Page 63 of Ricochet

With his shoulders bunched in warning, Blue watched me dance around the slim window, until, at last, I made my way back up the staircase, but I paused at the top of the stairs.

Only one place I hadn’t yet explored. Like some unsaid case of Beauty and the Beast and the don’t go exploring the west wing crap. Well, to hell with that. Answers lived behind that locked door, and damn it, I needed to know.

I crouched to the floor and slid the bobby pin from where I stored it in my bra strap. Though his bedroom door was the only one that remained locked, it didn’t hurt to keep hold of my emergency skeleton key. With a click, the lock popped. As I stood and twisted the doorknob, a waft of Nick’s cologne assaulted my senses like a delicious attack.

I’d been in his room a few times to shower, but only ever when he was present, and somehow the knowledge of him standing just outside the room while I stood naked, showering in his bathroom, struck me as slightly erotic. Yet, he never made a move. Never invaded my space. For the first time, I realized, in spite of being confined to an old, run down mansion, I’d been given more space than I ever had before.

I moved to beside his disheveled bed, imagining his body tangled in the blankets. I’d heard him some nights, yelling in his sleep. The nightmares.

He’d told me his wife had died, but I knew none of the details. I couldn’t quite pinpoint why I never asked him. It could’ve been that I didn’t want to pry, but perhaps the true reason was that I knew he wouldn’t have told me anyway. Both of us had our secrets, like vests of armor, keeping us insulated from the other. Exposing secrets made a person vulnerable, opened them up to questions, probing little inquiries that ultimately didn’t mean anything. He’d given me a small taste of his past, by revealing he had a wife, yet, a week later, it hadn’t made a damn bit of difference.

Still, the curiosity rapped at my brain. I couldn’t let it go. I thought about him most of the day, had sketched his face in my notepad. Searched the house for evidence of who the man might be. All I’d found was a cupboard full of liquor and some weights for working out. It was as if he lived two separate lives, interacting with me here, sober, serious, but not cruel— then stumbling around the house, knocking into walls before the sun came up every morning.

Who was the man who called himself Nick? Why hadn’t he killed me? Touched me? Asked anything about me, aside from what I tossed to him in brief conversation? It was as if he had all the information he needed.

I wandered his room and opened drawers, smiling at the copy of The Grapes of Wrath that’d been dog-eared. I set it back in the drawer and found a small scrap of paper, written in faded red crayon. James Nicholas Ryder, Ms. Waddell’s class. Nicholas—for Nick? Ryder, the name echoed inside my head. The paper didn’t look too aged to have been from his own childhood. A son? Though he hadn’t mentioned a child. He couldn’t have had a child somewhere as much as he came and went.

An image lay amongst the other items. I lifted it from the drawer, exchanging it for the note, and studied the subjects sitting on the front porch of a bungalow-style home. In it, a young-looking Nick sat with his arm around a beautiful brunette, while an adorable little boy with bright blue eyes sat on his lap. Beside them, a small puppy stood with his nose to the ground, sniffing, and I glanced down at Blue, who stared back at me, sat back on his haunches.

A pang of sadness stabbed my chest, and I closed the picture back inside the drawer, feeling as if I’d seen something I shouldn’t have.

The corner of a manila envelope peeked from behind the book when I returned to that drawer, and I carefully slid it out. From inside, I pulled out a stack of photographs.

Stood with the blur of a building at his back, Michael held a cellphone to his ear in the first image. The sight of him twisting my stomach, I flipped to another picture, taken months ago, where the two of us had attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new casino downtown. In yet another, the photographer had caught me exiting the cemetery on the day of my father’s funeral.

My breath hitched. Realization struck my head in a dizzy jumble of thoughts, and I gripped the lip of the dresser to keep from stumbling back.

Nick had been watching me for months. As far back as a year, from what I could determine from the remaining images. My kidnapping wasn’t some haphazard attempt to steal the mayor’s wife. He’d followed me—or, at least, someone had, and for a long time.

Another image had been taken through the window of my art studio at the hospital, where I stood before a classroom of students. I remembered the day. Vividly. One of my students had forgotten his medication and threatened to stab me with a pencil, until a distraction outside the window had thwarted his attack long enough to call security, to escort him back to the psych ward.

What did he want with me? To barter? Had Michael taken his son? Murdered his wife? Was I to be used to negotiate a deal of some sort?

Nick’s words from the first night slammed at the forefront of my thoughts: You think I’d kidnap you for something as insignificant as money?

No fucking way. No way I’d go back to Michael. I had to get the hell out of there. It wasn’t that I thought Nick would hurt me, but the possibility of sending me back to Michael would kill me, and I was too close to freedom to piss it away.

I had to find a weapon. A woman didn’t just roam the streets of Detroit without some form of protection. I had to find a gun, a knife, something. I’d already cased the kitchen, but, surprisingly, Nick didn’t decorate his countertops with a Ginsu block.

I turned to the closet, and as I crossed the room, Blue came to a stand beside me. Placing my hand on the knob prompted a bark from the dog, like he’d been trained to keep people out of it.

Which only made me want to know what was inside.

Testing the dog’s patience, I slowly turned the knob again.

Blue whined and paced, antsy—until he snapped out of it in a way that had the hairs standing across my arms.

Stiff as a board, he stood at attention, his eyes focused on the doorway. Oh, shit. Nick’d said he wouldn’t be long.

I released the knob, closing Nick’s door behind us, but instead of following me, Blue trotted down the stairs. A deep growl rumbled in his chest, freaking me the hell out.

“It’s Nick,” I whispered, but the dog kept on, stalking toward the front door.

It’s Nick, I told myself. When had Blue ever reacted that way to Nick, though? It was like the dog knew his master’s routine, the sound of his footsteps, and something didn’t seem right to him. Which meant, it didn’t seem right to me, either.

The pounding inside my chest beat a steady rhythm in my ears, and I rushed to the window in my bedroom, peering through the bars. Beyond the adjacent trees, in what I estimated to be the neighboring mansion, lights flickered to darkness, as though a set of headlights had been turned off.

Downstairs, Blue’s constant low growl filled the otherwise quiet house.