Eutopia (First version)

Chapter 18

The shrill alarm reached their ears before the looming shape of the house came into view, the sound cutting obscenely through the hush of daybreak with a screech like the repeated drag of nails on a chalkboard that immediately drowned out the dawn chorus. 

‘Someone’s been in the house,’ Jinn muttered needlessly, since anyone within a ten mile radius would know that. He came to an abrupt halt and set Eutopia on her feet. He had carried her for the past fifteen minutes or so with one arm crooked beneath her knees and the other curled around her shoulders as she half-dozed against his chest having been unaware of just how far she had run initially.  She had lost her flip-flops in the lake and so her bare feet had posed a bit of problem now that the adrenaline had left her system and she could feel each tender step upon the twigs and leaves that littered the ground, which is why she had consented to being carried.

‘What?’ she asked, suddenly tense and alert as all traces of sleepiness evaporated in an instant, every muscle and sinew singing with the desire to flee again as she steadied herself against Jinn.

‘I set the alarm before I followed you; I always do whenever I leave, no matter how long I’m gone for. Someone’s been in the house.’

‘Burglars?’ Eutopia asked in a hushed tone, fingers tightening on his forearm as Jinn moved protectively, instinctively in front of her. He frowned thoughtfully, one arm reaching out as though to hold her back from bolting into the house despite the fact that she had now turned bodily so that her feet and most of her torso pointed in the opposite direction.

‘Burglars wouldn’t be so incautious as to set off the alarm,’ he said. Eutopia’s eyes widened as she imagined a hoard of police officers lurking in the bushes that lay along either side of them, seeing their dark, uniformed shapes sneaking about in the shadows of the big old house, lying in wait for them behind the dusty velvet drapes and her fingers dug harder into the flesh of Jinn’s arm.

‘The police then, they must have caught up with us from your crazy stint at the service station!’

‘Definitely not, do you think they would announce their presence so publically?’

‘I guess not,’ Eutopia said, feeling quite stupid as she found herself pulled forward, keeping a tight grip on Jinn who began to stalk purposefully towards the piercing noise.  ‘Wait, you’re going inside?!’ she squawked fearfully as she half-heartedly tried to pull him back, remembering and meeting the bulge of muscle in his forearm that she had been forced to contend with at the garage when she’d tried to check his anger then.

‘I need to go inside to reset the alarm,’ Jinn explained patiently, his lips to her ear to avoid having to raise his voice over the din, ‘otherwise the whole Surrey police force will come swooping down on us. Don’t worry, it’s fine, I won’t let anything happen to you,’ he added, soothingly, as he caught Eutopia’s hand and pulled her close to his side. ‘I will not lose you for a second time.’ He said it with such forceful conviction that Eutopia felt all the fear trickle from her and a warm electrical thrill rushed to take its place as her ear tingled where his lips had touched. They had reached the French doors that led out from the kitchen at the back of the house.

‘Locked,’ Jinn said, trying the handle. ‘The glass hasn’t been broken either and all these windows look fine, none of them seem broken or forced open.’ A dark frown took over his handsome features as he took a step back to scan the flat face of the building before he produced a key from his pocket and led the way inside. Eutopia, still gripping his hand, followed with hesitant steps. The alarm was so much louder now and she could feel the pressure building up painfully in her ears as the high pitched sound continued its relentless wail, bashing again and again at her fragile eardrums. Jinn didn’t pause to turn on the light by the kitchen door but instead swept through the long hallway to the front of the house where Eutopia could make out a little box on the wall beside the front door that had tiny buttons like a keypad, much like the one he had fiddled with outside when they had first arrived. She found it hard to make out the numbers in the gloom, but Jinn obviously had no problem as he punched at a series of buttons with one finger without so much as squinting. Sudden silence flooded her aching ears with relief, leaving her eardrums buzzing gently in the wake of the assault on them and the immediate absence of sound seemed almost alien.