Living room. Kitchen. Mudroom off the back with boots and a heavy coat on a hook. Locked door beside the pantry that probably leads to a basement. A small office with a desk and aradio and two rifles in a locked cabinet I can see through the glass.
Rifles.
Okay.
I take a slow sip.
I've been around men with guns. I grew up with one. Marcus cleaned his service weapon at our mother's kitchen table while she yelled at him about oil on the placemats. I'm not rattled by a gun.
I'm rattled by the man who owns the gun and the way he's moving around the upstairs right now like he's doing a second sweep of rooms he already swept. I can hear the floorboards. Deliberate. Unhurried. A man taking inventory.
He comes down the stairs a minute later. Still hasn't taken the flannel off. I notice because the sleeves are pushed to his elbows and his forearms are a whole situation I'm not equipped to handle on a Thursday.
"Your bags are upstairs."
"You carried them up."
"Yeah."
"You didn't have to do that."
"I know."
I open my mouth to say something smart and my phone buzzes in my hand.
I look down.
Unknown number.
One line of text.
pretty little cabin you picked, Ms. Baptiste.
Cold moves through me from the chest out.
I don't make a sound. I just look at the screen a long moment and try to make the letters mean something else. They don't.
When I lift my head, Gray is already watching me. He saw whatever my face did.
"Give it here."
I hand him the phone.
He reads it. His face does absolutely nothing. No jaw tic. No flinch. Nothing.
That's the moment I understand, really understand, what kind of man my brother sent me.
"Upstairs," he says. Quiet. "Away from the windows. Now."
I don't argue.
I go.
Behind me I hear him kill every light on the main floor one by one, his boots silent on the floorboards, and the last thing he does before he follows me up is slide the bolt on the front door with a click that sounds final.
Forty-eight hours.
I have a bad feeling about forty-eight hours.
