Page 18 of He Sees You
They exchange a look that makes my skin prickle.
Someonewashere, watching the house, less than an hour ago. Maybe watching me arrive.
"Double the patrol," Dad says quietly. "And I want someone walking the perimeter every hour."
Johnson nods and heads back out.
Dad turns to me with his Sheriff face on. "You don't go outside alone. You don't go into town alone. You don't?—"
"Don't live my life because you're scared?"
"Don't end up as female victim number five because you're stubborn."
The words hang between us like a threat. Or a prophecy.
"Show me my room," I say, suddenly exhausted. "I promise to be a good prisoner."
His face softens. "It's exactly how you left it."
He's not lying.
My childhood bedroom is a shrine to teenage angst—purple walls I painted in rebellion against all the wood paneling, band posters for groups I don't listen to anymore, a bookshelf crammed with King and Rice and all the dark fiction that horrified my mother.
The quilt my grandmother made still covers the full-sized bed, and the dormer windows still frame the forest like a threat.
I set up my laptop on the old desk, positioning it so I can see both the woods and the driveway.
The sedan is back in position, guardian angel or prison guard, I'm not sure which.
"Dinner's at six," Dad says from the doorway. "I'm making?—"
"Spaghetti with sauce from a jar?"
"It's called consistency."
He leaves me alone, and I open a new document.
The cursor blinks at me, waiting.
Outside, the footprints are already filling with fresh snow, erasing evidence of whoever was watching.
But I can still feel them—eyes in the forest, waiting for something.
I start typing:
The hunter always knows when his prey comes home.
Delete.
Too on the nose.
But something about this place, these woods, the knowledge that someone who kills women is out there reading my words—it's exactly the inspiration I came here for.
Dark and dangerous and real in a way my recent books haven't been.
A sound drifts through the window—high and mournful, almost like singing.
No, not singing.
