Page 98 of Hunting Pretty

No. He wasn’t getting away this fucking easily.

I raced after him, following him out the front door.

But he didn’t go out the front and past the security box.

He wasn’t walking down the driveway at all.

He couldn’t have disappeared that quickly.

I scanned the grounds and spotted him slipping out a long forgotten side gate, almost entirely covered in ivy.

I made a mental note to get the locks on that gate changed.

I raced up to the gate, frowning as I pushed aside the thick green leaves and peered through the ivy.

His dark figure cut across my neighbor’s lawn with long firm strides.

I expected him to slip out my neighbor’s driveway and into a waiting car. I readied myself to remember a license plate number.

But to my surprise, he walked right up to the front door of my neighbor’s white Greco-Roman mansion.

Then he opened the door.

He walked into the house like he fucking owned it.

I could barely believe what I was seeing. No wonder my stalker had gotten here so fast when Cormac was threatening me.

My stalker had moved innext door.

THE SHADOW

Someone was stalking Ava. And it wasn’t me.

A few times I noticed another presence when I was watching her. A shadow that appeared too much like a silhouette, slipping away before I could identify them.

At first, I chalked it up to my intense paranoia.

But now I knew.

And it was time to make sure he knew thatIwas the only one allowed to stalk her.

I was the only one allowed to touch her.

Ava wasmine.

TheDarkmoor Timesoffice was dark except for the glow from the state-of-the-art computers of the main open-plan newspaper office.

I moved quietly toward the corner office, the only office with a light still on inside, listening for footsteps that would alert me to someone coming.

With what I was here to do, I did not want to get caught.

I stopped in front of the frosted pane door at the very end of the high-ceilinged room, careful not to step into the light and alert the person inside with my silhouette.

I leaned my ear to the door. The dramatic sounds of Wagner’sTwilight of the Godsfiltered through the oak.

Figures that this self-important prick would listen to this.

I slowly turned the handle in my gloved hand, surprised to find it unlocked. I’d brought along picks but I didn’t need them.

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