Page 41 of Say Yes to the Death

- Figure out better sleepwalking prevention solution

- Linens for A’s proposal

Caw.

It was dark. Everything was dark. Crickets chirped in every direction. The snap of a twig sounded like a gunshot in the darkness.

Ouch. Something stabbed into the arch of her foot. Claire’s eyes flew open.

Shadowy trees surrounded her. She was barefoot again. Oh, hell. She had sleepwalked right into the woods. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and her pulse skyrocketed. The last time she’d been in the woods, she’d been staggering down the gravel driveway outside the Heirloom Hotel. Fighting for her life in the blood-soaked remains of the wedding dress she was supposed to wear yesterday. There was no knife-wielding serial killer chasing her this time—at least as far as she knew—but the wound on her chest throbbed.

Leaves rustled in the wind. Another twig snapped somewhere close. A shiver ran down her spine. Was someone else out there? Could it be the person who left her the note?

She shuddered at the memory of the envelope under her pillow. Her home, her safe place, had been violated again. Who would have gone to such great lengths to leave her the note? What were they trying to accomplish? They could have dropped it in the mail like Barney did. But there was something personal here—they wanted to scare her. They wanted her to know they could find her.

It could have been Wendy. She certainly hated Claire enough to torture her legally and illegally. But somehow Claire couldn’t reconcile the image of the nasty, conniving woman who slept with her fiancé with a clever invader pulling a fire alarm and breaking into her apartment. Unless she had help.

Caw.

Something moved on her arm. She bit back a scream. A small black bird perched on her forearm, pecking at a handful of something wet and cold clutched in her left fist.

What. The. Fuck.

She jostled the bird off and opened her hand. A meatball squelched and dropped to the ground along with a handful of noodles. Great, unconscious Claire had decided to take another midnight stroll accompanied by a fistful of carbs.

Get it together, Claire.

She flailed her hand and wiped it against a nearby tree trunk. Hang on, her right hand was full too. A slice of moonlight penetrated the thick canopy of trees overhead. It glanced off an eight-inch chef’s knife. What the hell was her unconscious doing? Knives and spaghetti hands? At least if she was attacked by a bear or a mountain lion, she could defend herself.

She made a mental note to research sleep restraints and set her mind to getting out of the forest before Luke woke up and found her missing. Again. There was no need to panic. She couldn’t have gotten that far from the house while barefoot. Could she?

She tipped her head and glanced above her. The tree canopy was so thick she could barely see any stars. So that navigation method was out. Not that she knew how to use them anyway. She used her non-spaghetti hand to pat her legs and chest. No pants again. This was starting to become a real problem.

No phone either, but what was in her bra? Oh, good. A slice of garlic bread. As if hand spaghetti wasn’t enough, she could now top off her meal with bra bread. She flung it into the woods like a Frisbee.

Okay, no phone and no stars. She could do this. She had spent most of her adult life in West Haven. The creepy, barely moonlit woods didn’t scare her. Squinting her eyes in the dim lighting, she scanned her surroundings.

Aha! About five feet behind her, a noodle rested on a bush. She must have come from that direction. She stepped toward it carefully. A blanket of dead leaves carpeted most of the ground, but her feet seemed to find every stray acorn and pinecone.

Okay, so she had made it five feet. Better than nothing. She took another look around. Was it her imagination, or did the trunk of that tree have something red and wet on it? She stepped carefully around a stump and inhaled deeply. Yep, that was Luke’s homemade pasta sauce.

She walked hesitantly past the tree, eyes peeled for signs of unconscious Claire’s path. Another noodle trembled on a fern ten feet away. Thank god she had picked such a messy snack for the road. Five feet beyond, she found a branch that had snapped in half. Not definitive proof of her passage, but close enough. She followed that direction for another few yards.

Something was moving behind the trees in front of her. Her gut clenched. Was it a bear? A mountain lion? Some other wild animal who loved spaghetti? Or worse—the person who had left the note under her pillow?

She held the knife out in front of her, tip facing down like Roy had taught her. Claire’s high school hadn’t been the safest institution in the state. Something sharp on the forest floor jabbed into her foot.

“Mother fu—” She clutched her foot. Whatever jabbed her didn’t feel natural. She knelt and dragged a hand through the carpet of dead leaves. Her fingertips brushed a small, metallic cylinder. She held it up to the snatches of moonlight filtering through the trees.

It was a pen. An expensive-looking pen. What the hell was this bougie-ass pen doing in the middle of the woods? Had Luke flung it out here in a fit of rage? But he usually wrote in pencil. Hmmm.

She shrugged and pocketed it. No sense in wasting a nice pen. The shape moved again in the darkness, and Claire’s breath hitched. She had almost forgotten about it. Should she move toward the shape, or away?

Screw it. She charged through the woods, completely disregarding her footing. A low-hanging branch scratched at her cheek as she ran.

“Ha!” she shouted as she approached the figure. She burst out of the tree line, knife drawn and at the ready.

Oh, thank god. It was Luke’s pool. The mysterious moving figure was Rosie’s unicorn float skimming across the surface.

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