Little Girl Lost (Georgiana Germaine #1) - Cheryl Bradshaw Page 0,1
she could do something, even though she didn’t know what could be done. She thought about hopping off her bed, running outside, and shouting, “Hey! Stop it! Stop being mean to my daddy!”
But before she could do anything, the man aimed the gun at her father and fired. Her father pressed his hands over his chest. He looked at the blood trickling down his shirt and stumbled backward, collapsing into the pool.
Lark pressed her hands to her lips and screamed.
The man jerked his head back. He saw Lark, and his eyes widened. He tucked the gun beneath his jacket and walked toward her. Lark knew she should back away from the window, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. It had gone numb. The man reached the window, pressed his face against the glass, and tapped a finger against the windowpane.
“Hello there,” he said. “What’s your name?”
Stricken with fear, Lark thought of her mother and what her mother would say if she were there now, watching the events unfold. She closed her eyes and pretended she was somewhere else, somewhere safe, and the sound of her mother’s voice thundered through her mind like a lion’s roar. “Be brave, Lark! RUN!”
I woke to find my pillow saturated with sweat. I pressed my hands against my face, exhaled a long breath of air, and sat up, staring into the darkness. It was empty and black like a bottomless wormhole, and part of me wanted nothing more than to crawl inside and stay forever.
Ever since childhood, my dreams had been a stewed blend of fact and fiction. In college, I’d been given the nickname “psychic priestess” because I had an uncanny way of knowing when something was about to happen before it did. Most nights, my dreams were random and trivial. They didn’t matter. They didn’t mean anything. Other nights, they did, and a veil lifted, allowing me to see things I didn’t always understand or know how to interpret. Tonight’s dream had been more vivid than any I’d had in a long time. A young girl was running barefoot down a sidewalk at night. She brushed past me like I was invisible and kept on going. Based on the girl’s size, she was young, around seven years old, I guessed. Her long straight hair was so blond it was almost white, and several strands were dirty like it hadn’t been washed in days. She also had a quarter-sized tear in the knee of the pajamas she was wearing.
I reached my hand out to the girl when she passed, trying to catch a glimpse of her face, but she changed course, slipping through my fingers. Still, we’d touched for a brief moment, and I absorbed her emotions like they were my own. I felt the fevered rapidness of her heart thumping inside her chest. I felt her staggered breaths. She was scared, but not just scared—terrified.
Of what?
Or whom?
And why was she running?
The girl reached the end of the street and evaporated into the night. Seconds later, another set of footsteps thundered from behind. I glanced over my shoulder and watched a man charge after the girl. I waited for him to pass, and then I followed him. Before I could catch up, my dream was cut short when a gruff male voice called out to me.
“Gigi, you in there?”
My furry protector leapt off the bed and ran to the door, raising the alarm while standing guard. For a moment, I didn’t move. Something about the dream I’d just had disturbed me, and I didn’t know what bothered me more—my unwelcome visitor or the fact a flashlight had switched on outside.
He was out there, checking things out.
I didn’t like it.
“Come on, now,” he said. “Your Jeep’s parked outside. I know you can hear me. It’s colder than a polar bear’s toenails out here. Let me in, all right?”
“Gigi’s still sleeping,” I said. “Come back another time, like a respectable hour maybe.”
“I apologize for disturbing you so early in the morning. You know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”
I did know.
I just didn’t want to care.
When I remained in bed, refusing to get up, he rapped on the door a few times, muttered in frustration, and jiggled the door handle. The door creaked open, and he poked his head in.
Luka took one look at him and went from guard dog to a pile of goo in seconds, jumping up and down until he reached out to pet him.