Chapter 4 - Three Taps in the Glass
Elena’s hand froze against her daughter’s curls.
The warmth in the small bedroom seemed to drop ten degrees in a single heartbeat. Outside, a jagged bolt of lightning ripped across the northern sky, illuminating the bedroom in a blinding, instantaneous flash of stark white light, followed three seconds later by a concussive boom of thunder that rattled the framed watercolors on the walls.
"Sophie," Elena said, her voice dropping into a desperate, razor-sharp whisper as she gripped the little girl's shoulders. "What did you just say? What window man?"
Sophie didn't look frightened. She was safe behind her black mountain of muscle.
She sat up slowly, shifting her weight onto her knees, the royal-blue velvet of her dress rustling softly against the sheets. She reached out her small right hand toward the carved dark pine headboard bolted against the wall beside the window.
With her small knuckles, she demonstrated.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
"Like that," Sophie said innocently. "Three times. Then he whispers to the bricks."
Before the third tap could even finish fading into the room, Bruno’s entire body went rigid.
The Cane Corso didn't rise slowly. His front legs locked like iron pistons, lifting his hundred-and-thirty-five-pound frame off the mattress in a single, explosive motion. His amber eyes, which had been warm and half-lidded moments ago, flared with a terrifying, homicidal light. His cropped black ears pinned flat against his skull, and a low, subterranean vibration began deep inside his massive chest—a sound so deep it vibrated through the floorboards beneath Elena’s knees.
Elena gasped, scrambling backward against the dresser.
Bruno was not looking at the door. He was looking at the single-hung sash window directly above the headboard.
Outside, the rain streaked the glass in thick, distorting rivulets, backlit by the pale, distant floodlights of the garden wall.
Through the streaming water, a silhouette appeared.
It was tall, broad-shouldered, and featureless—a dark, wet mass pressed flat against the outside of the glass, its hands cupped around its temples to peer into the amber-lit bedroom.
For half a second, the lightning flared again.
Elena caught a glimpse of wet, dark canvas, a pair of eyes reflecting through the glass like cracked ice, and a leather-gloved finger rising toward the bottom pane.
Tap.
The Cane Corso erupted.
The roar that tore from Bruno’s throat was not a domestic bark; it was an ear-splitting, primal battle cry that rattled the glass in its frame. The dog launched himself off the mattress, his heavy paws striking the wooden floorboards with a concussive crash that gouged deep furrows into the varnish. He didn't claw at the glass—he knew the iron bars outside the window made an exit impossible.
Bruno spun on his hocks, his claws barking against the floorboards, and charged through the bedroom doorway like a black cannonball.
"BRUNO!" Elena screamed, throwing her arms around Sophie as the little girl gasped in excitement rather than fear.
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The dog hit the cottage sitting room at full speed, tore through the swinging rear pantry door, and barreled straight into the covered stone arcade that connected the staff quarters to the primary mansion’s lower servants' corridor.
The chase was on.
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