Page 9 of Stolen By the Billionaire
As he left the room, Sarah leaped out of her chair at the door, shoving it closed and pressing the doorknob’s button to lock it. The chair clattered to the floor behind her, making a racket and shaking the table.
Oh Lord, that was useless. That type of door lock was meant to keep someone’s dad from accidentally walking in while they were pooping, not protect Sarah from a renegade Navy SEAL breaking into her house and holding a freakin’ knife to her throat.
Sarah held her hand over her uninjured throat, still shocked that she was somehow not bleeding out on the floor from a severed jugular.
Or maybe she was, and she was having one of those “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” hallucinations. She wouldn’t put it past herself to fantasize away her last few moments on Earth. Believing she’d survived was probably preferable to watching a big ol’ blood puddle get bigger and wondering who would clean it up.
Her aunt’s voice squawked from her phone. “Sarah? Are you all right?”
Sarah righted the chair from where it had fallen over and steadied herself on the back as she lowered herself into it, still shaking.
Her psychic medium’s turban slipped forward on her head, and the top half of the room disappeared like a shadow monster had engulfed it.
She batted the stupid hat away, but the elastic band under the back of her hair caught on her wrist like it was trying to eat her arm. She had to fight the stupid sequined puff to fling it away from herself.
It bounced into a black-draped corner of the room, where light from the ring stand glittered on its multicolored sequins.
Sarah turned back to her phone, panting. “Yeah, Aunt Mary. I’m all right. Why did that guy call you a Russian mobster?”
“He is mistaken. He thinks I am somebody else.” Aunt Mary squinted through the phone at her. She circled one manicured finger at Sarah and her surroundings. “What is all this?”
Sarah sighed and hung her head. “I’m pretending to be a psychic. I read people’s tarot cards on SnipSnap. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just look at the cards and make up a story, and I make it a good story because people tip more if you tell them they’re going to be rich and famous rather than they’re going to die of cancer.”
Her aunt tilted her head. “You can know if they are going to die of cancer?”
“Oh no,” Sarah assured her. “I’m just making up a story. I don’t actually know what I’m doing.”
“Oh. For fun, then?”
“Not for fun. I charge people money to read their fortunes because the farm needs more money. The farm always needs money.”
Her aunt nodded. “Like tax on gullible people. I like your initiative. Is Blaze Robinson gone out of your house?”
Sarah listened to the big wooden farmhouse where the slightest movement made creaks and groans like the beginning of a ghost story.
Silence.
The warm wind outside brushed the west side of the house, drying out the soil. Muffintop wasn’t scurrying in fear anywhere.
She turned back. “I think he’s gone.”
“All right. If he is gone, then that is good. You have gun?”
“I have a varmint rifle, but it’s downstairs in the gun safe. I don’t have anything up here.”
“Okay, you get gun and keep that with you, and then my associates will be there in few days to watch over you until everything settle down. You okay with that?”
“Yeah,” Sarah said and nodded, trying to look like her heart wasn’t rattling around her chest like a penny in a tin can. “Yeah, I’ll be fine ’til then. Don’t worry about me.”
Aunt Mary nodded. “Be good girl, Sarah. I see you soon.”
Sarah’s phone turned dark as the call ended.
She slumped on the card table, her forehead resting on her arms, breathing hard.
Okay. She was okay. She’d survived whatever the hell that was, and she was okay.
After Sarah tried to remember how to breathe for a few minutes, scratching and meowing rattled the studio door.
