Page 86 of Everything You Hate
Motionless. Silhouette against the lighter dark of the night sky. Shoulders. Head. The outline of a person standing at the sliding glass door, looking in.
My heart stops. Actually stops. One skipped beat where the world goes silent, and then it hammers back to life so hard I feel it in my throat.
I don’t move. Don’t breathe. The figure doesn’t move either.
We stare at each other through the glass. I can’t see a face. Just darkness where a face should be, and the certain knowledge that whoever is out there can see me perfectly in the dim light from the bathroom nightlight.
Three seconds. Four.
Then the silhouette is gone.
Not walking. Not running. Gone. Vanished from the balcony like it was never there.
I bolt upright. The journal slides off my chest and hits the floor with a thud. I’m across the room in three strides, yanking the curtain aside, fumbling for the lock on the sliding door.
It’s already locked. I checked it before I fell asleep. I always check it.
I slide the door open. Cold air rushes in. The balcony is empty. Three feet of concrete, a metal railing, the harbor beyond. No footsteps. No sound of someone climbing down. No rustling in the bushes below.
Nothing.
I step outside. The night air bites through my sweatshirt. The harbor stretches below, dock lights strung along the waterfront, boats dark at their slips. No movement. No shadow fleeing across the lawn. The Tidewater’s grounds are empty.
I check the railing. No scuff marks. No handprints in the dew.
I go back inside and lock the door. My hands shake. I check the room: under the bed, in the closet, behind the bathroom door. Nobody.
I sit on the edge of the bed and press my palms against my thighs to steady them.
Someone was there. I didn’t dream it. The quality of the darkness changed. The air changed. I felt it the way you feel a presence in an empty room—not with your eyes, with your spine.
They wanted me to know. That’s the worst part. They stood there long enough for me to wake up. Long enough for our eyes to meet through the glass. They wanted me to see them.
I grab my phone from the nightstand. My fingers are numb. I find Dean’s number and press call.
The line rings. Once. Twice.
The harbor lights glow through my curtains. Somewhere out there, Dean is on a boat in the dark, searching for two people who might already be dead because I wrote a story that brought them here.
The phone rings a third time.
I press it to my ear and wait.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dean
The last of the adrenaline drains out of me somewhere around midnight, leaving my hands shaking on the wheel as I pull the boat into my slip. Doug’s asleep in his nest. Captain mutters something foul and goes back to dreaming. The radio’s been quiet for twenty minutes. Both treasure hunters, found. Both alive. Both stupid enough to merit the hypothermia they’re currently being treated for at the clinic. My clothes are soaked through. Salt’s crusted in my eyebrows. I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours and the cot in the forward cabin is the only thing in the world I give a damn about when my phone rings.
The screen glows blue in the dark cabin. Her name.
I pick up. “Scarlett.”
Her breath comes fast on the other end. Too fast. The kind of breathing that happens before words, when your body’s already decided something and your brain’s still catching up.
“Someone was on my balcony.” Her voice is thin. Raw. The sound of a woman who’s been holding it together and just ranout of grip. “They were watching me through the glass. I woke up and they were just standing there.”
The exhaustion evaporates. Just like that. Gone. My body’s already moving before my brain finishes processing what she said. I’m on my feet, grabbing my jacket off the hook, checking my pocket for my keys.
