Chapter 3
Sera
I throw on what’s left of my clothes and reach for the doorknob. Behind me, my shadow daddy materializes closer, a suffocating presence at my back. His shadows ghost over my hip protectively, like a warning.
Don’t.
The word echoes within my skull, but I twist the knob anyway.
James fills the doorway like a storm front. His smile is gone. What’s left is something carved from granite and fury, all hard edges and white-knuckled fists.
His eyes—those usually bright, unhinged, laughing eyes—are glacial. They rake over me in a single, devastating sweep, taking inventory of the torn shirt barely clinging to my shoulders. The fresh bite mark purpling on my neck. My swollen lips. The smell of sex clinging to my skin like perfume.
His jaw clenches so hard I hear his teeth grind.
“Prayer.” His voice sounds like gravel in his throat. Like he’s swallowing glass to keep from saying something worse. “Christ, hen.”
Cold spills down my spine. My shadow daddy pushes closer behind me, the temperature dropping again, a growl crawling over the baseboards.
“What?” I say.
“I saw something in your car,” James says.
Behind me, the temperature drops another ten degrees. Shadow Daddy’s presence solidifies, a jealous, territorial weight that presses against my spine. I feel more than hear his low growl, a vibration that rattles in my bones.
“In my car…” I shake my head. “What are you talking about?”
James shoves a tablet into my hands. “Watch.”
I look down. The screen shows grainy black-and-white footage of my driveway and my car. The timestamp reads thirteen minutes ago.
My stomach drops because I already know this can’t be good.
“Play it,” James says, his voice flat and dead.
I press play.
The footage is fish-eye distorted, mounted somewhere high—maybe the oak tree across the street?
But the angle shows my car clearly. A figure dressed all in black approaches, and with hardly a twist of their wrist, they open the very locked back door of my car as though locks are just a rumor and then slide inside.
Efficient and practiced, like they’ve done this hundreds of times before.
They settle into the back seat, disappearing below the window line.
Waiting.
Waiting for me.
My blood turns to ice.
The timestamp ticks forward. Seconds. A minute. Two. Then the front door of my house opens, and I step out onto the porch, keys in hand, my bag slung over my shoulder. I’m completely oblivious.
After several steps toward my car, my house starts shaking.
In the footage, I flinch and look back. The door slams open and shut, violent and rhythmic. The porch light explodes. I retreat toward the porch, confusion clear in my body language. The front door hangs open. I pause, then I step back inside my house.
The door slams shut on me.
For three seconds, nothing happens. Then the car door flies open. The figure in black tumbles out, stumbling slightly, and runs. They disappear off screen.
The footage ends.
I stare at the frozen final frame of my car door hanging open. Other than the dripping hand reaching toward me from inside the house, which is blocked by my fat head, this is all like how I remember it, except…
“Someone was in my car.” My voice sounds too distant, like it belongs to someone else.
“Aye.” James’s voice is closer now. He steps inside, forcing me back a step. The front door swings wider. “Waiting on ye. But when it was clear ye weren’t immediately coming back, he bolted.”
I look up. James is staring past me, into the shadows where Shadow Daddy lingers behind my back.
The air between them crackles with violent intent. Two vicious predators sizing each other up.
“He saved me,” I hear myself say. “My shadow daddy.”
I whirl to face him even though I can’t see him. “You brought me back inside and distracted me until that man—whoever it was—left.”
“The question is, who was it?” James asks, his voice tight. “And what exactly would he have done to ye if you’d gotten into your car?”
“It’s not Vincent,” I say in case that’s what he’s implying. “Vincent doesn’t lie in wait.”
He follows and attacks in an area where no one will hear you scream.
The temperature drops further, and frost spiders across the inside of the living room windows. A low, guttural sound rumbles from the hallway, and the lights flicker.
Tires screech outside once more. A car door slams. Footsteps pound up the porch steps.
Eddie appears in the open doorway, slightly out of breath, his detective’s eyes already cataloging the scene.
Me in my shredded shirt, holding a tablet, James standing too close, the unnatural cold, and the flickering lights.
“Someone called the station about an attempted kidnapping at this address,” Eddie says. “An anonymous tip. Sera, what’s going on?”
“Aye, the anon was me,” James says with a nod to the detective. “Our lass nearly got napped.”
Our lass… So James knows about me and the detective. Wait, of course he knows. He has cameras outside my house watching me nearly get kidnapped or murdered, so obviously he’s seen Eddie and I fucking on the front porch since we can’t do that with my shadow daddy here inside the house.
