning anywhere. Luke supposed he should have left a porch light on at least, but it was too late to worry about that now. He could see his own bedroom window across the way. The curtains were open and he could just make out the corner of his bed, the white bedspread catching the moonlight coming through the window.

As he stared at it, a shadow passed in front of his bed. Just—the smallest of shadows. Had a bird flown between the window and the moon? An owl, maybe?

Since Danny’s window was wide open, Luke leaned out on the sill, wishing he had a pair of binoculars. Then he remembered Danny spying on him from this very window just days before.
And Danny had been watching Luke through a pair of binoculars.

Luke turned from the window and squinted around the room, trying to find the binoculars Danny had used. He looked down at his feet, and damned if they weren’t there. On the floor. Right beneath the window.

Luke scooped them up, stuck his head outside as he leaned across the sill, and adjusted the lenses until his bedroom window came into focus.

The shadow inside his room was still moving. And it was a
human
shadow! Luke could see it standing farther from the window now. Farther from the bed. It looked like whoever it was, was going through his dresser drawers.

Holy shit! It was a burglar! He must have left a door unlocked!

He had to call 911! Luke grabbed for his phone, which was conveniently right in front of him, perched on the windowsill like a potted plant. Then he remembered the severed finger. Luke had promised Danny he wouldn’t call the cops about
that,
so he supposed he damn well shouldn’t call the cops about
this.
Granted, the burglar was in the house next door to Danny’s, but the cops would ask questions: “Where were you at the time of the break-in? Why weren’t you home at this late hour? How did you see the intruder in your bedroom when you say you weren’t even in the house?”

All those questions would lead the cops right to Danny. And once they got to Danny, they would realize Danny’s father was nowhere around. And that would spell trouble. Trouble even for Luke, since he would be the one who got his lover’s dad in dutch with the cops. The last thing he wanted to do was piss off Danny. Jesus! He wanted to
marry
Danny, not piss him off.

So what was he supposed to do? Just let the burglar burgle around and take whatever the hell he wanted. Uh-uh. That wasn’t about to happen.

Luke shuffled around the room in the dark, grabbing his shorts off the floor. He snagged a baseball bat standing in the corner which, unbeknownst to him, was left over from Danny’s thirteenth summer visiting his dad. That was the summer Danny had taken a shot at joining Little League. He was so skinny and gangly that summer, he was next to worthless on the ball field. The only thing Danny could really accomplish with any sense of continuity was falling down. He fell down a lot. So he gave up on baseball after two games. But he kept the bat. It had been standing untouched in the corner of his bedroom ever since. Until tonight, when Luke grabbed it like a knight grabbing his trusty mace.

Luke stood there in the darkness for a few seconds, hefting the bat, gauging its weight. It felt good and solid in his hands. Should dent a burglar’s skull quite handily, thank you very much. If Luke didn’t chicken out. Or if the fucker didn’t have a gun.

That
thought stopped him. But not for long. He had to do
something.
He had money in one of those dresser drawers.

Bat in hand, Luke turned to wake Danny and tell him where he was going. He quickly realized that was a really bad idea. Danny would insist on going with him. And that would set off his ankle monitor. Or he would insist that, rather than put himself in harm’s way, Luke should call the cops and forget about what Danny’s dad had said about not getting the police over here. That would get his dad in trouble.

Luke stood there beside the bed looking down at Danny’s gorgeous naked body laid out beneath him. The guy was still softly snoring. Apparently, he could sleep through anything.

Luke chewed his lip, deciding what to do.

When, behind him, Granger put his front paws on the open windowsill and softly growled at the intruder across the way, Luke knew he had to act. And he had to act alone.

He kissed his fingertip and gently pressed the kiss to Danny’s forehead. Danny didn’t stir.

“Come on, boy,” Luke whispered, clutching the bat, the very weight of it giving him courage.

Granger perked up his ears and followed Luke through the bedroom door.

Shit just got real,
Luke thought, as he stepped out into the moonlit night with Granger at his heels.
Shit just got really, really real.

He had no idea how real it was about to get.

A
S
QUIETLY
as he could, Luke stuck the key in the back door and eased his way across the threshold. He had the oddest impression
he
was the intruder in this strange, dark house. After all, he had only spent one or two nights here before he found Danny and started sleeping over there. This house was barely broken in. Luke didn’t feel like he was stepping into his own home at all. Actually, it felt like he had stumbled through a doorway into a place he had never been before in his life. But that wasn’t true. In the shadowy kitchen, barely lit by the distant light of the streetlamp half a block away, he could see the mess he had made there just that afternoon. Kitchen crap everywhere. Boxes scattered to hell and back. Kitchen chairs piled on the kitchen table just to get them out of the way while he unpacked box after box after box of junk he and his dad didn’t really need but had dragged halfway across the country with them anyway.

The house was dead silent, but for his own heartbeat pounding inside his head. It was beating so hard, it sounded like the thumper they used in the movie
Dune
to attract the worms.
Thump thump thump thump.
Spooky. His own heartbeat was giving him the heebie-jeebies. What the hell was that about? And then there were Granger’s toenails clackety-clacking across the tile floor. That was spooky too.

Hell, the whole fucking house was spooky.

