LITMIR.BIZ

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had been bare then, too, except for her hose. And she hadn’t turned on the overhead light.

      What if the snake had been in here, rather than in the hamper? What if she’d stepped on it in the darkness? Even as she looked for something to reinforce her makeshift barricade, she shivered at the thought.

      And then she froze at the next one. Her rational mind had, in the last few minutes, given way to the far more primitive part of her brain, the one that viewed the creature in her bathroom with the same primordial fear her ancestors had.

      Admittedly, this was snake country. One Alabama city held a rattlesnake roundup each year, capturing hundreds from among the scrub. It was certainly not unheard of for snakes to get inside a house. But inside a closed hamper?

      There could be only one explanation for that. One she didn’t want to think about.

      Someone had put the rattlesnake inside that basket, where, angered by the confinement, it had waited until she’d come into the bathroom. Highly sensitive to the body heat of prey, it had been coiling to strike even while she’d hesitated, her hand on the lid of the hamper, trying to identify what she smelled.

      And she’d been right about that, too. It had been something far more alien than a burned-out fluorescent bulb.

      In spite of not wanting to take the next step in this chain of logic, its conclusion was already inside her head, impossible to deny. If someone had put a snake in her laundry hamper, then it was possible the one she had trapped in the bathroom wasn’t the only rattler inside her house.

      As her terrified gaze swept the cream-colored carpet surrounding her, she knew that if there were others they’d be hidden, as the first had been.

      In the drawer she’d taken her nightgown from? In the closet where she’d hung up her clothes and put her shoes? Or somewhere she would never think to look until it was too late?

      She had to get out of here until somebody could conduct a thorough search of the entire place. Somebody…

      Who the hell did you get to search your house for snakes? Whoever it would be, she owed it to them to complete the containment of the one whose location she did know.

      Hurrying as much as her growing paranoia would allow, she began to take books off her bookshelf, expecting another triangular-shaped head to dart out of the space left by each one she removed. Then, arms full of the heaviest volumes the shelf had contained, she returned to the bathroom door and laid them end-to-end on top of the comforter.

      With the placement of the last book, she stepped back to check once more for any light seeping underneath the door. It would have been easier to do that with the hall fixture turned off, as it had been before, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw the switch.

      When she was satisfied with the barrier she’d constructed, the need to get out of the house was irresistible. Her cell was in her purse, which she’d left on the front hall table. She’d go out that way, picking it up as she went through the foyer.

      She turned on lights in front of her as she ran, eyes again searching her path. She grabbed her bag off the table, slinging the strap over her shoulder to free her hands so she could deal with the locks.

      Only when the door was open, and the heavy heat of the September night rushed into the coolness of the house’s interior, did she think about the danger of stepping out into the darkness barefoot. It wasn’t that she hadn’t done that before—to get the weekend paper or to cut off the sprinkler. But all that had been before she’d had a firsthand experience with something whose deadliness she’d recognized—and taken for granted—all her life.

      She put on the porch lights as well as the spotlights on the corners of the house. And then she stepped outside, closing the door behind her.

      The porch tiles were cool and smooth under the soles of her bare feet, the brick steps below them incredibly rough in contrast. Once she reached the sidewalk, she turned to look back at the front of her home.

      For a moment she wondered if she would ever again feel the same way about it as she had before tonight. That it was a sanctuary. Somewhere safe. Security from the threats of the outside world.

      She shook her head at the disconnect those words evoked, given what she’d just gone through. In spite of her escape, she knew this wasn’t over.

      Her first impulse was to call her dad. He would come, of course, bringing one of the guns he kept locked in the tall, glass-fronted case in the hall. Armed with that, he would open the door and step into her bathroom—

      She shook her head again, acknowledging that as much as she wanted him here, she wasn’t going to allow him to do that. Not at his age.

      This wasn’t his job. She wasn’t sure whose job it was. But right now, she didn’t much care.

      At least she knew where to begin finding that out. She reached inside her purse and dug out her phone. She flipped the case open and, for the first time in her life, dialed 9-1-1.

      Six

      It had taken only minutes for a county cruiser to respond to her call. The deputies had listened to her story and then radioed its details to the sheriff’s office.

      After almost a half hour’s wait, a hard-bitten, older man had shown up. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but he had come equipped with a forked metal pole and a heavy vinyl bag.

      Without so much as an introduction, he and the two deputies had disappeared inside. From then until now, maybe an hour later, no one had bothered to tell her anything about what they were doing or what they’d found.

      In this close-knit neighborhood, it hadn’t taken long for a couple of neighbors to join her on the front lawn. Especially since the cruiser was still parked along the curb. Both had expressed disbelief at her assertion that someone must have put the snake into her hamper.

      “That thing probably just crawled in there while you were at PTA,” Betty Savage had said.

      “And closed the lid behind it?”

      “Lindsey, you don’t honestly believe somebody broke into your house and put a snake in your clothes basket, do you? Who in the world would do somethin’ like that?”

      “Maybe it was in some gardening clothes you brought in out of the yard,” Milt Trump suggested. “You just didn’t see it.”

      Faced with their disbelief, Lindsey hadn’t continued to argue. Maybe their determination to deny what she was telling them was based on an unconscious realization of how much believing her might change their view of this neighborhood.

      That was okay with her. She no longer had any doubt what had happened tonight. And now, after more than an hour of having nothing to do but think, she also had an idea of why.

      The three of them turned when a second police cruiser pulled into the drive, lightbar flashing. When Shannon’s friend Rick Carlisle climbed out from behind the wheel, Lindsey walked over to meet him.

      “Heard about your snake on the scanner as I was heading home,” he said. “You think somebody put it in your hamper?”

      She hadn’t thought about how quickly her accusation would spread when she’d made it. Still, it’s what she believed had happened. And no matter how unpalatable that belief might be to anyone else, she wasn’t going to back down from it.

      “That rattler didn’t crawl in there by itself. The basket was closed, Rick. Somebody had to put it there.”

      “That’s a serious accusation, Linds.”

      “Yeah? Well, it was a ‘serious’ snake. A pissed-off one.”

      “You got an idea who might have done somethin’ like that?”

      “A few.”

      “You want to tell me?”

      “I can’t. Not specifically.”

      “What

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