Page 17 of Hot Momosa

I got it. I did. My father had a million things on his plate. However, that didn’t lessen the sting of our once-close relationship being handled by a third-party. I missed my dad. He never would have discounted my fear of the stalker.

I had no clue how long I laid in the dark, trying my best to fall asleep and end the pounding in my head. At some point, I must have drifted off, because I woke to the dulcet sounds of Gunnar screaming. Moving slowly, I forced myself upright and made my way down the hall.

It took my migraine-addled brain a moment to realize something was wrong, and another to figure out what it was.

My heart leapt into my throat.

Gunnar’s bedroom window was open, and the nightlight illuminated muddy footprints on the pale blue rug beside his crib.

Someone was in my house.

A reporter? The stalker? Oh God...

Every horrid word he’d ever written to me flashed through my mind. The threats, the promises, the twisted professions of love.

Scooping Gunnar into my arms, I whispered, “Shhh, it’s okay.”

He continued to wail.

I had to get to safety, but how?

I had two choices—climb out the window and risk falling and hurting Gunnar, or go back the way I’d come and possibly run into the intruder. I couldn’t hear myself think over the crying child, and that posed an entirely different problem. Gunnar was like a human air horn. The stalker could easily follow the wailing baby.

Gathering my courage, I threw a quilt over his head, tucked it in around him, and pressed him against my chest. One hand on the window frame, I eased my legs over the sill, jumped, and royally screwed up my landing. My ankle bent at an angle that sent a jolt of pain from my toes to my right thigh. Tightening my grip on Gunnar, I went down hard, but managed to twist my upper body and avoid crushing him. Without my hands to break my fall, my shoulder took the brunt of the damage.

Gunnar’s screams ratcheted up from distress to all out terror, high and shrill.

The silhouette of a man—a large, terrifying man—stared down at us from the window.

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