I slip out and secure the mirror, jogging to get her phone. When I’m back in the safe room, I hand it to Noelle and ask her to unlock it.
“There are a bunch of texts here from Karli, but none of them say anything about Tom, which is kind of weird.”
“What do they say?”
“Mostly, where are you, where did you go, let’s meet for lunch, type of thing.”
I take her phone and open up her settings. I turn the phone to her. “Did you realize you were sharing your location with Karli?”
She shakes her head, taking the phone from me with trembling hands. “I mean we’ve shared locations before, when we’re trying to meet somewhere, but I didn’t think it was permanently on.”
“Did she have access to your phone?”
“Of course. She’s my best friend. She’s always at my place and she knows my password so we can check photos before posting them.”
I roll my eyes. “Text her.”
“What?”
“I have a suspicion. Please text her that you’re checking in and you’re fine.” I watch as she does, nodding when she hits send. I turn her towards the monitor.
Our sinister smoker straightens, pulling something out of his pocket. Noelle’s hand covers her mouth. “That’s Karli’s phone.”
“How do you know?”
“See the butterfly sticker on the case?”
I squint, and sure enough there’s something with wings on the back. Such a simple thing for this guy to track her. Jesus.
“She’s texting me back!” Noelle holds out her phone. “Or he is, or something.”
I watch the three dots appear and wait. Sure enough, a message pops up asking if Noelle is with her brother. An uneasy feeling grows in my stomach. What has put Henry on the Blood Knights’ radar?
“Should I text him back?”
I shake my head. “No. Let’s see what he does.”
As we watch he texts a few more times and the messages come in, a variation of the same ones as before. When Noelle doesn’t respond, he stuffs the phone back in his pocket and keeps trudging through the snow.
I take some pleasure in the fact that it looks like Tom has been following us since last night. He’s not dressed for a stakeout, wearing sneakers and what looks to be a few layers of dark clothing. That means he hasn’t taken the time to plan this properly. I check my watch. I have a unit on their way here, but they’re still thirty minutes out.
Tom finally makes it to the edge of the woods where he can spot the cabin. I curse when I realize I was too distracted by Noelle when we arrived earlier to park in the garage.
Stupid, rookie move. I bet I didn’t even lock it. Tom approaches the vehicle, looking in the windows and placing his hand on the hood to check the temperature. He tries the doors and, sure enough, I didn’t fucking lock them. I could sound the alarm from my phone now, but I’m interested to see what he’s going to do.
He circles the vehicle, pulls out a phone, one I note is absent the butterfly sticker, and takes some photos, including of the license. Fucker.
He pulls out a blade and sets in, slashing at the tires before he turns his frustration on the leather seats. Goddamn it, I’m itching to get out there and teach this fucker a lesson, but not if it means leaving Noelle in here. I’m confident she’d be fine until the unit arrived, but I’m not taking chances with her.
I can’t quite see what he’s doing until a few seconds later, the front seats erupt into flames.Jesus Fucking Christ.
Noelle turns wide blue eyes to mine. “Is he going to burn us out?”
“He can’t. The cabin might look like wood, but it’s actually fireproof siding. It would take a while to breach the house.”
“But it’s possible?”
I shake my head, pulling her to me and dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “Not this guy and not today. I’ve called a unit in, and they’ll be here shortly. I would take care of this asshole myself, but it’s more important that I take care of you.”