Yet James doesn’t seem bothered in the least as he takes his tablet from me and hands it to Eddie.
Shadow Daddy does mind, however. The hallway groans. The shadows thicken, coalesce, his jealous rage feeding him strength. I can feel his domineering fury like a living thing, wrapping around my throat.
Mine. MINE, echoes in my skull.
“Daddy, stop,” I order him, catching the wide stares of the two living men.
James shifts his weight, his muscles coiling beneath his black T-shirt. “Daddy?”
“Tell me you didn’t name your rats ‘Daddy.’” Eddie’s hand goes to his hip, reaching for his gun.
The powder keg is about to blow.
“Outside.” The word rips from my throat. “Now. Both of you, outside.”
I grab Eddie’s arm with one hand, James’s with the other, and haul them toward the door.
They resist for a heartbeat—two alpha predators unwilling to retreat from the threat.
I shove them both onto the porch and follow, leaving the front door open behind me as a concession so Shadow Daddy can hear. So he knows I’m not abandoning him.
The fall chill hits like a wall after the unnatural winter inside. Behind us, through the open door, the shadows writhe, watching and listening.
“Now can someone tell me what the fuck’s going on?” Detective Eddie says.
James points to the tablet in Eddie’s grip, the frozen footage accusing me of my own stupidity. “Hit play.”
“Who are you anyway, and what are you doing here?” the detective demands.
“James, Sera’s mate since her Kansas City days,” James says smoothly in his Scottish accent.
My mate, my stalker, and now my lover and co-conspirator and co-murderer.
James juts his chin toward the tablet. “Hit play.”
Eddie does and watches the tablet in silence, his jaw tightening with each passing second. When it ends, he rewinds it and watches it again.
Then he turns to me, his detective brain clearly processing, but the panic in his blue eyes drags a shudder down my back.
“Sera.”
“What?”
“That could have been Red Hands,” he says, going straight for the jugular. “The MO fits. Stalking. Patience. Waiting for the right moment. If you’d gotten in that car, he’d have you, right now, alone, confined, and vulnerable.”
His next victim. A victim yet again to another man. My stomach churns, and I taste bile.
“I didn’t want to consider that,” I say, “but in the back of my mind, while I watched that footage…”
James nods solemnly, as though he considered it too.
“But we can’t see a face,” Eddie continues, zooming in on the figure. “The resolution is too poor, and it’s just a black blur. We can’t make a positive ID. Where did you get this footage?”
Eddie’s tone shifts and turns sharper. He looks at James.
James meets his gaze, unflinching. “Cameras.”
“What cameras?”
“My cameras.”
Eddie’s expression hardens. “You put cameras on Sera’s property?”
James’s mouth lifts, but it’s not a smile, just teeth. “Aye.”
Eddie turns to me. “Did you authorize this?”
I stare at the porch rail where the nail heads look like rusted smiles. “I didn’t know.”
The detective whirls back to James. “That’s illegal surveillance. What gives you the right—“
“I dinnae give a toss about rights.” James’s voice is a low snarl. “I give a fuck about keeping Prayer safe and alive. Without someone watching her, we dinnae know someone was in her car in the first place.”
Eddie blinks at him. “So you’re stalking her? Is that what this is?”
The light in James’s eyes crackles as he clenches his fists. “I’m watching over what’s mine.”
The word lands like a grenade. Even though the house behind me tightens, my skin hums. I like being his. I like being my shadow daddy’s too.
Eddie goes very still. “Yours?”
“Aye.”
“She’s not property,” Eddie snaps, every syllable a blade.
“Never said she was.” James steps closer to Eddie. They’re nearly the same height, but James is broader, all coiled muscle and barely restrained violence. “But she’s under my protection. Whether she likes it or nae.”
“Protection?” Eddie’s laugh is bitter. “Is that what you call it when you watch her through hidden cameras? When you—“
He stops, his eyes flicking to the tablet in his hands. I watch the realization bloom and then burn his face, and I already know where this is going.
“You’ve been watching her. All of her,“ the detective spits.
James’s smile returns, sharp and vicious. “Every. Single. Moment.”
“Okay, enough.” I step between them, my palms up toward their chests. “This is getting us nowhere.”
Eddie jabs a finger toward James. “You’re a sick fuck, you know that?”
“What can I say? I like te watch. Including the moments with ye, Detective.” James’s voice drips venom. “On this very porch every night. Ye always give quite the wee performance for our lass. Lot of heart.”
Eddie’s face goes white, then red. “Are you fucking her too?”