Chapter 11
Present Day
I woke with a start. I sat up, rigid in the warmth of my new bed, the soft linens bunched around me.
My heart raced. Something had summoned me, a sound like a crack against the window.
Despite my experience with weapons over the years, any such unexpected noise reminded me of the gunshot that had changed my life a decade before.
I shook away the images that so willingly swam to my mind’s forefront at any opportunity.
The blood. The faces. The fear.
I blinked in the darkness of my silent bedroom. I’d fallen asleep at a reasonable hour and saw it was well into early morning now. Close to two a.m. I held perfectly still, waiting for any follow-up to the sound that had called me from sleep.
When I heard nothing—no footsteps, no creaking doors, nothing louder than my own heart pulsing in my ears—I slipped from bed.
The plush carpet greeted my bare feet. I considered flipping on my bedside light to chase away shadows but instead crept to the windowsill to peek out into the dark.
I pulled back the curtain slowly, with my pulse in my throat, ready to duck or call the police.
I let out an exasperated sigh when I located the source of the sound.
Bray’s camera had come unstuck from the wall and landed with an innocent thunk on the windowsill.
“Seriously?” I muttered and picked it up. I pointed it at myself and gave it the finger with a frown for good measure, just in case he was watching. Then I pressed its sticky little pedestal to the sill and reached for my phone on the nightstand.
When I went to text him something rude for rudely waking me in the middle of the night, my phone slipped from my hand. I sucked in a sharp breath.
A man stood in the street outside my window, gazing in at me.
The streetlight bathed him in a ghoulish pale glow. His short hair was fair enough to look like he didn’t have any at all.
I stumbled backward and smashed into the bed. My knees buckled. I fell to the floor and scrambled for my phone. My breath came hard and fast.
I’d just seen a ghost.
My fingers trembled as I brought up Bray’s number. Without hesitation or consideration that it was two a.m., I hit dial. As the call went out, I cursed under my speeding breath and crawled toward the window, keeping myself hidden.
“Hello?” he answered after several rings. His voice was thick with sleep.
“Bray! There’s someone outside my window. I need you to check the camera feed.” I spewed commands at him, only halfway realizing what I’d seen was impossible. The fear in my gut and shooting through my every nerve blinded me to that fact.
“What? What time is it?” He was groggy and clearly, I’d woken him.
“It doesn’t matter!” I snapped. “Wake up and look at the feed from my bedroom! Now!”
“Okay! Stop yelling! Just …” He trailed off. I heard rustling sounds and wondered what he slept in; maybe pajama pants, maybe boxers, maybe nothing at all. He came back after what sounded like a yawn. “Give me a second.”
I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see. “For the record, you woke me up, and that’s why I’m calling right now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your camera came unstuck and fell. The sound woke me up, and when I got up to fix it, I saw someone in the street. He was staring at my window.”
He paused and then sounded much more awake. “Oh shit. Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously!” I hissed. “I don’t know if he’s still out there, but I need you to look at the feed from the last few minutes.”
“Yeah, yeah for sure. Hang on a sec.”
I heard him rustling around. The thought of him in pajamas put an odd warmth in my belly despite being on the edge of panic. I inched my way closer to the window but could not bring myself to peek over the sill. I did not want to see him again.
“Bedroom camera?” Bray asked.
“Yes. Go back like five minutes and watch.”
I heard a keyboard tapping in the background and imagined him propping his laptop up in bed.
He stayed silent for long enough to put me on an even sharper edge.
“Do you see anything?”
“So far, just the street.”
I ground my teeth to dust while I waited.
“Oh!” he said, and I gasped. “Oh, that’s just when it fell down.” He paused again, and I imagined the image having turned to black, since I’d found the camera face down against the sill. “Oh, that’s cute,” he said sourly.
“What is?”
“You, flipping me off. Thanks for that.”
I cringed, having already forgotten about my message.
I glanced down at my braless chest in the tank top I wore to bed and knew he’d gotten a glimpse of that too.
Heat filled my cheeks. I quickly changed the subject.
“Do you see anything now? He was there when I put the camera back up. I saw him like ten seconds later.”
He let out a quiet hum, and I held my breath. “No,” he said, drawing it out like he was watching and waiting to change his answer. “The angle is lower than it was, but I don’t see anyone.”
An exhale left my lungs with a painful sharpness. “Are you sure? I saw him standing there. Right outside my window.”
“There’s no one there.”
I blinked and worked up the nerve to lift my eyes over the sill’s edge.
The street was empty.
“Well, can you check the kitchen feed? Maybe that picked something up, because I swear, he was there.”
“Sure. Give me a second.”
I waited again, chewing my thumbnail, and scanning the empty street. Melanie’s house sat tucked in and sleeping across the way. The rest of the storybook street was quiet and dark as well.
“I don’t see anything here either,” Bray said.
My heart sank at the same time I grew dizzy with relief. “How is that possible?”
He audibly yawned. “Dunno. Maybe it was a shadow or trick of light. Sorry the camera fell and woke you. I’m going to go back to bed.”
“Bray, I know what I saw.”
He paused at the edge in my voice, perhaps sensing that my fear stemmed from more than a neighborhood smuggling ring. “Well, there’s nothing on the feed, so I think it’s fine, but do you want me to come over just in case?”
His offer caught me off guard. If it was a chivalrous act or perhaps a job duty he felt obliged to perform, I wasn’t sure. Either way, it felt excessive in the middle of the night.
“No,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”
I convinced myself it was the truth because, after all, the man I had seen standing in the street was dead.