Page 132 of Reckless

I stare toward the kitchen even though I can’t see the back door from where I’m sitting.

Please be a neighbor.

Please be someone coming home late.

Another step.

My pulse kicks so hard it makes my fingers tingle.

Piper is out.

Ghost is still in Church.

Nobody should be coming up to my apartment this late. The thought lands like a stone in my stomach.

I don’t know who’s out there, but suddenly I know with terrifying certainty they aren’t here by accident.

Where the fuck is Liam?

My brain runs through the possibilities the way it always does, offering me every innocent explanation available. Maintenance checking something. My own paranoia, worn thin after months of messages I never told anyone about and a threat I have been carrying alone since the day it arrived.

It could be anything.

It isn’t.

The handle begins to turn, so slowly I almost convince myself I’m imagining it. The quiet click of the latch echoes through the apartment, impossibly loud against the silence.

My stomach drops.

They’re not trying to break the door down.

They’re seeing if they have to.

Every muscle in my body seizes. For a heartbeat, maybe two, I simply stare at it, my brain scrambling to make the picture in front of me fit a version of reality that isn’t terrifying.

Piper forgot something… no.

She always comes through the front.

Maybe one of the neighbors… no.

But they wouldn’t be trying the back door.

Liam doing a rounds check… no.

He always messages me first to tell me he’s coming.

Another slow turn of the handle steals the last fragile thread of denial I have left. Cold floods through me so quickly it almost hurts. Only moments ago, this apartment had been home, safe and familiar. Now all I can see are entry points—windows, doors, hallways. Every corner suddenly feels as though somewhere somebody could be hiding.

The silence presses in around me until I can hear my own heartbeat pounding inside my ears, then…

Move!

Chapter Twenty-Five

SAGE

Lunging for my phone, my forearm catches the stem of my wineglass. It topples onto its side, cheap red wine spilling across the dining table and bleeding into the open case file I’d been staring at for most of the evening.