Love And Blood

Chapter Two

  The neighborhood was a quiet one, besides the occasional noise from the nearby basketball court three blocks from theirs. Crime was rare as there was a police station perfectly situated on the entrance to the estate. It had a park where most families in the area meet to mingle, and that was where Mark and Sarah met the McArthurs.

  Jack McArthur was in his early thirties and like Mark, he too was muscular and took physical training quite seriously. In fact, their friendship started out as workout buddies. Every morning, they jogged to the police station and back which usually took about 20 minutes. This was enough as both of them had demanding jobs. So after each jog, they went to the gym and did light workout programs for 15 minutes, just to keep shape. Samantha, Jack's wife, also enjoyed jogging and she tried to get Sarah to jog with her every morning but Sarah preferred the usual saturday workout that most ladies do.

   Jack house was a four bedroom strorey with a fireplace that they rarely used. He drove a black Sedan while his wife preferred the comforts of the Ford Focus.

   Sarah needed no interior decorator, she decorated the house herself. Wedding pictures were on the left of their 60-inch plasma TV while the more recent ones were to the right. There were 7 flower vases in the sitting room, each containing different flowers and arranged alphabetically depending on their botanical names. If the tulip died, it could only be replaced by another tulip!

   Mark picked up the broken Chrysanthemum vase, remembering the day it fell on his way up the stairs. He thought to himself,...perhaps the intruder was on his way upstairs when he heard the police.

   Mark stopped and took a look around, there were a lot of things that could have been burgled. His iPhone XS max was still plugged where he forgot it that morning while having breakfast. The only thing that was missing was a portrait of him, it was expensive to make but still almost worthless to the next person, not like he was a celebrity or anything. Mark looked at Sarah and saw that she wore the same puzzled look on her face.

    "What do you think really happened here?", asked Sarah as she put her hands on her belly protectively

   Scratching his head, he replied "I'm not sure babe, the only thing missing is my portrait and I can't possibly guess why anyone would take that rather than my phone."

   "Well, maybe he didn't see it, the lights were off when the police got here"

   "Yeah, maybe that's it", he said in an unbelieving tone.

   "The security alarm didn't go off, the intruder must have had some sort of experience in the field of technology", thought Mark to himself. He checked to see if the alarm was still functioning, it was.

   Mark and Sarah decided to stay at Jack's place until Sarah had her baby, he couldn't risk a recurrence. Sarah was already in the car waiting. Mark took one final look around and then something caught his eye... His phone... His phone was gone. "Sarah must have taken it", he said to himself as he locked the door.

   "Sorry for the delay dear, have you got my phone?'

"No babe, you left it plugged, remember?"

   Perplexed, Mark looked back but it was too late. All he saw was someone running. "A night jogger", he thought.

   He drove off to Jack's, wondering what could have happened to his phone or maybe he didn't actually see it, maybe it indeed was a robbery after all. He looked at his wife, already asleep, her hair covering her face, he pulled it back gently and for the first time that night, he smiled.