Daniel forced a full breath into his lungs, and another. He inched backward until his shoulder bumped the wall, then slipped his arm behind the mattress, reaching down for the length of copper pipe he kept under the bed.
He withdrew it and held it in his lap, waiting.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, familiar shapes in the room appeared one by one. There was the chest of drawers in the corner, and the straight-backed chair beside it, the low bench at the foot of the narrow bed, and the dim mouth of the open doorway. Daniel fixed his gaze there and waited without blinking for the sweeping beam of a flashlight, or the creak of a footstep against floorboards, or some other sign of whoever had finally tracked him down.
Whenever he’d pictured this moment, whenever he’d run through the possible scenarios in his head, it had never been like this. He’d imagined a sharp knock at the door, or the sound of a gun cocking somewhere behind him in the woods, or the cry of a siren, far off at first, wailing through the trees and growing louder and louder until he could hear the gravel popping under the tires of some federal SUV. He had always assumed he would hear the sound of the other shoe dropping—the sound of his past coming for him—but he’d never once pictured it like this. A surprise. A broken window in the dead of night.
For a minute that felt like an hour, Daniel sat motionless on the bed with the pipe gripped in his hands. Nothing appeared in the doorway, and all was quiet in the dark boathouse beyond. He dropped his legs over the side of the bed and rose to his feet. Every step on the warped floorboards ran the risk of creaking, and he moved toward the door with painstaking slowness, treading as lightly as a man of six feet can tread. Halfway across the room, a board groaned beneath his feet and Daniel froze.
For several seconds he stood rooted to the spot, all five senses humming, but there was no noise from the hall beyond. He wondered again if he had dreamed the sound of shattering glass, if maybe he was dreaming still.
He risked another step forward. A few more and he’d have a view down the hall into the main room.
He was probably overreacting, creeping around like this. It was probably something he’d feel foolish about in the morning. Probably. It wasentirely possible that the wind had torn a branch from one of the alders and whipped it into the window, or that an owl or bat, chasing an insect, had flown into the pane and shattered it. But no matter the cause, he had to see for himself. He had to be sure. He’d never find his way back to sleep until he ruled out the worst-case scenario.
Daniel took a cautious step forward, and another—then he heard it.
Crunch.
Glass underfoot. It was soft, but unmistakable. He was not alone. Someone was inside the boathouse. The last, foggy whisper of denial was swept away, doused by a cold surge of adrenaline, and Daniel gripped the pipe tighter, raising it over his shoulder as he stepped through the doorway into the hall.
Empty.
Broken glass was scattered across the floor, and something else, something dark and viscous. Small drops of blood.
Daniel’s brows drew together, but he did not lower the pipe. A creak sounded from the dark space beyond the hall, the room that served as both kitchen and living area, and was followed by a soft, shifting rustle, like the sliding of fabric against furniture.
So quiet. The movement of someone who had done this before.
There was an image swimming forward from the back of Daniel’s mind, a face threatening to come up like bile, and he shoved it away, refusing to see it as he gripped the pipe tighter, the hard copper a comfort against the calloused skin of his palms and fingers. No. Not tonight. Not any night.
Daniel shifted. Pressing his back to the wall, he moved sideways down the hall with his breath held, praying feverishly that the boards under his feet would keep quiet. He drew even with the window. It was thoroughly broken. Only a thin rim of sharp glass remained in the upper corners like jagged teeth.
Through the empty frame, Daniel scanned the dark woods to the dirt road beyond. There was no car parked outside, SUV orotherwise. Whoever had come was on foot and did not have the law in mind.
Daniel glanced down. The scattered circle of glass on the floor reflected the crescent moon outside, and he stared at it for a moment, his mind spinning.
He crouched, adjusting the image in the glass by tilting his head at an angle. Farther. There. Just barely, he could see around the corner into the dark kitchen using the glass as a mirror.
For long seconds he waited without moving, his eyes fixed on the shards.
A minute passed, and another, and his confidence in reality began to soften and slide.Washe dreaming? This silence had the clotted quality of a nightmare, and there was a sense that time was not moving quite as it should. A tense waiting for a bad thing to happen.
A breath of wind whispered through the broken window, and a handful of cherry blossoms fluttered into the hall, falling like snow and dancing across the fractured glass. As the last blossom twirled across the sharp edge of a lethal-looking shard, Daniel saw it, an inky shadow slithering across the glass.
The dam of fear inside him broke, flooding his slumber-heavy mind.
Monster. Demon. Something evil and awful was moving toward him, and Daniel did not think as he launched himself forward into a run, jerking the pipe back as he rounded the corner and bringing it down with all his might.
He made contact with forgiving flesh and unforgiving bone. There was a yelp of pain, a feral cry, and Daniel shouted, too, raising the pipe high over his head and bringing it down again and again on the crumpled intruder until the copper sang in his hands.
He struck blindly, savagely, without mercy, until his strength was spent and all that remained was his rasping breath and the broken body of the intruder heaped at his feet.
Chest heaving, Daniel raised the pipe over his head one last time,eyes wild, jaw muscles tight and bunching as he waited for any sign of movement, any sign of life, but there was only stillness and the cool night breeze behind him, carrying the scent of cherry blossoms through the broken window.
Inch by inch, Daniel lowered the pipe. Every muscle from his neck to his thighs was trembling with adrenaline and exertion, and his fingers stung from the vibration of the blows. He needed to see what it was. Who it was.
There was no way to stop the image from coming now—the face he’d seen in his nightmares, the pale blue eyes of the man he’d been looking over his shoulder for every day of these last seven years.
