Page 58 of Fatal Attraction

I could have sworn I’d activated them before I left.

Fetching my phone from my purse, I tapped on the security app, my brows furrowing once I saw I’d been signed out of my account. After typing in my username and password, I waited, just to blink dumbly when a notification popped up stating either my username or password was incorrect.

That couldn’t have been right.

My username was my email address, the same one I’d used for years, and my password was the same for all of my other accounts, so there was no way in hell I’d gotten it wrong. It was, however, possible I’d made a spelling error with how fast I was typing, so I took my time and carefully punched in the details again, confident I hadn’t made any mistakes.

“What the fuck?”

The notification popped up again.

I growled and inserted the information again, and again, swearing at the top of my goddamn lungs when the app locked me out. Good and pissed the fuck off now, I trudged for the front door, having no other choice but to call the security company. The door wasn’t locked like I expected and when I walked in, my phone fell from my hand, as did my purse.

Every fucking inch of my living room was destroyed.

Carter.

Oh, fuck.

I quickly fetched my phone off the floor and then called Phoenix, growling again when he didn’t answer. Spike wouldn’t answer either, so I blew out a breath and gripped the device tightly in my hand, fear coursing through me as I remembered Carter’s struggles with PTSD. He probably lost it after things fell south tonight.

“Carter?” I gently called out after grabbing my purse, closing the door behind me. “It’s Charlotte. Are you here?”

My TV was on the floor and there was a large hole in the center, the size matching what I could only guess matched a fist. My center table was smashed with all its splintering pieces beside the TV. My couch was flipped over, and all of my pictures that were hung up on the walls were now torn into pieces, the shards from their frames scattered along every inch of the floor.

“Carter,” I shouted again, tears filling my eyes as I cautiously stepped over the mess.

I entered the kitchen and placed my purse and phone on the island, my jaw trembling as my eyes swept over my open cabinets and all of the liquor bottles I kept stowed away broken, booze and sharp glass coating the floor. One of my utensil drawers was open, specifically the knife drawer, and tears poured down my cheeks when I noticed all the knives gathered in a pile on the floor, the largest and sharpest one missing.

Oh GOD!

“CARTER,” I screamed, dashing my way through the mess until I was running up the staircase, searching through room after room.

I cried out in horror when I found him in the middle of my bedroom floor, his hands and feet bound and a gag over his mouth. There was a large gash on the side of his head with blood trickling down his face.

I rushed over to him, and he quickly shook his head, crying something I couldn’t decipher thanks to the gag. Something told me to turn aroundand when I did, I was bashed hard in the head, falling to the floor beside him.

Carter bellowed out a menacing growl, his muffled voice screaming my name. I saw stars, groaning as I struggled to sit up and clear my vision.

I was struck again, hard enough to taste blood.

I spit it out onto the floor, coughing as I bravely risked looking up and found a man wearing a deer mask encrusted in gold.

I awoke with a lung-burning gasp, frantically gaping around a plain white room I didn’t recognize, my heart pounding as I struggled to remember what happened. My legs were operable, but when I tried to move my arms, I cried out once I noticed they were pinned, locked in place by chained clamps attached to the headboard of the bed I was lying in.

NO!

I let out a blood-curdling scream, weeping for help as I fought, desperate to break free. Tears slid down my cheeks the harder I thrashed, my hands too big to fit through the tiny clamps painfully wrapped around my wrists.

“SPIKE,” I wept louder, breaking down as my will to fight ceased. “PHOENIX! Someone help me!”

There were only two other doors in the room, one I assumed was a closet, and another which had to be the exit from this room. One of them opened, and my body steeled itself as I blinked a few times, trying to convince myself I wasn’t hallucinating when Perry, my coworker, walked in. He slammed the door behind him and then leaned against it, cocking his head as he surveyed me with a feral look in his eye that sent nausea burning up my throat.

There was a gun in his hand.

After taking another look, I realized it was my gun, the one I kept in my nightstand.

I came home.

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