He crossed the deck and slipped into the house through the living room doors, pausing to listen. Hehadheard something. Someone was moving through the house.
He crept into the empty hallway. The front door was shut. No lights were on. The bowl on the hallway table where Ellie kept her keys was empty. It definitely wasn’t her. Whoever was in the house must have come through the vegetable garden, hidden by the stone walls, and through the back door into the kitchen. But what the fuck were they doing there?
Josh walked through the house on silent feet, hunting for the intruder. Goose bumps rose over his arms and lifted the small hairs on the back of his neck. The pins and needles were back, but he fought them.
He couldn’t fade away now. He couldn’t bear it. Ellie needed him. And he’dpromised.
How had he promised? What had he promised? He didn’t know. But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was Ellie. He’d told himself he wouldn’t get involved. That he wouldn’t care for her. But now… now, he couldn’t bear to think about her being hurt.
His muscles tightened as he crept down the quiet corridor and drew closer to Ellie’s gaming room. The door was ajar—whoever was there hadn’t bothered to fully close it—and he could hear the sound of her chair being pulled out, someone settling into it with a quiet grunt.
Fuck. It wasn’t just her gaming room. It was her office. It was where Nissy slept. Where was she? Ellie would be devastated if something happened to her cat. And honestly, so would he.
But the cold was all over him now. Waves of freezing mist enclosed him as the color slowly leached out of his surroundings, leaving everything gray and bleak.
He stepped forward, through the door, to see a man, hidden beneath a balaclava, his leather jacket hanging on Ellie’s chair, gloved hands tapping at the keyboard.
Something about the man was familiar. The way he sat. The angle of his head. Something struck a chord. But what?
Josh opened his mouth to demand answers, but even as he did, he knew it was too late. No sound emerged. Everything was amorphous, turning to mist.
Ellie wasn’t there to hold him to the earth, and he’d already clung on long past what he’d hoped might be possible. He stumbled forward and peered into the cat cave—desperate, knowing it was the last thing he could do—and thank God, it was empty. Nissy was somewhere else, hopefully safe.
But it wasn’t enough. He was leaving them at the worst possible time. He was leaving them in danger.
Darkness flooded over his vision, and Ellie’s world disappeared, leaving him to float, alone, in the icy shadows, howling out his fury and desperation.
Chapter Twenty-One
It wasearly morning by the time Ellie got back to her forest road, the sky transforming from pink and gold to a clear, light blue glinting between the trees.
The emergency responder who answered her call had promised that a team would visit first thing in the morning and told her not to go back to her house in the meantime. There had been no point in them sending a quick response team when the intruder had almost certainly already left and Ellie was safely miles away.
But Josh and Nissy were there—Josh who she couldn’t begin to explain, and Nissy who the responder was sympathetic about, but she wouldn’t send an entire team for a cat—and Ellie couldn’t reach them. She didn’t have a landline to call Josh, he didn’t have a phone, and she couldn’t see Nissy through her webcam. She didn’t know what had happened to them.
What if they needed her?
She forced herself to stand still and think. To not give into the panic as it twisted and churned. She would go to them as soon as she could—she was too far away to be of any immediate help, and she had to secure her business first.
She grabbed her phone and lifted her finger to hit the button to call Vic, the person she would always have turned to in the past… and then stopped. Vic wasn’t the same, she’d been?—
God. Vic couldn’t have done this? Could she? No, Ellie couldn’t bear to believe it. But she hesitated, nonetheless. And then she scrolled away and called her security company instead. She arranged extra protection for the office and then manually changed all the administrator passwords—including Vic’s. Until this was resolved, nobody would be able to access anything sensitive without a double login and Ellie’s personal approval.
Once that was done, she called Duane and left him a message explaining what had happened and asking him to call as soon as he woke up.
Finally, she rushed through the office, dropping Post-its on desks with last thoughts and notes of encouragement. And then she locked up and left in the darkness before dawn. She couldn’t sit still miles away if Josh and Nissy were in danger.
The roads were empty, and she made the journey quickly, despite the worry slithering through her mind, presenting her with every dark possibility over and over. Finally, she pulled into her drive just as the world brightened from the misty darkness into daylight.
Her cottage seemed peaceful. Slumbering. And the first thing she saw, thank God, was Nissy. There was no sunbeam, but she sat in the window licking her paw, completely unconcerned about the riot of emotions pouring through Ellie.
She slumped in her seat, wiping tears of relief away with her fingers. Tears that she’d held in all through the long night.
The only thing that would have made it better was for Josh to be there with Nissy, striding out the front door to sweep Ellie into his arms. But there was no tang of ozone, no electricity in the air. No movement from the house. She could feel Josh’s absence like an ache.
She stayed in her car, dabbed her face, and leaned back against her headrest to watch Nissy as the shadows retreated. If she’d believed Josh was there, or if she hadn’t seen Nissy in the window, she would have gone inside despite her fear. But he wasn’t there. And she didn’t need to be reminded not to go creeping in alone after an intruder.
So instead, she waited. It was ironic that she could sit in her car now—the place that had seemed so threatening—and feel sheltered.
