Page 143 of Say Yes to the Death

Outside the windowpanes, a trail of tiny red droplets led up the stamped concrete sidewalk. They stopped on Luke’s doormat, where a human-looking heart rested with a knife plunged through the left ventricle.

Her stomach rolled. Who or what had this heart belonged to?

Luke hung up and glanced at her. “The bedroom, now. We don’t know for sure that there isn’t anyone in the house,” he said, grabbing her arm and steering her toward the stairs.

She yanked her arm back. “No. Let’s check your footage. Then we’ll know.”

Luke swore and walked into his office. He slid his computer chair down a row of monitors until he got to the last one. He pulled up the footage from his front door camera and began scrolling through the evening, starting when he and Claire had arrived.

“Before we do anything, back the whole night up and email it to me and Detective Smith,” she instructed sternly. “I will not stand for any more technological failures in catching bad guys.”

“Done. Nothing, nothing,” he mumbled to himself as he fast forwarded.

“There,” Claire said, pointing to the screen.

Just after 3 a.m., a figure dressed entirely in black emerged from the dense clump of oak trees by Luke’s driveway. The figure swung a backpack off their shoulder and set it on the driveway, digging for something. A plastic bag holding a dark shape emerged. The figure, who already had gloves on, reached into the bag and drew out what could only be the heart. They seemed to stop and listen for a long moment, still crouching on the ground.

They walked up the sidewalk and onto the porch, taking care to arrange the heart exactly in the center of the welcome mat. The figure took a steak knife out of their back pocket and considered for a moment before plunging it into the heart.

Just then, Luke’s phone rang.

“Detective Smith?” he asked, hitting pause on his desktop. “The back door? Why? Fine.”

Claire followed him out of his office and down the hall to the ballroom. They pushed open the patio doors and took the long way to the front door, passing several officers examining Luke’s land.

Another policeman was cordoning off the front porch with yellow caution tape. A half dozen police cars parked at haphazard angles on Luke’s driveway.

Detective Smith, an unremarkable-looking man who seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, turned to them with grave seriousness in his ice blue eyes.

Claire gasped, staring at the front door. She clutched Luke’s hand so hard that she thought she felt something pop.

There, in foot-tall, blood-red letters, was a simple message.

You’re next, bitch.

Luke turned to her, gathered her into his chest as though he could shield her from the message.

“Well,” she said into his shirt, “you have to give them points for the correct comma usage. Villains are not usually known for being sticklers for grammar.”

The police combed Luke’s entire yard and the surrounding woods for hours before leaving. Yellow caution tape still stretched across the porch. They had taken the heart with them as evidence, and a call had been placed to a crime scene cleanup company.

“Do you think things will ever be normal?” Claire asked as she stood by the breakfast nook, staring at the tree line. She had just checked all the locks in the house for the fortieth time that day.

Somehow, the heart on the doorstep was worse than torching her car. They had come onto Luke’s land while they were sleeping and utterly unaware, just to leave a horrifying message. How much longer could this go on?

She had scoured the internet daily ever since learning the truth about ESA. There weren’t any new reports of women going missing in the greater West Haven area. What were they waiting for? Were they so afraid of Luke that they wouldn’t try to breach his house to get to her? Or was this just another cruel training exercise like Bowling Ball had mentioned?

“With you? Unlikely.” Luke slid an arm around her waist and pressed a mug of coffee into her hand. Bags had formed under his eyes. He kissed her just below her earlobe, sending a shiver down her spine.

“I have to go to the office,” she said, turning to look at him. She took a big sip from her mug and handed it back to him. Work might be the only thing that could save her sanity.

“Right now?” he asked.

“I have to go make sure every detail of the escape room proposal is perfect. I can’t afford to lose focus on my clients just because a bunch of idiots are hell-bent on killing me.”

Twenty minutes later, Mindy looked up as Claire entered the warehouse. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What do you mean what am I doing here? This is our office.”

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