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Chapter Eleven: Suspicion
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Before He Wakes Chapter Twelve: Getting Through the Door
CHAPTER TWELVE:Getting Through the DoorClare stood againstthe back wall, fingers plugging her ears, as Patrick used the already dented bucket to beat on the doorknob, denting the bucket even further. A dull, hollow gong! reverberated in the air with every strike.The sound also seemed to reverberate in her bones, making her feel as if her skeletal frame was going to simply break apart and she’d collapse onto the floor, a collection of ivory shards in a loose sack of skin.Of course, she realized this was only the fear talking. Fear that Big Daddy would return and discover what had been done, the hole in the plaster wall and the damaged doorknob, and he would make them suffer for their insolence and disobedience. She realized they’d really gone too far to turn back at this point. They couldn’t repair the hole in the wall. Their best course of action was to continue forward and try to get out of this cell before Big Daddy got back.Be brave, Clare, she told herself. No givin
Before He Wakes Chapter Thirteen: Dinner Time
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:Dinner TimePatrick stood withhis back against the door, watching as Clare bent over, weeping hysterically. What are we going to do now?she’d asked, but he had no response to that one. He could feel the vibrations in the wood as the Doberman launched itself at the door as if trying to use its head as a battering ram, much as Patrick had used the two-by-four as one on the cell door.The two-by-four!He dashed down the stairs, moving so suddenly and quickly that it startled a gasp out of Clare. At the bottom of the stairs, he snatched up the beam from where it had fallen once punching its way through the hole where the doorknob had once been. He held it near one end and gave it a few test swings, as if it were a baseball bat. The thing was lighter than he would have liked, lacking substantial heft, but it did have the wicked nails sticking out of either end.“What do you plan to do with that?” Clare asked. She’d come down the stairs and taken a seat on
Before He Wakes Chapter Fourteen: Confrontation
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:ConfrontationRobert had justleft Manly Hall a little after 8 a.m. when his cell phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he recognized Mrs. Young’s number.He answered immediately and said with desperate hope, “Any news?”Silence from the other end then a sigh. “I guess that answers my question. I was calling to see if you had heard anything from Patrick.”“No, ma’am,” Robert said, feeling near tears again. He’d been in a constant state of crying or just-about-to-cry for the past couple of days, leaving him feeling perpetually exhausted and dehydrated. “So I guess that means the police haven’t come up with anything new?”“No. Well, actually yes, but nothing that helps us. Nothing that tells us anything we didn’t already know.”Robert meandered aimlessly past the library, heading toward the front of campus with no particular destination in mind, his feet moving on autopilot. “What do you mean?”“They located a woman who was walking at the lake Sunday morning,
Before He Wakes Chapter Fifteen: Venturing Out
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:Venturing OutPatrick awoke suddenly, his head snapping up. There was no moment of blissful disorientation when he thought he was in his bed in the dorm, his biggest worry being that he might be late for class. He knew instantly where he was and how dire his circumstances were.Clare slept next to him, her head still on his shoulder. His entire body felt like one big cramp, though the worst of the stiffness and pain resided in his neck and lower back. He gently pushed the girl to the side so that she slumped against door, her chin touching her chest. He rose slowly, his muscles feeling atrophied, as if he’d been immobile in a coma for months or years, his joints creaking like rusty hinges. His left arm was partially numb, beginning to buzz with the pinprick sensation as blood returned to the limb. He turned his head far to one side then the other, trying to work out the soreness. His spine felt compacted, an accordion that had been squeezed in. He walked down two st
Before He Wakes Chapter Sixteen: Linda’s Abduction
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:Linda’s AbductionWhen Linda Childers heard the dingof the microwave, she carefully placed a bookmark in the Ruth Ware paperback she was reading and got up from the cushy recliner, leaving the book on the end table. In the kitchen she took her Banquet meal out of the microwave, sitting it on the counter to cool for a few minutes, while she made herself a cup of herbal tea. She placed the meal and her teacup on a tray and carried it all back to the living room. Settling on the sofa, she placed the tray on the coffee table in front of her. She turned on the television and found a rerun of Murder She Wrote and began to have supper.This was a nightly ritual, though aspects of it changed. Sometimes her frozen meal was lasagna, other times macaroni and cheese, still other times beef stroganoff. The television program varied, depending on what was on, but it was typically some rerun, since she didn’t find most modern shows appealing. If not Murder She Wrote, then To
Before He Wakes Chapter Seventeen: Mommy Dearest
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:Mommy Dearest“I think I know her,” Patrick said.Clare glanced back at him. “Really? You do?”“Not personally or anything, but she looks so familiar. I think I remember seeing news stories about her disappearance.”Turning her gaze to the woman once again, she scanned her features to see if they sparked any memory, but there was nothing. Not surprising. Clare didn’t pay much attention to the news, local or global, and that had become even truer since she started dating Hank. She could admit that she had turned into one of those girls who thought of nothing but her relationship, doodling hearts with arrows through them and writing her first name with his last name. Silly high school stuff from a girl who claimed not to believe in fairytales but still expected her life to turn out like one.Even after she’d been abducted, such fantasies persisted. After all, most fairytales had a dark period before the happily ever after. Cinderella had to flee the ball, Snow Wh
Before He Wakes Chapter Eighteen: Ashes to Ashes
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:Ashes to AshesSue Barrett layin bed, resting on her left side with her back to her husband. Her body was balanced precariously on the very edge of the mattress, on the verge of toppling onto the floor. Behind her she could hear her husband snoring softly, had been listening to the sound for hours. According to the clock, it was nearing 9 a.m., which meant they’d been in bed almost four hours, and she’d been awake the entire time, watching as the darkness gradually gave way to a grainy light through the windows.Listening to Phil’s snores.She found herself baffled that he could sleep, baffled and angry that he could find escape in slumber so easily after everything. She simply couldn’t shut her mind off, thoughts churning and twisting like laundry in a dryer. Any time she closed her eyes, she saw a blaze reflected on the backs of her lids and adrenaline pumped into her system, taking sleep even further out of her reach. She groped for it, and it would shrin
Before He Wakes Chapter Nineteen: The Attic
CHAPTER NINETEEN:The Attic“I killed her,”Patrick said again, dropping to his knees. Distantly, he heard Clare saying his name, but it was small and tinny, as if coming through a radio with a bad connection. Or as if he were at the bottom of a deep well and she were calling down to him from the top.All he could think about at the moment was the fact that in a matter of a few hours, he had killed first a dog then graduated to killing another human being. Acts of which he would have thought himself incapable of a mere week ago.While Patrick didn’t go so far as to actually call himself a practicing Buddhist, he did have great respect for their philosophies and had spent some time visiting with a Buddhist monk at the Cambodian wat in Wellford. One of the things that resonated the most with Patrick was the Buddhist belief that all life was precious. Not just human life, but all life. Buddhists tended to be vegetarians and didn’t wear leather, but it went even deeper than that.
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- Before He Wakes Chapter Two
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- Before He Wakes Chapter Twenty-Four: Putting Sis to Bed
- Before He Wakes Chapter Twenty-Three: Daddy’s Home
- Before He Wakes Chapter Twenty-Two: Through the Woods
- Before He Wakes Chapter Twenty-One: Going Down
- Before He Wakes Chapter Twenty: Rise and Shine
- Before He Wakes Chapter Nineteen: The Attic
