"Just admiring your book collection," Matt responded smoothly, gesturing to the shelves behind the table. "You have a first edition Agatha Christie. My grandmother collected her works."
Sarah's posture relaxed fractionally, though her eyes remained watchful. "The Queen of Mystery," she said, stepping into the room. "No one's ever solved crimes quite like her characters." She placed the pitcher on a coaster, her movements precise. "I've made up the guest room for you both. I insist you stay the night. It's far too dangerous for you to be driving around after dark."
The offer hung between them, framed as hospitality but carrying the weight of a command. I heard it all from the kitchen.
When I joined them moments later, Sarah turned to me with renewed enthusiasm. "Eva, I was just telling Matt that you simply must stay tonight. I've prepared the guest room already."
"That's very kind," I began, "but we don't want to impose?—"
"Nonsense!" Sarah interrupted, her voice rising slightly. "I won't hear of you leaving. It's settled." Her smile stretched wider. "Let me show you the room. I put out fresh towels and turned down the sheets. The bathroom has new toothbrushes still in their packages and travel-sized toiletries—all the amenities of a luxury hotel but with the comfort of a friend's home."
She led us upstairs, chattering about thread counts and hypoallergenic pillows, her enthusiasm becoming increasingly disconcerting. The guest room itself was impeccable—a king-sized bed with plump pillows arranged in descending order of size, bedside lamps with matching shades, and even wrapped chocolates on the pillows. It was a haven for someone like us who had been living in sleazymotels and who had slept on the concrete floor of an empty warehouse just the night before.
"Everything you might need should be here," Sarah said, opening the attached bathroom door to reveal an array of products arranged by size on the counter. "But if you think of anything else, anything at all, my room is just across the hall."
As she finally left us alone, closing the door with a soft click, Matt and I exchanged glances laden with unspoken concern. Sarah's meticulous hospitality had taken on an increasingly oppressive quality—less the generosity of a friend and more the calculated control of a jailer ensuring her prisoners remained exactly where she wanted them.
Chapter 27
The guest roomfelt both luxurious and suffocating, with its high thread-count sheets and abundance of pillows that Sarah had pointed out with such peculiar pride. Matt sat on the edge of the bed, removing his prosthetic with practiced movements. Neither of us spoke until we heard Sarah's footsteps retreat down the hall, followed by Tommy's bedroom door closing and the muffled sounds of a bedtime routine in progress.
"She has burner phones," Matt finally murmured, his voice barely audible above the soft hum of the central air conditioning. "What do you think she uses them for?"
I removed my earrings and placed them on the nightstand with deliberate care. The small gold hoops—a gift from my daughter Christine years ago—were one of the few personal items I'd managed to keep with me through our desperate flight. "Five identical phones, you said?"
"All the same model, prepaid. The one I checked had outgoing calls to the same number." Matt massaged his residual limb, easing the discomfort from a day spent on the move.
"The office wall—it had newspaper clippings of me, all from the past few days. She said she has been following the news because shewas worried and wanted to help, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way. Why would she hang up newspaper clippings?"
The weight of what I'd seen in that home office pressed against my chest.
"I’ve started to wonder if her interest in me coming here is more than just doing a speaking engagement and book signing," I continued, keeping my voice low enough that it wouldn't carry through the walls. "Me coming here, doing the speaking engagement. It feels planned."
Matt's hand found mine in the semi-darkness, his fingers warm against my perpetually cold ones. "The question is why. What does she want from you specifically?"
I stood, moving restlessly to the window overlooking the backyard. Security lights illuminated a perfectly maintained lawn, a child's swing set, and a stone patio with arranged seating. Like everything in Sarah's life, the yard was meticulously organized, unnaturally perfect. "The stalking emails we found in Collins' account showed classic progression—observation, perceived intimacy, entitlement, then rage when the fantasy relationship wasn't reciprocated."
"And when Collins rejected the stalker…" Matt began.
"If it was Sarah, she eliminated him and found a way to make me pay simultaneously." I turned from the window, arms crossed over my chest. "But there's something else bothering me. Her behavior toward Tommy seems off—possessive beyond normal maternal concern."
Matt nodded slowly. "I noticed that too. The way she watches him and corrects him for minor infractions. That intensity when he interrupted our conversation."
"Like he's an extension of her rather than his own person," I added, remembering the look that had passed between mother and son—Tommy's subtle flinch, Sarah's controlling gaze. "Children raised by narcissists often develop that hyperawareness of parental moods. They learn to read subtle cues for self-preservation."
"You think the boy might be in danger?" Matt's expressiondarkened with concern. Despite the risks we faced, his instinct to protect an innocent child remained undiminished.
I sighed, returning to sit beside him. "I don't know. But if Sarah is unstable enough to commit murder and frame me for it, she's unpredictable. That unpredictability makes her dangerous to everyone around her, including Tommy."
Matt ran his hand through his hair—a gesture I recognized from our years together, his way of processing disturbing possibilities. "We need to be out of here by dawn. Whatever Sarah's involvement, this house isn't safe."
"Agreed." I reached for my bag at the foot of the bed. "We take shifts sleeping. Four hours each."
We continued planning in whispers—exit strategies, rendezvous points if we got separated, what information we still needed to gather before leaving. Eventually, Matt stretched out on the far side of the king bed, his breathing gradually deepening as exhaustion claimed him despite the danger. I remained sitting upright against the headboard, listening to the house settle around us.
The central air shut off, leaving a sudden silence that amplified smaller sounds—the refrigerator's hum downstairs, the occasional creak of expanding and contracting wood, the soft tick of a clock somewhere down the hall. Through the window, I watched clouds slide across the moon, casting shifting shadows across the too-perfect lawn.
An hour passed, then another. Matt slept soundly beside me, his face relaxed in a way it never was during waking hours. I envied his ability to shut down when necessary, to grab rest in the spaces between crises. My own mind continued to race, assembling and reassembling the puzzle pieces of our situation.
