Chapter 2
I came up sputtering, trying to tread water in my running shoes. Instead of helping, Spense stared with open-mouthed wide-eyed astonishment at whatever was going on in the house, heedless to my demands to help me out of the pool. I thrashed around trying to get a view of what had finally gotten Spense’s serious attention.
I’d swallowed about a gallon of pool water and another gallon felt like it was behind my contacts. The ring of floodlights around the pool threw off halos of light that my blurry, blinking vision couldn’t penetrate.
“Spense....SPENSE....SPENSER,” I said, trying to get his attention without shouting since I didn’t know if that would raise an alarm. Spense reached down without taking his eyes off the window. I hiked a leg up, trying to find some foothold on the wet slippery tile.
“What? What’s going on?” I twisted back toward the house, blinking furiously to get the pool water out of my eyes, trying to see what was horrifying Spense.
I had just gotten one good foothold on the edge when Spense let go of my hand with a calculated sounding “Sorry, buddy” and sent me flying back into the pool.
When my head popped up, I didn’t even try to get out of the pool. I struck out for the side closest to the window, dug my hands into my eyes to wipe out as much water as I could and looked up.
Inside the house, two silhouettes bled into one another. A single body with two heads. And I’m not talking about my blurry vision. The two shapes would come together into a single shadow before breaking apart. I couldn’t swear to what they were doing, but somebody was too damned close to my wife. The ponytail shadow arched her back, seeming to look up into the other shadow’s face.
And that’s when the other figure raised something—a hand, maybe a weapon—and struck the ponytail silhouette. Marilyn—I was sure of it now—slumped against the other figure.
She wasn’t getting up.
With some kind of superhuman strength, I made it out of the pool, but Spense held me back.
“Marilyn! I’ve got to go in there.”
“You don’t even know that’s Marilyn, and what are you going to do? That dude might be dangerous!”
“But that’s my wife!”
Spense shook me roughly and pool water went flying off me in sheets. “Do you hear that? Sirens!” In other neighborhoods sirens are ubiquitous, but we were in the Hollywood Hills.
“They're getting closer. Let's go flag down the cops. We don't need a hero, Rick. We need the police!”
I kept struggling, pulling against Spense, digging my heels in, but I’m 150lbs—even when you add the pool water. The rush of adrenaline that had gotten me over the side of the pool wasn’t enough to break me away from Spense. Physics was against me. He started dragging me away, and I should have fought harder against him. But I didn’t. I let him pull me away from Marilyn.