She yawned and turned the deadbolt, but the thunk reminded her. She had forgotten to sweep the floor. Just a quick sweep. That was all that she needed to do, and then she could go back up to her apartment, make a cup of herbal tea, maybe read a little of the Theresa Romain waiting for her. She could do that, right?
She pushed the broom around the floor. A waltz. That’s what she needed. Music as motivation. Nothing better to stanch the ache than make cleaning fun. She really must be exhausted. Next she would be whistling and changing her broom into a magic wand.
What had she been humming? Lifehouse. It had been so good. So, sooooooo good. The strength of Patrick’s muscles under her hands, the intensity of his gaze when he had brought her back down to the ground, the delicious burn of his arms around her waist.
Anita stopped abruptly in the middle of the studio, catching sight of herself in the mirror. Her ponytail was rumpled, her eyes bright and almost fevered. This wasn’t her.
She had been off-beat with the jive kicks. She had been smiling like a moron during her evening group beginner’s class. Unacceptable.
She was a professional. This was a professional agreement—that was it. Patrick had been her friend for years, and she had not had feelings for him in nearly all that time. Well, certainly not ones that she would ever admit to herself. It was theexhilaration of the dance. That was all. A moment of fabricated romance. She was just a little lonely.
Still, he had looked at her as though she was his first meal in a week, or a rainstorm in a drought. A harbor in the tempest.
No. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She finished sweeping, turned off the lights, and headed up the back stairwell to her apartment. She would do literally anything for a glass of wine. Screw the peppermint tea.
Thump knock thump.
She whirled, her nerve endings suddenly on high alert. She had locked the front door, hadn’t she? Of course she had. She had a distinct memory of turning the dead bolt, the steady thunk as the metal had settled into place. But had she? Or was it just something that she had done eight hundred thousand other times?
Thump knock knock thump thump.
Maybe she should have left on the lights. She tiptoed across the studio, stepping through the spiderweb of shadows stretching across the polished golden wood floor. She latched onto the firm metal handle of the broom she had carefully leaned against the wall by the stereo. At least it was something. A girl could not be too careful, but this was her studio, her livelihood. Like she would let it go without a fight.
How best to startle the intruder? If it turned out to be a raccoon or something equally mundane, she would never live it down.
She heard the sound once again, summoned her courage, and leapt out in front of the door, flicking on the lights as she moved, brandishing the broom handle in front of her like a crazed janitor.
Nothing. There was nothing there, not even a tree branch scraping the glass window of the door.
Anita set the broom against the check-in desk. Her heart would not stop pounding, the small hairs on her arms and on the back of her neck standing at attention like she had been electrocuted by sticking a wet finger in a light socket.
She moved cautiously closer to the door. Was she just a twenty-something spinster, hallucinating after a bizarre day? Maybe lusting after her friend of umpteen years was making her delusional.
Nope. Lusting after Patrick was worse than fear.
She exhaled forcefully.Get a grip, girl.She turned to go back up toward her apartment when the half-light of a streetlamp through the door caught a flash of white at its base. She froze in the moment, her hand on the wall, contemplating. It couldn’t really be anything dangerous, though she remembered the stories of poisons sent through the mail, pipe bombs in packages.
She needed to stop reading the news before bed.
Jammed under the door, apparently with a great deal of force or anguish, was a single piece of plain white printer paper. Nothing too scary. Ordinary.Get a grip, Anita. For real this time.
She cast a cautious glance through the glass front of the door. Nothing. No one. She was hallucinating.Just do it quick and move on.
Anita unlocked the front door, grabbed the paper, then set the deadbolt again. She went over to the check-in desk and tilted the paper under the tinted light from the vintage Emeralite desk lamp.
The handwriting was scratchy and slanted. It was written in pencil, too. Weird. Who used that after grade school?
I SEE YOU.
Weird. It almost looked like one of those letters with the alphabet cut out of various magazines, though whoever hadwritten this was a lot lazier. Why spend all that time cutting and gluing when you could just write a creepy note with a first grader’s writing instrument?
Anita smoothed the paper with one hand, then turned it over and over. There were no other identifying marks. It looked like the same plain white printer paper she had been using ever since she was a child, sitting and drawing pictures on the floor behind her father’s giant mahogany desk.
She really just needed to go to bed.
Her heart rate beat only a degree above normal. Why worry over anonymous childish threats when they could not bother to be more specific? Out of sight, out of mind.
With a slight huff, Anita tossed the paper into the recycling bin, turned on the alarm, shut off the lights again, and headed upstairs so she could finally, finally soak her aching feet.
