Unraveling Midnight by Stephanie Beck Page A

view on family was changing hers in the best ways.
    She checked her watch again and cursed. Only ten minutes had passed since she’d checked last. She started turning the heel of the sock, knowing it would take at least ten minutes to work the edge and make the gusset. Then if she had a customer or two, the rest of the hour would fly by.
    Busy. It could work.
    She could usually knit for hours and be very content, but after the heel was turned, Lucy started searching out busywork. She vacuumed and sorted the baby yarn into shades, which she never did. The norm was to let it all intermingle and be pretty, but she put like with like to make a rainbow instead. And it only took seven minutes.
    The bell over the door rang and she hurried to the front, hoping someone needed thirty-six minutes worth of help.
    “Put your hands up and don’t move.”
    Lucy froze, the customer-ready smile on her face locked in place at the order. Recognition sparked when she got a good look at the man holding the gun. He was the one who had hit Scott. He wore a ski mask, but the eyes were the same and his panicked expression was there. The last time she’d seen him, he’d run away from hitting a man—she wasn’t in any frame of mind to test him on what he would do with a gun.
    “I want all the money in the register and all the money in the safe.”
    “I don’t have a safe.” The words emerged before she thought about how much they might anger him.
    “Yeah, right. Empty the damn register now.”
    She hurried, forcing her feet to move when they tried to stay planted to the floor. Her hands shook as she tried to get the register to open. When she’d taken business classes, the instructor had warned about robberies and had recommended the students to be cooperative and nonthreatening.
    At the time she’d thought for sure she would fight or argue. Faced with real fear she understood not only the advice, but why people followed it. The robber was violating her space. He could have the money if he wanted it, she just wanted him gone.
    She handed over the money, less than five hundred dollars, and stepped back again, seeing the street clearly. Like when Scott had been hit, there was an inopportune lull in traffic. Of course a police officer couldn’t drive by when she really needed one.
    “Now the safe,” he demanded.
    “I told you I don’t have a safe,” she said, trying not to panic. “You have all the money in the shop right now.”
    “Bullshit. Take me to the back. You’re not going to fuck with me.”
    The back storeroom only held yarn and a heavy back door she couldn’t imagine using to make a quick escape. Leaving the main room sounded like suicide, but even as she thought to delay, he cocked the gun. The wild look in his eyes prompted her to move without comment or protest. As they walked, he batted at yarn, pushing over displays and exhibiting so much unnecessary violence Lucy’s insides shrank. She was next and the thought solidified when he roughly grabbed her arm and pushed her to the floor of the stockroom.
    “Where’s the safe?” he demanded.
    “I don’t have one. I only have the yarn and the small fridge back here. I don’t do enough business to need a safe.”
    She was babbling, but the words wouldn’t stop. He had to understand.
    “No, damn it,” he roared and the huge center shelf she’d spent hours building creaked as it fell, sending hundreds of skeins of yarn to the ground. The shelf itself stopped just above her and she cried out, trying to avoid being crushed by hundreds of pounds of wood and yarn.
    “I need the money.”
    “I’m sorry,” she whimpered, staying low and out of his sight. He seemed to become more irritated every second and the yelling hadn’t stopped and neither had the crashing shelves. If he couldn’t have more money, it looked like he was going to take his irritation out on the shop. If he’d leave—
    “Damn it,” he swore again and the scent of the bathroom cleaner she used