Chapter 5 - He RanI almost laughed.
Not because it was funny. Because it was so stupid my body didn’t know what else to do with it.
One second he was in front of register twelve in loafers and a polo shirt trying to act important. The next he was shoving past a display of discounted chips and sprinting toward the grocery doors with two security guys cursing behind him.
People scattered with their carts.
One little kid yelled, “Mom, that man is running.”
No kidding, kid.
Wyatt was on his feet fast for a big man. He looked at the security guards, then at me, and made the right choice. He stayed.
“Lock the exits,” he barked toward the service desk. “Police are en route.”
David made it almost to produce before two off-duty guys in line near the self-checkout decided they’d had enough. I learned later one was a lineman for Oncor and the other coached JV football. At the time all I saw was bodies colliding by a pyramid of avocados.
The avocados lost.
Green everywhere.
David hit the tile shoulder-first, one of the men on top of him, the other wrestling his arms behind his back while shoppers backed up and filmed.
I heard somebody say, “He just assaulted a pregnant woman.”
And then the air changed.
You could feel it.
People who’d been frozen before weren’t frozen anymore. A man in a work vest started telling security exactly what he’d seen. The old woman next to me pointed a rigid finger and announced, to no one and everyone, “That bastard pushed her.”
Denise leaned closer to my stomach, concentrating. “Rachel, has the baby moved since we started talking?”
I went cold all over.
“I don’t think so.”
She pressed her lips together. “Okay. We’re not waiting on anything now.”
“I thought we already weren’t.”
May you like
“I mean mentally,” she said.
Fair enough.
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