Page 2 of Ranger's Honor
And now it’s watching me.
My laptop chimes behind me. A low, distorted tone—definitely not my usual cheerful alert sound.
Frowning, I set the water glass down and cross back to the table.
The screen’s gone black.
No open files. No blinking cursor.
Just black.
Then, in jagged white text, words begin to appear—one at a time.
Like a warning.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STUCK TO WRITING YOUR DIRTY BOOKS, KARI BONHAM.
My blood turns to ice.
I grip the edge of the table, heart hammering.
More words appear.
THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING. DESTROY THE NOTES.
SOOKIE COULDN’T TAKE A HINT.
DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE.
The cursor blinks beneath the message. Then the screen goes dark again. Completely black.
My mouth is dry. My fingers hover over the keyboard, unsure whether to try and reboot or rip the whole machine out of the wall and toss it into the bay.
In the living room, Maggie hums softly, flipping through a cookbook—completely unaware. She doesn’t know I picked up where Sookie left off. Nobody does. Not even Gideon. I thought I was being careful. I thought if I worked in drafts and offline folders and unmarked drives, I’d be safe.
I thought if I played it normal—just a quirky author with too many mugs and not enough boundaries—I could keep chasing the truth under the radar.
The problem is, someone did notice.
I close the laptop slowly, like it might explode. My hand flies to my chest, breath ragged as the truth punches through me:
I’m not safe. And Sookie was right—if I’m not careful, the next story he ‘rewrites’ won’t be fiction. It’ll be my obituary.
CHAPTER 1
KARI
Idon’t scream. I don’t cry. I don’t even throw my glass across the room like I want to. I just sit there, spine straight, staring at my closed laptop as if glaring at it hard enough will reverse what I just saw.
It won’t—and I know it. No amount of staring is going to undo what just happened or erase those words from my memory. I wish I’d never agreed to take the notes. No one told me to write the story—but if they didn’t want it told, why hand them to me? A safe deposit box would’ve made more sense. Instead, I opened a door I don’t know how to close. I'm a romance novelist for god’s sake, not an investigative journalist.
I've always been the kind of woman who only writes about danger, not lives it. And now here I am receiving anonymous threats on my computer. I suppose I should be grateful no one has taken a shot at me, but this feels somehow more threatening, as if the sender has invaded my space.
The air feels thick with static. Every breath a struggle—like trying to suck molasses through a straw. There’s a weight pressing down on my shoulders, not physical, but heavy all the same—dense with implication and dread. I feel exposed, as if every wall in the house has been peeled back and someone iswatching me through the bones. Like I’ve been marked. Not with ink or blood—but with attention. The kind that kills.
“Lavender wrap, coming in hot,” Maggie calls from the hallway—cheerful, oblivious. She has no idea someone just threatened my life using the same device I use to write steamy threesomes and grocery lists.
Ever so gently, I push the laptop away from me. I slide it beneath the stack of draft pages on the table. Then I do what I always do when my world goes sideways: I fake it.
