I’m not sure how long I had been sitting there staring at the photograph. To be perfectly honest, it could have been a minute, or it could have been five. My perception of time was so far off kilter that I probably wouldn’t have known the difference between the two even if I had been watching the clock instead of the picture.
However, when my epiphany finally forced my reticent gaze to loosen its grip on me, I slowly turned back to the canine using my lap as a pillow and looked into his eyes again.
I shook my head and muttered to him, “Dammit…What the hell am I doing here? Watch the house. I’ve got to go.”
I had already shrugged into my coat and tapped in the code to set the house alarm when the phone began to ring.
CHAPTER 8:
“Hello?” I barked into the phone, stretching the handset’s cord almost to its breaking point while I spoke.
The warble of the alarm system’s countdown tone was speeding up as it approached its armed state. I knew if I let it get that far I’d end up setting off a motion detector, and then I’d have cops crawling all over my house yet again. Extending as far as I could I leaned across the chair and quickly stabbed in the master code then punched the off button, sending the raucous electronic beeping into silence.
Unfortunately, as annoying as the tone was, I would have preferred it to what I heard coming back at me across the phone line.
“You bastard!” An angry, heavily accented voice struck my ear with the insult. “What have you done?!”
This was absolutely the last thing I needed at the moment, but I couldn’t say that I hadn’t been expecting it all along. I just wished that I’d checked the caller ID before snatching up the handset with such haste because now I was committed to the call even though this definitely wasn’t the time for it.
My father-in-law Shamus O’Brien had never made a secret of his dislike for me. Ostensibly it was due to my religious beliefs, and given his tirades, I had no reason to doubt they truly were the cause. In fact, he had stated on more than one occasion that he was firmly convinced that it was I who had corrupted his only daughter. The fact that she was already following a Pagan path long before I met her didn’t seem to have any bearing on his conviction either.