Page 33 of One Night Years Ago

Did I lock the door?

A moment later, anger replaced the fear. Sharp’s Cove wasn’t a big city. It was still a place where people could choose to keep doors unlocked—or it had been until now. Three days ago she’d been the one to purposefully instill fear in the townspeople.

You did what you had to do. Better safe than sorry.

The creaking sound came again. There was definitely someone there, and it was too loud to be a cat.

She picked up her weapon from the drawer by the entrance, thinking she might keep it on her person from now on. Its weight felt solid and real in her hand.

She opened the door and pointed the gun in a semicircle, from the left side through to the right side then back again. There was nobody on her porch. She went down the steps quickly and turned around, doing the same from the opposite angle. Nobody there. Beyond her yard, from the neighbor’s porch, a small clay gnome mocked her.

What’s your problem?

She put her gun back in the holster. It was enough to have the gnome staring at her, she didn’t know what the neighbors would think if they saw her.

Probably that I’m losing my mind.

She made her way back indoors. Gun firmly wrapped in her hand, she went through every room, nook, and cranny of her three-bedroom home. She knew the house like the back of her hand. It was her childhood home. When he retired, her dad had gifted it to her, arguing it was too big for him and that he wanted to live on his boat. Not having to pay for it meant she’d been able to spend the money on renovating it and had left it exactly the way she liked it. Too big for a single person, sure, but at the time she’d still been half-hoping to have a family. That hope had gotten further and further away as time went by and she still hadn’t found any man who could even tempt her enough to get close to him.

A few had tried. Charles Doll, a forty-year-old lawyer, still asked her out once a month on average. But she wasn’t sure his heart was in it anymore. She wondered what he’d say if she actually said yes one day. Probably leave town and set up his practice elsewhere. That would make Helen happy. Her friend had never told her what she had against Charles, but she didn’t seem to like him much, and Natalie knew Helen too well to think she was afraid of a bit of healthy competition.

Natalie finished searching her entire house then came back downstairs and set the alarm again. Her heart hammered against her chest. She wasn’t going crazy. She knew there’d been someone outside.

She went back to the kitchen and closed the manila folder. Not that Lanie would stay inside the folder. Natalie knew she’d come join her in her nightmares later on that evening. She defrosted herself a depressing TV dinner, thinking she should have taken Emma and Helen up on their offer.

She fell asleep while watching a nature documentary about a strange marine ray that looked like a butterfly. She woke up disoriented, still in her day clothes. Her handcuffs were digging into her back. She looked down to find she’d been drooling all over her aqua sofa cushions. She picked herself up, ignoring the crook in her neck, determined to make her way upstairs to bed, when she heard it again.

There’s somebody out there.

Her mind went from foggy to alert in a matter of seconds. She picked up her gun, throwing the remains of her half-eaten TV dinner container to the ground by mistake. She ignored the mess and made her way to the front door.

She repeated the same steps from before but made sure to begin from right to left this time around, in case somebody was watching. There was nobody there. She went out to the yard and looked back at her house. Nobody there, all was silent.

And then she realized she’d seen something behind her, right outside her yard, on the street, something that hadn’t been there before. She turned so fast her head spun.

Chapter 14

Natalie

Natalie strode towards the dark blue pickup truck, no hesitation in her step. She rapped on the window. A dark shape inside jumped. The hands moved to the wheel, and she thought he might take off.

“Open the fucking window!” she shouted. She didn’t care if she woke the entire neighborhood.

The window rolled down cautiously. Dark gray eyes looked at her from inside.

“What the hell? Are you stalking me now, Hunter?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me.” Then, as an afterthought, added, “Were you on my porch?”

“Hell no. What would I be doing on your porch?”

“Forget it. You’re certainly close enough to my porch. What the hell are you doing here? Don’t you have your barn?”

He shrugged, not seeming offended in the least.

“When he’s caught, I promise I’ll leave.”