“Well, look at that. We survived,” my row mate said. “As long as we taxi back safely.”
I refused to worry about the few hundred feet to our arrival gate. We said goodbye to one another as I grabbed my single carry-on from the overhead bin and made my way off the plane, happy to be alive.
My hands still had a slight shake by the time I entered my Uber outside the main pickup point. Night had already fallen over the city while we were in the air, and I watched the lights of the city fly by as we made the twenty-minute drive to my Airbnb. Thankfully, the driver wasn’t in a chatty mood. A light drizzle started as we left the airport’s twisted roadways and headed toward the city.
Unfortunately, the quiet in the car gave my brain time to overthink. We were fast approaching my destination where tomorrow I had to pretend to be a serious journalist. I’d be deep diving into an unsolved murder case with exactly zero experience besides an overview of my best friend’s write-up on the case.
Delaney—said podcast producer and best friend extraordinaire—believed Savannah was a city seeped in mystery and Southern charm. She said ghosts haunted the very places I’d be walking. It all kind of freaked me out. But I needed the money, vacation, and distraction.
I pinched my arm to make sure the plane hadn’t actually crashed, and now I was a Savannah ghost stuck in a time loop but never able to reach my Airbnb on Broad Street. It stung. So not a ghost then.
Or what if we were supposed to crash? Since we’d made it safely now, all the flight passengers were about to star in our own Final Destination remake. Would that be worse? I guess it depended on how I went out. I scanned the roadway for a truck carrying a bunch of stacked logs, but thankfully we’d turned into a residential street. No murderous lumber here.
If I died during this excursion, it was all Delaney’s fault—even if she meant well. She’d better be the biggest crier at my funeral. With the way my life was going, she and my mother might be the only mourners. They were all I had left at the moment.
After being unable to find a new job for over a month, I’d given up the lease on my apartment and was in the process of moving home with my mother when Delaney’s father had a stroke. My lack of commitments made it easy for me to step in for her and help with this project.
I’d thought a free vacation and a small paycheck sounded like a great idea before I returned to the job search. Delaney promised me a Savannah adventure, but after that plane ride, maybe I should have stayed home. My nerves couldn’t handle much more adventure.
The light drizzle turned into a steady splatter of rain by the time the Uber slowed. I checked the map on my phone and saw my destination to my left. Rain covered the window as I tried to squint through the glass. “I’m here?”
“That’s what the app says,” my driver replied, sounding slightly annoyed at the question. He stared at me from the rearview mirror, and I took that as my cue to get out, even with the rain.
The shaking in my hands had stopped, but as my feet hit the clean sidewalk outside the car, my anxiety kicked in again. Rain drops coated the tops of my shoulder, soaking through the light jacket I’d worn to ward against Savannah’s April weather.
From the trunk, the driver grabbed my suitcase and handed it to me with a quick wave of goodbye. I stared down the street, first to the left and then the right. In front of me—where the app said I’d be spending the next week—was nothing more than a black metal swinging gate. To the side, a two-story blue home looked like it belonged in a Civil War movie and to the right, an even taller white home definitely housed a Civil War soldier at some point.
My heart rate kicked up as I walked back and forth between the two buildings, looking for the number attached to my rental. A tall figure, shrouded in the night’s darkness, stepped around the back of the blue building and started for me. He was tall, even from a distance, and I turned around, looking for somewhere to flee with my heart beating hard in my chest. It was only a road behind me, though.
“What are you doing out here in the rain?” his deep voice rumbled as he marched forward.
2
I grabbed my suitcase by its sides and lifted it, putting the bulkiness between me and the Hulk coming toward me.
He tilted his head to the side as he approached the black metal gate—my last line of defense—and his steps slowed. “Do you need help with that?”
“No!” I stepped backward, careful not to fall off the sidewalk onto the road. My arms already ached from holding up my bag. I really needed to get back into a gym routine.
Mr. He-Man unlatched the gate with a flip of his wrist. Why hadn’t I seen the latch? “I’m Reed from Death Finds You First. Didn’t Delaney say I’d be here?”
“Oh,” I spat out the breath and lowered the heavy suitcase. My heart didn’t take the hint and continued to beat erratically in my chest. Delaney did mention I’d have someone here with me, but I’d completely forgotten with the almost dying in a plane crash earlier.
He grabbed my bag from my hand and wheeled it past the gate. “Our place is back here. It’s hard to see from the road. Delaney said it’s the unit Lisa used to live in. Her son rents out two of the units as short-term rentals, one with a long-term tenant, and then his private space.”
“You read the case file?” I asked, even though he clearly had.
He gave a half chuckle. “I expected Delaney on this trip, and they warned me she’s a stickler for the facts.”
Whoever told him that knew her well. “That sounds like her. She had a family emergency. Hence our quick switch.”
A dim porch light did a horrible job cutting through the gloomy night, but I glimpsed Reed’s face as he walked under it, carrying my bag into the Airbnb. Holy shit, talk about super-hot. His chin looked like he shared DNA with Gaston, but in a good way. Not the evil villain trying to take out a prince type of chin. It matched perfectly with his broad shoulders and long stride. Sometimes hot guy stereotypes were true. Unfortunately, that probably meant he was a jerk. No one so hot had a chance at a good personality.
He pushed the door open and let me slip past him to enter our place first. I did my best to not touch him on the way in, but I caught a sniff of his woodsy cologne. Ah man, he even smelled good. He definitely had to be an asshole.
Get a grip, Elenore. It’s just a man.
“Wow, this place is nice,” I said, stopping halfway into the front room. It was enough to see most of the layout.
