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She rested her hands on the hood of her car and forced herself to breathe.
“Okay. My keys are in there somewhere,” she said in the calmest tone she could manage. Other than a preliminary sweep of the kitchen when she’d first arrived, the only area she’d been in was the twenty square feet in the center of the living room. That was good. That narrowed her search area.
She would walk back inside and rummage until she found them. It would take, what? Five seconds? Ten, tops. But as she pictured her temporary boudoir—surrounded by shopping bags, blankets, and snack food—the spark of hope fizzled. She could have inadvertently kicked her keys under the air mattress or tossed them into the takeout bag. They could be hiding in the packaging for the bed sheets.
A careful search might take several minutes. Minutes during which she would hear or—gulp—see something that would forever haunt her.
Dread pooled in her gut when she cast another glance at the doorway, but she steeled her spine and put on her imaginary armor. “You can do this,” she whispered. “Just go in and—”
Something moved at the tree-lined edge of the property—it was too tall to be an animal, unless it was a bear.
Hallucination caused by stress. She closed her eyes for the count of three, and reopened them. The shadow shaped like a human lifted a long handle with a curved piece on top. Then it progressed, that figure wearing the night, crunching over sticks and brush and coming straight for her.
The scream building in her throat stopped short when the figure stepped from the trees into the pale moonlight. The man’s gait was…familiar somehow. More of a swagger than a lurch. And when he held up the ax, she could tell it was of the Halloween store variety. Plastic—she’d bet her handbag on it. The figure moaned as he walked toward her, the sound echoing behind the hockey mask. She folded her arms and tilted her head to one side.
A hockey mask. On Friday the thirteenth.
How original, Marcus.
The closer he came, the better she was able to discern the broadness of his shoulders. She knew exactly whose head sat atop them, too. And since he was trying so very hard to scare her, he deserved some payback. So, she decided to play along.
Pushing away from the car, she pulled in as much oxygen as she could and screamed like any B-movie actress worth her salt. A muffled sound that might have been her name, followed by an expletive, came from behind the mask.
She ran to the porch, waving her arms and saying, “Oh no! He’s going to get me!” as the man said her name again.
Then he bonked into a tree. “Ow.”
She swallowed a giggle and pretended to trip up the porch steps.
That’ll teach him.
The asshat.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dammit!
Marcus, his hand on the peeling bark of a big-ass tree he had not seen thanks to zero peripheral vision in the mask, was mad at himself. He hadn’t meant to scare Lily so badly. The ax was as chintzy as they came, but her scream had chilled his blood.
He was an asshole.
“Lily!” he called again, the mask muffling his words. He reached for the plastic mask and yanked, but it wouldn’t come off.
“Shit!” How his short hair had wound itself around the strap, he had no idea. He half-stumbled, half-limped, thanks to the welt on his shin from bumping into the tree, as he attempted to untangle his hair from the mask.
Through the eyeholes, he watched as she stood and dusted her hands on her pants. Now that he was closer, he could tell she wasn’t as scared as she’d sounded a minute ago. She looked, well, pissed.
Her narrowed eyes practically glowed with anger. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
He held up his hands—the ax in one of them. “Look—”
“You look like an idiot. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you in that getup?”
Great. Now he was sweating under the mask. “It was a joke!”
“A bad one.”
He tripped up the steps but caught himself on the railing before he accidentally knocked her down. She tore off the mask, along with a chunk of his hair. When he yipped in pain, she didn’t console him. She snatched the toy ax from his grip and smacked him with it.
