Only it isn't Spencer on the other side.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Spencer here?" The older gentleman wraps his thick, dark brown trench coat around his body and leans closer, trying to see inside the house.
I instinctively lean back to keep my distance, and so the smell of stale cigars doesn't suffocate me. Frankie growls, then circles once around my feet and stops, sitting directly in front of me, working as a blocker. The old man peers nervously down at her, both his hands clutching the trench coat.
"No."
His eyes slither up and down my body. I cross my arms to cover up my chest, failing to ease the dirty feeling his gaze creates. "You the girl with him when he found the body?"
This damn town and its gossip. "Yeah."
"Tell Spencer to stay out of our business, or you'll both and up like Kevin." He turns, slinking to the side, his boots crunching on the light covering of snow over my walkway.
I step out the door after him, stopping at the end of my front porch. The snow seeps through my socks and freezes my toes. "Who is Kevin? What happened to him?"
He turns back before opening the passenger door of an old-style town car, its windows blacked out with dark tint. "You met Kevin…in his kitchen.”
He doesn't mean Kevin was the dead body, does he? Snow falls off the tree when his door slams, and the black town car peels away.
Hedidmean the dead body.
My bare arms prickle from cold, the fabric of my thin T-shirt not doing anything to keep the freezing air away from my skin. Although, I don't think it's just the temperature that gives me goose bumps. I’m calling Spencer before the door closes. It rings as I twist the deadbolt.
"Miss me already?" he asks playfully.
"Spencer," his name comes out breathlessly, like I finished running a marathon rather than walking the distance from my porch. The way my heart beats against my ribs, it feels the same. "How far away are you?"
"What happened?" His voice deepens, growing an edge normally lacking from Spencer’s speech.
“Spencer," I whisper into the phone, peeking out the curtain to make sure there’s no one in my driveway. I drop the fabric, allowing it to fall loosely.
"Well, what happened?"
"Frankie ate soap."
"Okay.” He doesn’t sound as upset as I expect.
"She threw it up." His lack of reaction opens the floodgates, and everything from the last two days bubbles up. "I found a dead body. I had to talk to the police. We slept together!” We were both under the covers, it counts! “Then Frankie ate my soap. Regina is reporting our relationship to Pearl. Do we even have a relationship? And then some guy knocked on my front door and said I’m going to end up like Kevin.” I suck in a deep breath. “And I think Kevin was the dead guy!”
"Whoa, calm down. It's okay." He uses soothing words like I'm a small child ready to have a breakdown. He might not be far from the truth. "Tell me about the guy."
"Don't you care about Frankie?"
"No, she ate a bar of deodorant when I first brought her home. I called poison control and waited for her to puke it up," he's quick to respond. “I’m sure the soap will be fine.”
“What?”
A vehicle pulls in my driveway and stops close to my front porch, but I’m too scared to check the window.
"Open the door, Joslin."
With Spencer’s reassurance, I release the deadbolt. He and another equally tall male calmly walk into my house—like my life wasn't threatened a few minutes ago. And while on the topic of annoying, does the military only accept tall people? Is there some kind of rule written down somewhere that in order to be in the military, you must be tall and hot? Maybe it’s just SEALS.
Frankie run circles and jumps, her paws hitting Spencer’s friend in the thigh.
"Joslin, this is Sloan. He's on the team."
