I didn’t give myself time to second-guess. Instead, I moved down the hallway with the silent precision prison had taught me. Each step controlled.
When I reached the front door, I turned the dead bolt as slowly as possible. Quiet. Silent.
If this fucker was outside, I would not be the one caught off guard.
The last millimeter of the dead bolt released with a soft click, and I clenched my jaw, irritated by even that small sound, before easing the door open.
“Lock it behind me, then get to the bathroom. Now.”
She hesitated for one more second.
“Come back to me,” she whispered.
“Always.”
The door closed, and the lock clicked into place. Good girl.
Cold air hit me like a punch to the chest. The wind howled through the bare trees, carrying with it the scent of distantwoodsmoke and something else. Something I couldn’t quite place in the chaos of my thoughts.
But as quickly as it came, the wind shifted and carried the scent away from me.
I scanned the front yard quickly, looking for clues in the damp earth. It had rained yesterday, the ground still damp. Which was why I saw them in the areas with no grass—footprints.
Footprints that didn’t belong. Footprints facing the living room window, as if someone had stood there. Watching.
My blood turned to ice.
The security team was parked at the end of the driveway, and if someone had been standing in the yard long enough to leave prints like these, they should have seen him. Should have been on him before he ever got this close.
The driver’s door was hanging open.
Bare feet burning against the cold ground, I bolted toward the SUV.
And when I got there, my stomach dropped.
The driver’s eyes were open, his head angled slightly to the side. His coffee was still steaming in the cupholder like the last few minutes hadn’t happened.
His partner was in the passenger seat. He’d had time to react. His holster was unsnapped, his hand wrapped around the grip of his weapon, halfway drawn. But that was as far as he’d gotten. Two rounds to the chest. His body had slid sideways against the door, his head resting against the window at an angle that made him look almost peaceful if you didn’t see the rest.
No shattered glass. No signs of a struggle. No sound that had reached us inside the house.
A silencer. Had to be. The suppressed shots would have been swallowed by the wind, buried under the howling that hadbeen rattling the windows all night. We never stood a chance of hearing it.
I backed away from the SUV, my mind recalculating everything. This wasn’t a stalker leaving threatening texts and lurking in the shadows. This was a man who had just executed two armed, trained professionals with the kind of precision that said he’d planned every second of this.
Silas wasn’t here to scare Harper.
He was here to end this.
58
KNOX
I needed to get back inside. Get Harper out. Now.
I turned toward the house, and that’s when two things registered simultaneously. First, I saw a dark figure toward the back end of the bungalow.
Silas. It had to be. And he was shaking some kind of canister.
