He raised his gun and moved into the dark hallway. Before he was out of sight, he reached back and locked the bedroom door from the inside.
Eve held out her hand to stop him. He disappeared before she could.
The small light in the bathroom did nothing to alleviate how dark the room felt after the soft click of the door closing.
Eve closed the space between it and her on bare feet. She didn’t unlock the door—she didn’t even touch it. Instead, she leaned close to it and listened.
Her heart was beating too loudly, racing since she had realized Darius had gone into fight mode. Her breathing, too, was off. Too fast, too distracting.
She couldn’t hear anything but herself.
Eve put a hand to her chest, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
It helped.
There was nothing at first, but then she heard a faint sound of movement.
Eve tilted her head, trying to figure out exactly where it might be coming from.
Too far away to be from the hallway bathroom or Darius’s childhood bedroom. Close enough, though, that it couldn’t have been the foyer or the living room.
The kitchen?
Maybe Theo had gotten up for a late-night snack? Or maybe he had risen early to go do his marathon training?
Eve realized she didn’t know what time it was, just when she realized her Theo theory was most likely wrong.
The faint noise in the distance turned into something breaking. Glass shattering. A loud thump. Something scraping against hardwood.
Then, worse.
Silence.
Eve’s eyes flashed opened.
Hearing a gunshot would have been more surprising.
She strained to hear something—anything.
No one spoke.
Eve reached for the doorknob.
Surely if it had been Theo that Darius had run in to they would have said something or—
Footsteps.
Eve stopped her hand midair.
They were coming down the hallway.
Maybe it was Darius.
Maybe he had come to explain what was happening.
Creak.
The floorboard outside of the door—the one Darius wouldn’t have stepped on—sounded.
