Page 47 of Brick

"Yeah, well, I'm not here to have sex with you. You know what? Never mind." She speed-walks to the door, and I have to jump over my bed to get to it before she does.

"No, wait!" I slam my palm against the door, shutting it just as she opens it.

Her entire body is trembling. She thinks I'm going to force myself on her. Never in this lifetime. I take a few steps back and raise my hands so she can see I'm not trying anything.

"Just wait. I'm sorry. It was truly a fucked-up misunderstanding. What do you need? I'm not going to hurt you. I'll even bring other people if it'll make you feel safer. Tell me the reason you came here, and I'll get the work done."

She squints her eyes at me as if she's trying to gauge whether or not I'm being serious.

"Free of charge," I add on. I hope that's not what her plan was the whole time.

She lifts her chin and takes a breath to calm her nerves. "I'm going to open this door."

"Okay, just don't run off. I want to make this right."

She nods and opens the door, giving her a clear line of sight to the exit. Now that she seems a little more at ease, she says, "My lights are off again. I tried to change the fuse like you showed me the last time, but I don't think that's the problem. There aresome wires hanging out. They must have gotten cut somehow." She shrugs and looks down as if she's ashamed.

"Did you cut them?" I ask just to know what I'm working with.

Her bright blue eyes pop back up to mine. "No, of course not. I already told you, my electricity is vital. My son is still on the respirator. He's getting better but not there yet."

I nod my head. "Okay, let's go. I'll get it fixed."

She walks out ahead of me, and I drop my head back to stare at the ceiling. Please don't let this woman call the cops on me.

Grabbing my portable toolkit, I follow the woman back to her place. Thankfully, she's only two blocks away from the shop, so I don't need to drive. I watch as she rushes around to the side and waves through the window. When I go to see who she's waving at, I notice a little boy, maybe about seven or eight years old, lying in his bed, playing on his old-fashioned Game Boy. It definitely looks like a knockoff version, but he seems to be content. I look down and see there's a tube connected to his throat, and the tube is connected to a large medical device that is flashing red. The internal battery is dying.

She wasn't playing. This is an emergency.

I already know where the electrical panel is. I've been here several times before. She follows me around the house, and sure enough, sticking out from under the panel are wires that are cut. I examine the wrappings to see if it was some sort of animal that did this, but the cut is clean. This was done with a knife.

Dread coils in my gut as I look down at the ground and notice three cigarette butts snubbed out in the dirt. It looks fresh.

"You smoke?" I ask, my voice quiet. Deadly.

"No, of course not. Tyler wouldn't be able to tolerate that." She furrows her eyes at me like I just asked her the most asinine question.

It doesn't take long for me to add two plus two.

Her lights have been cut through by a knife, and there are cigarettes lining her property.

Someone was watching her. Someone did this on purpose.

It seems like I was right all along. This definitely wasn't an accident.

Someone is trying to terrorize this woman and her son.

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