Page 49 of Silent Threat
He liked to keep track of her.
She liked to play hard to get.
He let her for now. He wasn’t a monster. But he was in control, whether she knew it or not. Whenever he felt the need to know where she was and what she was doing, he tracked her down and watched her.Hecontrolled the game.
Someday soon, he was going to teach her to check in with him regularly throughout the day. Once she understood that the continued survival of her animals depended on her obedience, she would toe the line nicely.
As he headed out to the parking lot, he caught sight of Cole walking between two buildings. Good. At least he wasn’t with Annie.
Annie was home. Probably alone. Was she moving back to her house? Was she going to sleep at her house tonight?
The man smiled, thinking how much he’d missed that these last two nights. He liked watching her around town, or at work, or with her animals. But helovedwatching her sleep.
He made a point to stop by at least two or three times a week. They’d spent many nights together. She just didn’t know it.
Darkness fell by the time Annie ran out of steam, with every muscle in her body aching and shouting a protest, begging her to quit the heavy lifting. Her kitchen was in better shape, but by no means clean. She decided to listen to her body and moved on to her regular chores.
She led the grazing animals into the garage. Fed the babies again. Thought about walking out to where she’d left her car earlier and driving to Hope Hill, but she’d just have to drive back again at midnight. She didn’t have it in her. Staying required a lot less effort.
She took Cole’s warnings about stalkers and escalation seriously, especially after the David scare. So she lined a large basket with towels and brought the dozen skunk babies inside the house. Now she wouldn’t have to go out again in the middle of the night.
She settled the little ones in her bedroom, then ate a tuna sandwich for dinner. Her stomach full, she collapsed on her bed, fully clothed. Her shower didn’t work, but sleeping dirty one night wasn’t going to kill her. She could pretend she was camping. She could clean up at Hope Hill in the morning.
The house was locked up tight, and the hole in the bathroom was sealed. Spending a night here should be perfectly fine.
She was so certain of that thought that she fell fast asleep. So certain that, hours later, when a noise woke her, she put it down to the house settling. The structurehadlost two walls recently: one internal, one external. Any house would creak in protest.
She didn’t think anything of the noise until she blinked her eyes open. Through the bedroom door, she saw movement in her kitchen—a large, looming man. Definitely not David this time. This guy was bigger.
Thud, thud, thud.Her heart was all clear on the danger, while her brain still tried to catch up.
Who?
How?
She’d locked up. Only her cousin, Kelly, had an extra key, and the large shape out there definitely wasn’t Kelly.
The man in her kitchen had broken in. Annie was pretty sure he wasn’t here with good intentions.
Even in her sleepy state, two things became immediately clear.
One: The man wasn’t Joey. Joey she could have reasoned with, but the guy in her kitchen had a different shape. Thicker body. No baseball hat. Joey never went anywhere without his.
Two: The bedside clock showed five minutes to midnight. In five minutes, the alarm would go off to wake her for the midnight feeding. And the sound would draw the intruder’s attention to the bedroom, to Annie.
If she turned off the alarm, the clock would beep. It beeped for any push of any button.
Four minutes.
Oh God.
Panic choked her for a couple of seconds before her brain woke up enough to find a solution. Inch by minuscule inch, she reached behind her nightstand and unplugged the clock. The clock face went dark without a sound.
The guy walked toward the guest bedroom, disappearing out of sight. For a second or two, Annie could almost breathe. But he came back into view a moment later. Did he mean to go through the whole place? If he did, in a few minutes, he would be entering the master bedroom, alarm or no alarm.
Annie eased off the far side of the bed, taking her cell phone with her. Once she moved, she could no longer see the intruder, which also meant he wouldn’t be able to see her as she ever-so-slowly crept toward her half-open closet.
On second thought, she grabbed the basket of skunk kits on her way. The guy in her kitchen had to be the same guy who’d crashed her fence yesterday and opened her gate today. No way could she have more than one psycho after her.
