Don't Go Home by Carolyn Hart Page A

here about books. I wouldn’t bring books for him ever. I’m here about people. Can’t you stop him?”
    Rae’s irritated look slid away, replaced by a mixture of regret and uneasiness. Her expressive face was suddenly forlorn, weary. “I’ve tried.” She pressed her lips together for an instant, then blurted out, “Everything’s a mess. Look, I don’t have time to talk now, the TV crew’s about to leave. I have to get him.”
    As she started to turn away, Annie talked fast. “He can make something up. He doesn’t have to hurt people.”
    Rae paused. “I’m afraid that’s what he wants to do. I told him—Oh, it doesn’t matter now.” She shook her head, started up the oyster shell path.
    Annie hesitated, then followed Rae. Annie made up her mind. She would warn Alex Griffith. Before he spoke, she was going to climb up on the gazebo steps and face the audience first. He wasn’t going to have everything his way. She had a lot of friends here tonight. She didn’t relish making a scene, but she and Death on Demand were not going to be associated with Alex Griffith. Phrases tumbled through her mind . . .
can’t stand by and see cruelty . . . Griffith’s book belongs to him but people’s lives aren’t his property . . . you know what he plans, he’s told the world . . . don’t help him destroy people you know . . . get up . . . walk out . . . now . . .
Then she’d sail down the steps. She hoped she wouldn’t leave alone. Some would stay and she would have made a spectacle of herself and the TV crew wouldn’t have missed a bit of it and probably the reporter would be following her, mic outstretched, asking, “What do you mean by cruelty?”
    As she came around the corner of the building, she heard a sliding door open. She reached the patio. A drape billowed out throughthe partially open door. Black industrial tape covered the gash in the glass made earlier in the day by the hurricane lamp. Light streamed across the flagstones. Someone had swept up the shards of brightly colored glass. A new hurricane lamp sat on the patio table.
    A strangled cry, deep, wrenching, came from beyond the partially open door. A hand with bright red fingernails gripped the drape, pulled the soft yellow cloth aside. Rae Griffith stumbled out onto the patio, eyes staring, mouth working, face ashen. “Alex. Help me. Alex . . .” She careened into the table, both hands outstretched. The new lamp wobbled, toppled on its side, crashed onto the cement. Rae shuddered and scarcely breathed the words. “Alex . . . someone hurt him . . . help . . . we need help.”
    Annie looked from her to the open doorway, took one step, another. She pulled aside the drape. She stopped, stared in shock.
    Alex Griffith lay on his back at an awkward angle on the wicker sofa, his torso twisted as if he had fallen to his left. A yellow throw pillow rested atop his face. Blood had seeped from beneath the pillow. His left arm hung limply, part of one grayish hand resting on the parquet flooring.
    Behind her came an unsteady step. “We need to get help.”
    Annie turned.
    Rae stood just inside the room.
    Annie struggled to breathe. “I’m afraid no one can help him.”
    Rae lifted her hands to her face, began to make soft whimpering sounds.
    Annie moved toward her, gripped one arm, tried to steer her to a chair.
    Rae jerked away. “I can’t bear to be in here.” She pulled aside the drape and stepped onto the patio. She looked diminished, still withthe same flyaway silky dark hair but her face sharp and pointed, her shoulders bowed.
    Annie followed, glad to be out of the room, trying not to remember with such clarity the stillness, that pillow, the blood. She yanked her cell phone from her pocket. She