Page 40 of The Sniper

Not Daddy.

He was supposed to be preaching tomorrow morning. He was supposed to be coming back Monday to help me sort through things at Grace House. He was supposed to be alive.

I gasped, hands pressed to my mouth like I could hold the scream in.

But it came anyway—low, strangled, animal.

I don’t remember how long I sat there, shaking on the tile, the faint hum of the fridge the only sound in the room. The voicemail had ended, but the silence it left behind screamed louder than any siren could’ve.

Eventually, I forced myself to pick the phone back up. My fingers felt foreign, like they belonged to someone else as I tapped through.

It rang twice.

Then, “Hello?” His voice was low, rough.

I choked on the breath I’d been holding.

“Noah,” I whispered, the name catching in my throat.

He went still on the other end. “Hallie Mae?”

A beat.

Then—sharper—“What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t say it. Not yet. Not out loud.

“I need you.”

Three words. That’s all I could manage.I need you.

12

NOAH

Iwas halfway through my workout, sweat dripping down my back, the clang of weights echoing in Dominion Hall’s gym.

Ryker was spotting me, grunting something about my form being shit, but I barely heard him—my head was still spinning from that dream.

Hallie Mae, bare and wild, her taste haunting me, her cries ringing in my ears—I’d woken up hard, sheets wrecked, and the burn in my muscles wasn’t enough to shake her out of me.

Then my phone buzzed on the bench, cutting through the haze.

I dropped the bar, let it crash louder than it needed to, and grabbed the phone.

Her name lit up the screen—Hallie Mae—and something twisted in my gut, sharp and cold.

Not lust, not this time. Instinct.

Something was wrong.

I swiped to answer, pressing it to my ear, breath still heavy from the reps.

“Noah,” she whispered, her voice cracking on the edge, fragile like glass about to shatter.

“Hallie Mae?” I said, already moving, wiping sweat off my face with my forearm.

A beat. Then, so soft I almost missed it: “I need you.”

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