Page 6 of He Sees You
In forty-eight hours, I'll be home.
Where the silence will help me write.
Where inspiration is waiting.
Where nothing ever happens except the occasional bar fight and teenage vandalism.
My father will worry. He always does.
But I haven't come this far by playing it safe.
I've built my career on darkness, on making readers fall in love with monsters.
Now I just need to remember what makes monsters worth loving in the first place.
As I throw clothes into a suitcase, my laptop sits open on the bed, cursor still blinking on that empty page.
Soon, I promise myself.
Soon, I'll fill it with something that makes Richard Haverston's wire-rimmed glasses fog up with excitement.
Something that will make readers sleep with the lights on.
Something real.
Outside, the snow keeps falling, erasing footprints and covering sins, making the whole world look innocent and new.
But some things can't be covered.
Some things are patient, waiting in places where the snow falls differently, where the silence isn't peaceful but predatory, where darkness isn't just the absence of light but a presence all its own.
I'm going home.
And home, as they say, is where the heart is.
Or in my case, where it stops beating.
CHAPTER ONE
Cain
She's coming home today.
I stand at the edge of my property where the tree line meets civilization, watching the main road that winds into town like a black snake through white snow.
Two years of waiting, and it comes down to hours now.
Minutes, maybe.
The deer skull in my hands is still warm with blood, the bone slick under my fingers as I wire it to the post.
This one's different from the others—a ten-point buck I took down three days ago when I saw her post about driving home.
I've been preparing it specially, cleaning it with the kind of attention I usually reserve for other projects.
The ones Sheriff Sterling is so desperate to solve.
My phone buzzes.
