The sight was
jarring. Her tire was shredded, the split in the rubber the work of a sharp
blade. She quickly looked up and scanned the area. Nothing was out of the
ordinary. Here and there others in town wandered down the sidewalks and perused
the shops on Main Street, all of them unsuspecting and indifferent. Nobody had
a clue that her tire had been slashed.
Walking around
to the other three corners of her Jeep, she saw the rest were too. Somebody had
intentionally sought out her Jeep and destroyed her tires. Her brain rejected
that reality, swimming in a shock that left her speechless. For the life of
her, she couldn’t rationalize why. None of it made sense. She was a
visitor in Lutton, temporarily in town for the summer. Who the hell would do
something like this?
Samara must’ve
looked like a frazzled mess standing there beside her Jeep. Several passersby
slowed up and stared. A few stopped and asked if she needed help. Her shock
hadn’t worn off so she ignored them all, blinking with a lump in her throat at
the damage done. It was difficult for her to tell how much time had passed
before the last person she wanted to hear spoke to her.
“Who did this?”
Chase asked from behind. He had exited the grocery store to discover her on the
sidewalk. He walked up with tentative footsteps, keeping a distance between
them. “Somebody slashed your tires.”
Her earlier
temper rushed in like water bursting through a dam. “No shit! Just go, okay? I
don’t need your—”
“You were in the
store for a few minutes,” Chase interrupted in his low drawl. He dropped his
own groceries on the cement and strode forward to kneel beside a shredded tire.
“That means one thing.”
“What? What does
it mean?” She had no patience, snapping without care or thought.
Chase ran a hand
over the deep puncture marks. “It means somebody was watching you.”
No comments:
Post a Comment