Love Gone Read Online Free PDF Page B

she should
be. Mac was a big man and he’d been in a lot of fights growing up
and as an adult. He was a fisher. He’d been a fisher on some of the
roughest crews in Boston, Maine, and now Alaska. He was a
supervisor on the boats now and that meant breaking up fights and
keeping other men in line, sometimes with his fists. Mac would want
her to protect their son and their unborn baby. He would take care
of them.
    She could hear Mac fighting with that
strange man. She could still hear those gut twisting grunts, and
every time they got a little too close to the door they were hiding
behind she felt her stomach twist a little harder. What was
happening?
    “Liam,” she whispered. He rushed over
to the door where she was crouching, one hand on the door knob. “Go
look out the window. Carefully! See if you can see anyone out
there? A car or anything?”
    He ran over to his window to check
things out. Watching him she prayed that he’d see a neighbor
looking curiously out a window or that one of his friends might
decide to stop by. Anything or anyone that might be able to help
them right now.
    “I can’t see anything mom,” he
reported back, trying to stay as quiet as she’d been. “There’s no
one else out there.”
    She had a decision to make. She could
either tell her son to climb out his window and run to one of the
neighbors for safety, or she could make him hide in his closet or
under his bed while she went out and tried to reach the phone to
call the police.
    She closed her eyes and prayed for
wisdom or a little of the sight Mac boasted about. She didn’t know
what to do. She didn’t know.
    “Run Liam,” she heard herself say,
almost without realizing that she’d spoken out loud. “I need you to
run.”
    “No mom! I’m not leaving you!” Her
brave son left his post at his window and rushed back to her side.
“No fucking way am I leaving you and dad!”
    “Liam,” she shook him with
frustration. “We need your help. We need you to go to one of the
neighbors and call the police. I don’t know what’s happening. I
don’t know who’s out there.”
    “Come with me,” he pleaded like a
little boy. “Please come with me. Don’t stay here. Let dad handle
it.”
    “I can’t baby,” she stroked his cheek
even as her gut twisted with fear again as she heard the inhuman
grunting noise outside the door again, and was that the sound of
Mac gasping in pain?
    “There’s no time Liam,” she urged him.
“Your dad needs our help right now, please go.”
    His blue eyes, so much like his
father’s, stared at her in fear. She pushed at his shoulder, nodded
at him to get going. He tried to act like a man, but he was just a
little boy. She had to get him out of here, if there was a chance
she could get him away from this terror she had to take it. She had
to make him take it.
    Screwing up his courage he slid away
from her. It’s just like a video game he told himself. A video game
with the goal of getting from one level – the house – to the next
level – the neighbors house – and beating the bad guys in the
process. Nothing but a game, he repeated. You can do this man, he
encouraged himself. Silently he slid the window up and worked at
the screws holding the screen in place. C’mon you mother fucker, he
cursed it under his breath, half expecting his mother to hear him
and remind him to watch his language.
    Glancing at her over his shoulder he
could see that she was a long way from caring about his swearing
right now. He could see her with ear pressed against the door, her
hands clinging to the knob, body pushed against the door to stop
anything or anyone from trying to get in. To get at him, he
realized. His mom was prepared to stop anyone from reaching him,
even if it meant that they would have to go through her to get to
him. He couldn’t let her do that. He had to get help.
    He directed his fury at the screen and
the rusty screws stubbornly stopping him from jumping out and
getting help. He pulled