Nemesis (Southern Comfort) by Lisa Clark O'Neill Page B

as best as she could manage from her awkward position hanging upside down.  Another hand joined the first on her ankle, and she twisted maniacally like a human windsock.  Managing to loosen the man’s grip with her crazy wriggling, given the fact that her skin was impossibly wet, Sadie watched in horror-filled fascination as her untied shoe slipped off in his hand.
    She hit the ground with another bone-jarring thud, and started screaming Declan’s name.
     
     
     
    CHAPTER TEN
    DECLAN stilled, towel held against the hair which had gotten soaked as he’d left work.  Thunder rocked the house, the storm’s raucous calling card, and the wind whistled eerily outside. But he could have sworn he heard a high-pitched squeal that sounded suspiciously like his name.
    He cocked his head, heard nothing.
    “You’re losing it, Murphy,” he admonished himself, going back after his tangled locks with the towel.  His mood had vacillated wildly between low-level anger and an annoying sense of melancholia all day, and now he was hearing voices.  Super.  Maybe he’d finally gone off the deep end and could look forward to a padded room.  It might explain why he’d felt so damn out of control in the past few days, so… shaken from his foundation.  Like the pilings beneath him had finally succumbed to rot. 
    But then they’d been eroding for the past decade and a half, so he figured it was about time.   
    Except that the sudden pounding on his front door wasn’t a figment of his imagination. 
    Dec dropped the towel from his hand until it draped around his shoulders, and turned his head with disbelief.  Sadie’s car hadn’t been in the driveway when he’d passed, and no lights shone from her house – he’d been pissed off with himself for wondering where exactly she’d been, this late at night.  But he couldn’t imagine who else would be banging on his door in the middle of a raging thunderstorm.
    Had that been her voice calling out to him?
    Seriously, what the hell was she thinking?  He couldn’t possibly have made it any plainer to her that he did not want to be bothered. 
    Because she bothered him a hell of a lot.
    So when the doorbell began ringing and the pounding started up again, he threw his towel to the floor in irritation. Having Sadie Rose living next door again must be part of the penance he’d been waiting years to pay.
    He stalked down the stairs, threw open the door.
    Felt his world shatter into pieces, again, right there at his feet.
    “Sadie? What the hell?”  She was soaked and muddy and shaking.  And before he had time to note anything else, she was climbing up his torso like he was a tree.  Her little body pulsed with shivering tremors, her heart battered against his chest like a frightened bird, and her sodden hair dripped down his back in an icy-cold shower.  He clutched at her involuntarily, staggered from the unexpected tackle, and when he shifted his hands to get a better grip, brought them away bloody.
    His heart clenched and his breath backed up, only to come out in an explosive rush.  “What the hell have you done to yourself?”   
    “Sh-shut the door.  Shut the door!”  Her words broke on a torrent of sobbing as her arms wound even tighter about his neck.  But even through the deprivation of oxygen he could hear the fear throbbing in her voice.
    “Shh.  Okay, honey.”  He crossed to the door and closed it.  Had she gotten so freaked out by the storm that she’d run over here and somehow hurt herself?  Which didn’t make a bit of sense.  The Sadie Rose he knew hadn’t been given to female hysterics, unless it involved face to face time with serpents.  Whatever had shaken her so badly had to be more significant than wind and rain.  “What’s going on, Sadie?”
    Her body trembled, and she gulped for air, lips chilled where they touched his neck.  “S-someone’s in the house.  A man.  Two .  Two men.  They ch-ch-chased me.”
    What breath he had