“Okay, I want to go get ready.” She squeezed my arm. “I’ll be back over in, like, half an hour, okay?”
“Perfect. That gives me exactly half an hour to pack all the stuff I was supposed to be packing earlier.”
She laughed and headed out, and I immediately attacked my closet with renewed energy. The suitcase filled quickly. Clothes, toiletries, my favorite books. Evidence of a life about to change.
But as I worked, my thoughts drifted to Harper. How easily she’d let herself into my world. How little I actually knew about her. She never mentioned family or friends. In fact, I’d never seen anyone visit her place. And while she hadn’t been here long, it struck me as odd. Lonely even.
I wondered what secret she was keeping. Who had hurt her. Who she was running from.
More importantly, I worried for her. What if she couldn’t outrun her past? What if the right thing to do, for now at least, was to stay here? To protect her as best we could?
I’d talk to Ryker about it, I decided, but before I could plan more than that, the sound of my front door opening pulled me from my thoughts.
It was odd. Harper was welcome to come in, of course, but she usually knocked.
“Harper?” I called out.
No answer.
“I’m almost ready!”
Still nothing. Silence pressed against my eardrums, thick and wrong.
Then it hit me. Cold and sharp as a knife to the ribs.
I’d locked the door after she left, and I’d never shown Harper where I kept my spare key.
My pulse kicked into overdrive. The house suddenly felt different. Colder. The air heavy with something I couldn’t name, but recognized in my bones.
Danger.
I was in the back bedroom. Whoever was in my home with me wasn’t announcing themselves. If it was Ryker, he would’ve called back by now. Would’ve come to help me.
It wasn’t Ryker. And it wasn’t Harper.
Moving slowly, I grabbed the baseball bat I’d kept in thecorner since this nightmare began. The wood was smooth under my palms, and my stomach turned as memories tried to surface. Memories of Blake’s hands gripping a bat just like this one when I was a little girl, and he’d used it to stop my foster father from killing me. The sound it had made when Blake swung it at my foster father’s skull. The blood.
No. Focus.
My hands shook as I reached for the window blinds. I wasn’t going to be one of those idiots in horror movies who goes to investigate the scary noise.
I was going to be the bitch who escaped out the window long before Sir Von Killer slashed my throat.
When the blinds rattled, I froze. A floorboard creaked. Then nothing.
My heart hammered so hard, I could taste copper in my mouth. Another creak, closer this time. The hallway groaned under someone’s weight.
I raised the blinds, the metal chain cold against my fingers, each click of the mechanism thunderous in the silence.
Another step. Heavy. Ominous. Sending my heartbeat racing so fast, I felt dizzy.
My fingers fumbled with the window’s first lock. The metal was slick with sweat.
Another step. He was approaching my doorway now.
The second lock stuck. I pushed harder, panic making my movements jerky.
Another step.