Luke stood stark still, head tipped to the side, and just listened, trying to catch a sound from the intruder upstairs. He must still be up there. Luke didn’t think the guy could have left without him knowing, although he supposed it was possible. Going barefoot, Luke’s footsteps were silent. And he didn’t think the burglar could hear his heartbeat. It wasn’t pounding
that
loud. He crossed the kitchen like a drifting shadow and stepped through the dining room door.

This part of the house was even darker than the kitchen. Bushes outside the windows blocked the streetlight off in the distance completely. And the moon was straight up in the sky now, ducking in and out of a passing bank of clouds, so it wasn’t much help either.

Luke’s house had a banistered staircase, not unlike Danny’s. Thank God, this part of the house was carpeted so Granger’s toenails were silenced.

Luke took a firmer grip on the baseball bat with his right hand. With his other hand, he grasped the newel post and cast his eyes toward the well of shadows leading up to the second floor. If this was a horror movie, it would be at this point right here when Luke would scream from the back row, “Don’t go up there, asshole!” And then he would watch as the idiot on the screen went up there anyway.

Just like he was doing. Boy, people never learn.

Luke took it slow. One step at a time. Granger wasn’t being much help, lurking at Luke’s back the way he was doing, the chicken. Next time Luke got a dog, he’d get something butch. Like a Rottweiler. Or a pit bull. Something with balls and an attitude. Well, maybe he wouldn’t. He sort of liked Granger the way he was, even if he wasn’t the bravest thing on four legs.

Luke heard a sound that stopped him cold. Just the tiniest sound. Metallic. Then he placed it. It was the rattle of a venetian blind and it was coming from
behind him.
Downstairs! With his heart doing a real tap dance now, Luke turned on the stair. He was about halfway up. Granger was two steps below him. Granger didn’t seem to have heard the sound at all since he was still looking up instead of back the way they had come.

Now Luke didn’t know what to think. Had he heard a sound or not? Should he go back down, or keep going up? Before he could decide, he heard another sound. It was the sound of a floorboard creaking. Just one little creak. Like a hesitant footfall. And this time it was definitely above him.

Oh, man.

Luke wiped a dribble of sweat off his forehead, straightened his glasses, regripped the baseball bat, and kept climbing up. Granger followed along behind him, occasionally bumping the back of Luke’s bare leg with his ice-cold nose and making Luke jump every time he did it.

With one more step to go, Luke suddenly felt the air and light change around him. A sound like thunder rumbled toward him. Footsteps. Pounding footsteps. They were headed right for him!

Granger started barking. It startled Luke so badly he almost fainted.

Luke raised the bat in front of his face to ward off whatever was coming at him. He felt Granger rush between his legs with a growl, then a pair of hands came out of the shadows and gave Luke a shove. Luke windmilled his arms for a second, teetering, trying to regain his balance, but he didn’t manage it very well. The next thing he knew, he was falling backward down the stairs,
sailing
actually, and he was hitting every single step along the way. With his head. With his ass. With his elbow. The bat went flying out of his hands and clattered across the floor below. Luke had just enough presence of mind as he tumbled down the stairs to tear his glasses from his face and clutch them in his fist to protect them.

He hit the foyer floor with a
whump
that knocked every whiff of air out of his lungs. He lay there for a second, taking stock. Flexing his fingers. Wiggling his toes. Nothing seemed to be broken. “Ouch,” he whispered, not because he was hurting so much, but more because he just wanted to see if he could still talk. That way he’d know he was alive.

He was just about to pull himself to his feet when the thundering footsteps returned. A tall shadow came flying down the staircase right at him once again. And once again, Luke crossed his arms in front of his face to ward off the danger. A pair of long legs sailed over him where he lay all crumpled up on the bottom step. A second later, another shadow sailed over him. A smaller shadow. It was Granger. He was really barking up a storm now. Snapping, snarling, growling. Acting all protective and gutsy now that the bad guy was on the run.

In the distance, Luke heard a door bang against the wall, and footsteps clattered down the back steps. Granger’s bark grew more distant, then it stopped altogether.

“Fuck,” Luke murmured, dragging himself to his feet. He slipped his glasses back on and immediately took them off again and wiped them on his T-shirt. They were smudged from having been held in his sweaty hands while he cartwheeled backward down the stupid stairs.

Standing, Luke took stock of his injuries. There weren’t many. His elbow was skinned, as was his knee. He had a kink in his neck where he’d landed on his head at some point as he tumbled down the stairs. And his ear hurt like a mother. When he touched it, it felt wet. Blood. Must have taken some skin off there too.

It took Luke a minute to realize that maybe he really wasn’t out of danger after all. The guy could come back. Or there could be someone else inside the house. He squinted through the shadows until he located the baseball bat. He scooped it off the floor with a groan, and hearing a new sound directly behind him, he whirled around with a good tight grip on the bat, holding it at eleven o’clock, ready for bear, when he saw it was only Granger grinning up at him.

“Well, shit, boy,” Luke said. “Scare me to death, why don’t you?”

He squatted to take Granger’s head between his hands and listened to the darkness around him, not sure what to expect. Judging by Granger’s attitude, the danger was gone. But Granger wasn’t exactly combat-ready, so Luke thought he’d do better to trust his own instincts rather than the dog’s.