Chapter 27 Nyah
NYAH
Two days earlier
The sun shined, the birds chirped, and I was so loved-up that I could have levitated right off the ground. My cheeks actually hurt from smiling so much. How was that even a real thing? It should be illegal for someone to be this happy.
But I was.
Oh God, I was seriously delirious with happiness.
I had turned into one of those women I hated. The kind whose whole lives centered around a man. The kind whose only happiness was derived from sweet words, and him holding your hand in public, and tying you to his bed at night so he could do every wicked thing you’d ever dreamed of.
Dax had done them all.
Plus many I hadn’t even had the imagination to conjure up. I blushed every time I thought about it.
I didn’t even care we’d spent pretty much every minute together since we’d first met, other than when we were at work. Didn’t care that any sane human being would have called us codependent.
I was going to marry that man. And soon, because I was already sure he felt the same way.
We’d spent half the night talking about how many kids we’d have—at least four—and we’d already, only half-jokingly, discussed an island wedding, just the two of us, somewhere tropical and warm where we could hide from my family and the rest of the world and just live in a cocoon made up only of the two of us.
The way we talked, it should have sent at least one of us running for the hills, and yet it hadn’t. I saw my excitement mirrored in his eyes, and that feeling of it just being right never went away, no matter how much we lived in each other’s pockets.
So sue me if I skipped to work. That was how he made me feel.
It was only as I approached my first job, my cleaning caddy clenched in one hand, that I truly registered the address.
I cringed up at the building, but it looked a lot different in the daylight. In Toby’s photo, the house appeared dark and ominous, long shadows falling across the yard, hiding secrets in the corners.
In the daylight, it could have been any other house. Just a regular suburban home. It wasn’t even in the worst part of town.
An odd feeling skated down my spine, but I brushed it off, embarrassed for getting carried away.
My father would have been mortified if he knew his daughter was balking at the sight of a house, just because it was in the background of a photo where a couple of ex-con thugs had been dealing drugs or whatever the fuck it was Lynx and his friends had been up to in Toby’s photos.
I could practically hear the insults my father would have hurled in my direction.
Soft. Pathetic. Scared of your own shadow, Nyah? Didn’t I raise you to be better?
I ground my molars.
I hated that he was always so in my head, even when he was miles away and I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in months.
But my father wasn’t the sort of person you forgot easily.
Unfortunately.
But in this case, his taunts would have been warranted.
I’d already cleaned this house once. The owners hadn’t been home at the time, and they’d left a key for me beneath the mat.
It had been a simple, straightforward clean, bathrooms, kitchen, vacuum, mop, out the door and on my way to the next house.
I wasn’t the weak little princess my father accused me of being. He had raised me to be stronger than that.
A few weeks wrapped up in the arms of a man who was sweet and kind and gentle hadn’t turned me soft.
I pulled my shoulders back and strode to the door, tapping my knuckles against it. There was no answer, so I checked beneath the doormat for the key, and just like last time, one waited for me. I fit it to the lock and got the door open, before struggling inside with my caddy.
The door closed behind me with a bang loud enough to make me jump. I spun around, staring at it, but there was no one there.
The wind was picking up. I didn’t need to get all twitchy just because slamming doors sounded a lot like gunshots.
I wasn’t back in the city. I didn’t need to worry about people shooting at me. Nobody knew who I was here. Nobody had painted a target on my back, just because of who my father was.
I put the caddy down and shoved my hands on my hips. “Right. Where to start…”
Bathrooms were always my go-to first stop, so I fell into my regular routine, spraying cleaning liquids around, wrinkling my nose at their fake lemon scents. As I moved into the kitchen, I hummed beneath my breath, any stress I’d had melting away with the repetitive work.
My father would have said it was beneath me to be cleaning other people’s shit stains and dirty kitchens.
But I didn’t have a problem with it. It felt like good, honest work, and when you’d spent your entire life doing anything but, surrounded by people who had never worked an honest day in their lives, it was nice.
I found a mop in the bathroom cupboard and got busy with it. The floorboards creaked beneath my feet, but I took great pleasure in shining them up, washing away the thin layer of dust and grime that had built up since the last time I’d been here.
“Just another day, just another chore,
Just another girl scrubbing at the floor.”
I jumped a mile, spinning around at the voice.
There was nobody there.
My heart rate picked up. “Hello?”
Nobody answered. I squinted, and inched toward the stairs, calling up them, “Anyone up there?”
When nobody answered, I slowly looked around the room. Gaze falling on a Bluetooth speaker on the kitchen counter. A green light indicated it was on.
“A friend once came and left just fine.
But second guests run out of time.”
That definitely came from the speaker.
I stared at it for a long moment, trying to comprehend what it had said. I didn’t get it. But the whole thing was creepy as hell. My Spidey senses tingled, and I wasn’t the sort of woman to ignore them twice.
“Yeah, fuck this.” I didn’t care what my father would have thought of me gathering up my things in a rush, eyeing a cheap plastic speaker like it had the ability to hurt me.
He would have laughed and accused me of being scared of badly delivered poetry.
But he wasn’t the one here listening to it, alone in a creepy house.
My purse falling off my shoulder, my cleaning supplies tipping over in the caddy because I hadn’t taken the time to stack them properly, I rushed for the door.
I had the distinct feeling of being watched, even though there was no one in sight. It was so strong, I paused before I left and flipped the empty room the bird. “See ya later, weirdo.”
I reached for the doorknob.
Twisted it.
It didn’t give.
“Sweep the floor and mind the grime. You’ve walked into the perfect crime.”
I searched for a lock I could flip, but there was nothing.
“Sweep the floor and mind the grime. You’ve walked into the perfect crime.”
Panic skated across my skin. I dropped the caddy, not caring that the contents spilled everywhere. With both hands, I grappled with the door, my fear disabling my brain so all I could do was act on pure instinct.
“Sweep the floor and mind the grime. You’ve walked into the perfect crime.”
A whirring mechanical noise started up.
I spun, trying to work out where it was coming from.
“Your hands are swift; your steps are light. But not all stains wash out at night.”
I stared at the speaker in horror.
The mechanical noise came again.
The floor fell away from my feet.
I didn’t even have a chance to scream.
I hit something hard, my ankles twisting painfully beneath me. I cried out, pain shooting through my legs as I crumpled into a ball, the floor I’d just been cleaning now somehow above my head.
The trapdoor slid shut again, enclosing me in a box beneath the floor of the house.
“Perfect crime,”
the speaker taunted as the darkness sealed me in.