Free The Ruse by Jonas Saul Page B

early. Everything appeared normal. I’d thought of all kinds of scenarios. If there was a gun involved, I was toast. I didn’t know CPR, so I hoped the intended victim didn’t have a heart attack or something. I went through as many scenarios as I could come up with on how I would save someone’s life. I also thought about my client. I wondered who Jessica had gotten to show the house.
     
    At 3:00pm exactly I was standing in front of the butcher shop. Nothing happened at first. All my senses were on full alert. I watched anybody and everybody. I watched where they were walking in case a car was coming too fast. I especially watched older people. The area quieted down a little. I looked at my watch.
     
    3:08pm.
     
    Nothing happened. I started getting angry. What if the text sender was a real estate agent and at that moment they were showing the Garrison house to my client? I decided to believe in the validity of the text. I had nothing else to go on, and they had come true twice. No one could’ve known my sister would show up at the butcher shop at the same time as me. I remembered it clearly. So the texts had to hold something greater than my ability to understand.
     
    I decided to stand there, and wait. At 3:30pm, my cell phone rang. Call display said it was the office. Maybe my client wants to put an offer in , I remembered thinking.
     
    “Yeah.”
     
    “Hi.” It was Jessica. She was broken up. It sounded like she was trying to catch her breath. “How did you know?”
     
    “Know what?” I asked.
     
    “The house.” She could barely get it out. “The house is gone.”
     
    “Gone? He bought it?” I asked, hoping that was the case.
     
    “No, gone. As in destroyed.”
     
    What is she talking about ? “Destroyed? What’s going on Jessica?”
     
    “They think it was a natural gas explosion. The house you were supposed to show at 3:00pm has been leveled. It blew up like a bomb hit it.”
     
    I remember dropping to my knees so hard that little pebbles on the sidewalk left bruises. “Is anyone hurt? Who showed the house in my place?”
     
    “When I called your client, he said they would view it when you were ready. They only wanted to deal with you. The owner of the house and his workers weren’t there because they had expected the showing. I didn’t call them because I was trying to get another agent in. At any other time, several people would have been there. Because you booked it for 3:00pm, and then didn’t go yourself, you saved a lot of lives today. You saved yourself.” I heard her stop, catch her breath, blow her nose, and then clear her throat. “But I killed someone. I’m so sorry.”
     
    What the fuck is she talking about now? I dodged a bullet here. I’m alive, in one piece, and Jessica is talking her shit again.
     
    “I killed someone,” she repeated.
     
    “Is this about your parents, because if it is, you have really bad timing. I could’ve been killed today. I saved myself. It isn’t always about you Jessica. Get over it, already, geez.”
     
    “I killed someone you know intimately.”
     
    “What? Are you mad? I didn’t know your parents.”
     
    I was completely confused. Most of the phone call, I was in another reality, another field somewhere, stupefied at my good fortune that I was still alive.
     
    “I killed… I killed your sister, and now I have to die.”
     
    “What the fuck are you talking about?” I was getting mad. I had no idea the woman was this fucked up.
     
    She blew her nose again. “Your sister called here looking for you this morning. When you told me to take messages and tell you them tomorrow, I didn’t say anything about her. You cancelled the 3:00pm booking. I couldn’t call her back anyway. She didn’t leave a number.”
     
    “Where are you going with this? How could you have killed her? As far as I know, she has cancer. She’s probably dead already.”
     
    “She asked where you’d be today so I told her about the Garrison