Free The Bug: Complete Season One by Barry J. Hutchison

flickered on and off again. It was little more than a blink, but enough to tell her that Imogen was restless.
    Abbie held her breath, not daring to move. Immy had been sleeping better these past few nights. They'd almost dared to believe that the months of sleep-depravation might be about to come to an end, but that tiny flicker from the monitor was enough to throw the whole dream into doubt.
    "Don't wake up," Abbie whispered. "Please don't wake up."
    She stared at the baby monitor, as if she could make Immy stay sleeping through sheer force of will.
    She could hear her breathing – not the rhythmic sighing of sleep, but the louder huffing in and out of the wide awake and restless.
    The little red dot flickered for a fraction of a second. Abbie tensed and gripped the duvet. This was still salvageable, she told herself. Immy may still fall back asleep. The night wasn't necessarily a complete write-off yet.
    She sat up and leaned in closer to the monitor, trying to get a better understanding of what was happening down there. Were Immy's eyes closed or open? Was she sitting up or lying down? If she could figure that out she'd know what the odds were of her darling daughter dropping back off.
    The baby monitor buzzed softly in Abbie’s ear. She could still hear Immy breathing, but there was another sound, too. A scuff of footsteps on carpet. Abbie’s stomach tightened and her lungs seemed to stop working altogether as she realized with complete clarity that her daughter was not alone in her room.
    She’d never thought of herself as a brave woman, and even as she leaped from her bed and raced into the hallway in her pajamas, she still didn’t. Her baby – her daughter – was in danger. Nothing else mattered but that.
    Immy’s room was on the ground floor, but Abbie didn’t even notice herself flying to the stairs, or taking them in bounds of two and three.
    Snatching a heavy wooden candlestick from the sideboard, she barged into the room, throwing the door wide and screaming like a woman possessed.
    “Get away from my baby!”
    “What the Hell?” yelped Mark, ducking and holding up his arms to protect himself from his wild-eyed wife. “It’s me, it’s me! Abbie, it’s me!”
    Abbie dropped the candlestick and covered her mouth with both hands. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks and she let out something that was halfway between a sob and a laugh of relief.
    “Oh God! Oh God, Mark! I almost brained you,” she said between big, gulping breaths. “I thought you were a burglar or, I don’t know, someone. With all the sirens outside tonight, I thought…”
    Mark stepped in and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in close. “Ssh, it’s OK. It’s OK.”
    With her head pressed in against Mark’s chest, Abbie could just seem Immy’s face. Her eyes were wide and sparkling as she reached up for the mobile dangling above her. There’d be no getting her back to sleep now, but for the first time in weeks, Abbie was happy about that.
    “What you doing home, anyway?” Abbie asked, still content to stay snuggled in Mark’s bear hug.
    “Strangest thing happened,” said Mark. “I’d picked up some guy in Blackhill and run him out Dumbarton direction. About, I don’t know, couple of hours ago. So I pull up, right, and he pays me in cash.”
    Mark stopped. “I’m not sure that qualifies as ‘the strangest thing’,” Abbie said, but with her head against her husband’s chest, she could hear his heart pounding much faster than normal. “What is it?” she asked. “What happened?”
    “It’s just… As he was handing me over the money, this… thing fell out of his sleeve, right onto my hand.”
    Abbie drew back so she could see Mark’s face. His eyes darted left and right, as if searching for a memory he couldn’t quite track down. “What do you mean ‘this thing’? What thing?”
    Mark’s eyes stopped shifting and fixed on her. “A bug,” he said. “It was a bug.”
    “A bug?” Abbie frowned.