When a Villain Calls (Turn the Lights Off #1)

Prologue

REED

“Nice tool, pretty boy. Do you know how to use that thing?” The unknown caller’s deep, rumbly voice curls out of the phone speaker like a tongue invading the hot shell of my ear.

My knees buckle, and my sweaty grip falters around the handle of the hastily grabbed hammer he’s referencing. I stare out into the dark expanse of Wyoming trees from the first-story floor-to-ceiling windows.

My heart bounces into my throat. I end the call, eyes scanning the landscape.

Every shadowy tree branch is an arm. Every large bush is a crouched figure waiting to pounce.

I’m all alone in a remote mansion with a malfunctioning security system.

Beep, beeeep, be-beep. I couldn’t be an easier target if I walked around with a dartboard strapped to my back.

The phone rings again. It’s him. Out there in the dark. Watching me. I should be scared, but something else stirs instead…

“Bad boy, it’s not nice to hang up on people when they’ve asked you a question,” the unknown caller says the moment I pick up. I can tell by his tone that he’s enjoying this.

“I know how to use it,” I spit, holding the hammer up for him to see. Wherever he is.

He pops his lips. The sound is as loud as gunfire to my hypervigilant ear. “Are you prepared to use it?” he asks.

The million-dollar question. If I had to, could I fight?

The stranger sounds tough, strong, like he may be able to pin me down with nothing more than a single look. But voices can be deceiving, and my muscles aren’t just for show. I unconsciously flex for him so he knows I mean business.

“Why don’t you come in here and find out?” I ask, trying to project bravery while my body floods with warring doses of cortisol and dopamine.

The stranger’s chuckle is low and gravelly, and it makes the pouch of my briefs fuller. This shouldn’t be turning me on, but it is. Danger has always had a firm, slick hand wrapped around my libido.

“What makes you think I’m not already inside the house?” he asks. The smug smile is evident in his voice. A tingle rushes up from the base of my spine.

I flick on the outdoor light, bathing the wooden back deck in stark white. I brace myself to come face-to-face with the unknown caller.

A breath saws out of me. There’s nobody there. No masked man wielding a knife or a gun beside the dormant spa or empty recliners. The night is eerily still.

The only thing I see moving is my own reflection, trapped in the glass of the telescope door. The only thing potentially separating me from the stranger.

I’m five-foot-eleven—why lie about an extra inch?—and one hundred and seventy-five pounds. I work out five days a week, and when I’m not lifting, I indoor rock climb. When I’m not rock climbing, I do 5k runs for charity. By all metrics, I should be able to take this guy.

If it is a guy. I have nothing to go off of except a steely voice spewing threats from the other end of a phone call.

For all I know, there could be a bot on the line with me right now.

Though from the way my body is responding, I sense a human is behind this.

No AI could coax this kind of reaction out of me.

In the door’s reflection, my blue eyes are wide with fright, my curly blond hair is a messy tangle since I forgot my special shampoo at home, and my hand holding the hammer shakes.

“What makes you think,” the stranger asks when I’m silent too long, “that I can’t smell the Peony and Blush body cream you applied after your shower earlier?”

Someone had been out there. While I was soaking in the spa. While I was rinsing myself off in the shower. I knew this house’s back wall of windows was an open invitation for peeping Toms.

I should feel violated. Instead, a tickle glides over my skin, applied like the fragrant, expensive cream that was shoved in the back of a drawer in the primary bathroom.

I figured nobody would miss it. Now, the peony, suede, and apple notes mix with a musky fear wafting off my skin from how much I’m perspiring.

“What makes you think I can’t hear your precious heartbeat from where I’m hiding?” the unknown caller asks, voice like sharp, seeking fingernails scratching down my back. Drawing blood. Eliciting carnal screams.

My head whips around. I can’t tell which way to look.

Should I guard the entrance or chart my escape?

If I go farther into the house, he might jump out from a corner and grab me.

If I make a run for it, the same might happen.

The nearest house is over a mile away. Probably closer to two.

Even with my speed, he’ll have seven-plus minutes to catch me, and that’s if my fear doesn’t slow me down.

Left with only bad options, I ask, “What do you want?”

“I told you already…” he says, sounding like a professor who refuses to go over the study guide answers before a big exam.

“What do you really want?” I ask, getting to the heart of this.

“Everything,” he growls.

The word thrums through my chest. I take him to mean everything in this house. Including me. That he wants not just my cooperation, but my body, my soul. Maybe even my life.

“Everything?” I ask in a meager bid to bide myself some time. To think through where this jerk might be hiding in this overly spacious house.

“It would be easier for me to tell you what I don’t really want.”

“Fine. What don’t you really want?” I ask, playing his game. The phone is hot against my clammy face.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, and I resist the urge to laugh at that. I’m sure even the slightest chuckle would only crank up his anger.

Thank god I’m barefoot, so I can hunt for this freak without being heard. If he’s telling the truth and he is inside the house, I have a sneaking suspicion that wherever he is right now, he doesn’t have eyes on me anymore.

I survey the couch, the fireplace, the ugly abstract painting on the wall behind an armchair. My gaze snags on the porthole window that looks into the luxe home gym, complete with every bench, bike, and stairmaster known to man.

“I don’t believe you,” I say as I tiptoe out of the living room and through the house’s second kitchen.

The stranger chuffs. “I said I don’t want to hurt you. I will hurt you, but only if I have to,” he says.

I pause before rounding the corner. The sliding glass doors to the gym leave me nowhere to hide if he’s in there, poised behind a bulky piece of workout equipment, ready to attack. A hammer can’t outmatch a dumbbell or worse.

“Or…” the stranger adds, reeling me back to the call.

“Or?” I repeat, chest rapidly rising and falling.

“Or you want me to hurt you.”