CHAPTER 1
EMILY
The thing about bad feelings was Emily Carter had learned, over the course of twenty-six years, to talk herself out of them.
It's fine. You're being dramatic. Nobody's that creepy on purpose.
That voice inside of her head, the reasonable one, the logical one, the one that sounded suspiciously like her mother’s, had gotten her into trouble more times than she could count. It was the voice that saidhe probably just forgot the hardware bagwhen Marcus Delling texted her back after their Facebook Marketplace transaction to let her know he'd accidentally left out the mounting nails and brackets for the squat rack she'd bought.
Which was how Emily found herself, at nearly nine o'clock on a Tuesday night, pulling her silver CR-V back up the long gravel driveway of a house on the edge of Grand Ridge she'd already been to once before.
She hadn't told Chloe where she was going.
She hadn't told anyone. She didn’t want to be a bother.An inconvenience.
It's fine. Stop being crazy. I really need to stop watching True Crime.
The house looked different at night. That was the first thing she noticed. The way the porch light threw everything into harsh yellow shadow and the way the trees on either side of the driveway pressed in close gave her chills. It had looked ordinary enough in the afternoon, just a mid-century ranch with a detached garage full of exercise equipment. A guy who'd outgrown his home gym, the listing had said.
Emily had been building her own setup piece by piece for six months. The squat rack was going to be the centerpiece.
She parked and killed the engine. Then sat there for a second.
See? Normal. There's his truck. Lights are on.
She grabbed her purse and got out.
Marcus answered on the first knock, which should have been fine, except that the way he smiled was just slightly too wide, slightly too slow, like a man who had beenwaitingrather than a man who had been surprised by a knock at the door.
"Emily." He said her name in a way that made her insides clench with warning. "Glad you came back. Come on in, I'll grab that bag."
"Oh, that's okay." She stayed on the porch. "I can just wait here."
Something flickered across his face. Gone before she could name it.
"Suit yourself." He disappeared inside.
Emily stood on the porch and breathed in the cold Colorado night air and told herself she was being paranoid. The Naughty Girls Book Club had been reading entirely too many dark romance novels lately and now Emily saw danger in every male smile.
Marcus came back with a small brown paper bag. Handed it over. Their fingers didn't touch, she made extra sure of that, andshe smiled her polite customer smile and said thank you and turned around.
She was three steps down the driveway when she heard him say, behind her, very quietly, "Drive safe."
Nothave a good night.Notthanks again.
Drive safe.
Emily got in her car, locked the doors, and sat there for exactly two seconds before she made herself start the engine and back out of the driveway like a normal person who had not just felt every single hair on the back of her neck stand at attention.
She was two miles down Highway 285, headed back toward town, when the CR-V started coughing.
It started as a shudder, just a little tremor beneath her hands on the wheel, and she made a mental note to get it checked, she probably just needed new spark plugs. She'd make an appointment tomorrow. Then it became something worse. A grinding reluctance, the engine losing power in stutters. The dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree.
"No," Emily said. Softly, then louder. "No, no, no, come on?—"
She quickly tapped on her phone and found the nearest gas station. She was in the middle of nowhere, but luckily one was on her maps. She made it to a gas station. Barely. Coasted in on momentum and a prayer and the sheer force of her refusal to accept that this was happening, pulled into the lot, and felt the car shudder once, deeply, and die.
The gas station was closed.
