Page 106 of Protected By Duval
Noelle’s heart was pounding in her chest and the woman in front of her who probably hadn’t heard the phone in Noelle’s hand ringing over her own piercingly loud voice, was still complaining.
“If you put my children online, I’m suing you!”
Noelle looked up, hoping to catch her mother’s eye, but she couldn’t see her mother anywhere in the store.
Good.
Hopefully.
“Are you listening to me?”
Noelle heard the screech of shopping cart wheels a second before her phone was snatched from her hand and thrown down to the ground.
As soon as the phone bounced from the first impact, it flipped and landed on its back.
Noelle could see a pronounced spider web across the dark screen.
“You... you people,” the woman spat, “always on your damn phones!”
“Ma’am, please.”
Noelle turned to look at Tony, but he wasn’t standing there anymore.
Panic.
Her whole body froze in panic.
Where did he go?
Noelle turned around, looking behind her.
The aisle was empty.
She let out a breath.
Okay.
The double swinging doors behind his cart, likely where he’d come from, were still.
He probably hadn’t gone back through the doors.
That left...
Someone grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked at her.
Noelle spun around and came face to air with the woman who hadn’t let her past. The woman was smaller than she’d expected without a cart between them.
“You don’t own this place.”
“What?” Noelle didn’t know what she was talking about at first. And then... “Of course, I don’t. I just wanted to go-”
“It’s all about what you people want, isn’t it?”
Noelle wanted to knock the woman’s hands away.
She wanted to call out to her mother to get her attention.
She wanted to get far, far away from that store and call McCrae, but none of that seemed possible at the moment.
