Keeping Caroline. Vickie Taylor
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Название: Keeping Caroline
Автор: Vickie Taylor
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика
Серия: Mills & Boon Vintage Intrigue
isbn: 9781472077240
isbn:
Wondering what was taking Caroline so long, and what he was going to say to her when she returned, he paused at the bottom of the stairs. It was quiet up there.
As it was down here. The keyboard music had stopped.
“Caroline?”
No answer.
“Caroline? Is Jeb up there with you?”
Still no answer. Swearing under his breath, he headed for the dining room. It wasn’t his business. Caroline was the baby-sitter, not him. But he still had to be sure the boy was okay.
Matt found Jeb in the kitchen, with Alf. Blood pounding in his temples and a headache already well entrenched at the base of his skull, Matt swooped across the worn linoleum. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he roared.
Jeb pulled his head out of Alf’s fur, looked up with unseeing eyes. His thin arms clamped tighter around the dog’s neck. Alf thumped his tail and wheezed.
When Jeb didn’t answer, Matt unwound kid from dog. Holding Jeb by the upper arms, he lifted until the boy’s sneakers swung a foot off the floor. “I asked what you were doing.”
Jeb’s dark eyes pinched shut. His mouth gaped and pursed like a fish. But instead of an answer, the boy let out a wail that half the county would probably mistake for the tornado siren.
The hairs on the back of Matt’s neck jumped to attention. He almost dropped the kid in his hurry to save his eardrums.
The sound abated as quickly as it had begun. Jeb crouched on the cold floor, his chest heaving. His eyes rolled wildly.
Matt steadied himself with a breath, waiting for his buzzing nerves and ringing ears to quiet, then brushed his fingers across Jeb’s trembling knee. “Hey, kiddo—”
Hardly a blur he moved so fast, Jeb sprang to his feet, lashed a solid kick into Matt’s knee and squirreled under the table. Against the wall, he curled into a ball, arms locked around his knees and head buried between his elbows, and rocked himself, sobbing silently.
Matt watched him, guilt and self-loathing swelling inside him. Jesus, God, what had he done?
Bare feet slapped across the floor behind Matt. Caroline flung herself into the room in a dead run, grabbing onto the doorjamb to stop her momentum. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
Her gaze fell to the crumpled boy beneath the table. She dropped to her knees next to him. “Oh my God.” She reached out to Jeb. “Hey, little rebel. What is it? What’s wrong?”
Jeb pulled tighter into his little ball.
The fire in Caroline’s eyes scalded Matt. “What happened? What did you do to him?”
Matt tried to move. To help her. But his feet might as well have been stuck in cement. The cement might as well have been sinking in a foul river. He couldn’t breathe, either.
She gave him one heartbeat to answer. Two. Then her lips curled back in a snarl. “Get out.” Fury swam close to the surface in her voice. “Get the hell out. Now!”
He stumbled back a step. Then another. He turned. He could hear Caroline cooing and clucking behind him, childish, nonsense words. The screen door slammed shut behind him as he made it out of the house. Out onto the porch. Into the air.
But he still couldn’t breathe.
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