Chapter 17 Margo
MARGO
Margo was in the middle of a dream so lovely she didn’t want to leave it.
The sun was warm on her skin, the water around them a clear blue-green, and the deck beneath her bare feet moved with that soft, easy rise only a calm sea could manage.
Someone laughed behind her, low and familiar, and when she turned, Rad was there in a white shirt with the sleeves pushed back, one hand braced on the rail, the other holding out a glass of something cold and sparkling.
His hair was wind-tossed, his eyes crinkled at the corners, and the look on his face made her stomach flutter in that ridiculous way it had started doing far too often lately.
She took the glass from him, and their fingers brushed.
The dream version of herself wasn't nervous. She didn’t overthink or second-guess. She simply smiled and leaned into the moment as the yacht drifted over the bright open water, and Rad said something she couldn’t quite hear but somehow understood anyway.
Then the sound came again.
Sharp. Loud. Wrong.
The scene cracked.
There was more banging. A voice calling her name. Then another. The sea vanished, the warmth vanished, and Margo came awake with the kind of violent confusion that made her heart slam before her eyes had even adjusted.
For a second, Margo didn't know where she was.
Then the familiar shape of her room came into view around her.
She realized it was still a little dark, but early in the morning.
The thin glow of predawn squeezed in along the small gaps in the curtains.
Her eyes ran along the familiarity of things like the old chest at the foot of the bed, her sweater draped over the chair, and the dark face of her phone on the bedside table. Then the banging came again.
“Margo!” A rough, muffled voice echoed back at her.
She bolted upright. Her eyes widened, and her heart was hammering against her rib cage as she realized the banging wasn't part of the dream.
“Margo!” A female voice called, and she realized it was coming from her bedroom window.
She threw off the covers, stumbled to her feet, and crossed to the window, still heavy with sleep, her mind refusing to catch up to the urgency in the voices outside.
When she pulled back the curtain, Rad and Willa stood below in the weak gray light, both looking up at her with enough concern on their faces to send a cold ripple through her.
“What the heck is going on?” Margo asked, pushing the window up. “What’s happened?”
“We’re here to ask you that!” Rad stated through the glass.
“What?” Margo asked, confused. “I don’t understand.”
“You messaged us,” Willa called back.
“Yes, it sounded urgent,” Rad told her, sounding a little breathless as he held up his phone. “Your message said, get here now.”
“What?” Margo frowned at her. “When?”
“About…” Rad glanced at his wrist, found it bare, then glanced at his phone screen. “Fifteen minutes ago.”
“Margo, what’s wrong?” Willa asked, her voice taking on a more urgent lilt now. “Is someone inside your house?”
“Huh?” Margo pinched her eyes shut and shook her head, wondering if she was still dreaming. When she opened her eyes, she was still standing in front of her bedroom window with two very concerned faces staring back at her.
“I didn’t message anyone.”
“This is from your number,” Willa said, holding up her phone and pushing it toward the glass. “See?”
Margo tilted her head to look at it. Yes, that was her number, but… “I never sent that.” She glanced back at her phone sitting right where she’d left it when she’d gone to sleep the night before. “I was asleep.”
Margo turned back to the window and stared at them.
For one absurd second, she wondered whether she was still asleep.
Whether this was some jagged continuation of the dream, and she was about to wake up properly any second now.
She squeezed her eyes shut once again and forced them open.
The scene hadn’t changed. Margo could feel the cold on her bare feet.
The bite of morning air at the open window, and it was all real.
And the look in Rad’s eyes was very real too.
What on earth was going on?
“Go around to the front door,” Margo told them. “I’ll let you in.”
She realized she was in her pajamas. Margo quickly grabbed the nearest sweatpants and pulled them on.
Her sweater went over her head inside out the first time, and she made an irritated sound under her breath as she yanked it back off and fixed it.
She shoved her feet into sneakers without bothering with socks, dragged a brush once through her hair, then gave up when it made no difference, and the knots sent pain shooting through her roots.
Margo was almost at the bedroom door when she remembered her phone.
It was still where she’d left it on the bedside table.
Margo picked it up and checked it while hurrying down the hall.
The message was there.
A group text.
To Rad. Willa. Ace.
Get here NOW!
Sent sixteen minutes ago.
She stopped dead in the hallway.
Her stomach dropped so suddenly it felt like she had missed a step.
“No,” Margo whispered. “It can’t be… how on earth…”
She tapped the message, as if opening it again might make it disappear or explain itself.
But it stayed stubbornly where it was, time-stamped and undeniable.
There was no sign anyone else had touched the phone.
No half-open app. No clue. Nothing but the blunt fact that from her phone, while she had supposedly been asleep, that message had been sent.
A knock sounded at the front door.
Then another, more impatient one that she knew was probably an annoyed Willa.
Margo forced her feet into motion again and let them in.
Willa came in first, hair scraped into a hasty knot, oversized sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder, and bright yellow duck-shaped fuzzy slippers.
Rad followed close behind her, his T-shirt wrinkled, alongside his sweats he’d probably tugged on in haste, his expression still carrying the tail end of fear.
He looked like a man who had come running without stopping to think about anything except getting there.
Ace jogged up the path just as Margo had opened the door wider and came in behind them, equally disheveled.
His shirt was buttoned wrong by one hole, his boardshorts looked crinkled like he’d pulled them from the laundry hamper, and his hair looked as though he had run his hands through it rather than found a comb.
Margo shut the door and looked at the three of them.
“I didn’t send that message,” Margo said again.
Willa studied her face. “You do look like you were asleep.”
“I was asleep,” Margo’s voice raised slightly and brimmed with frustration.
Rad looked down the hall, toward the back of the house, then back at her.
“Did you hear anything?” He asked.
“No.” Margo shook her head. “Nothing. I was in bed, fast asleep. I woke up to you two banging on my window.”
“So how did you send that message then?” Ace asked. “Is it on your phone? Did you check?”
“I did,” Margo said, nodding. “And it’s there.” She clicked the screen and handed it to Ace, who took it. Her eyes looked down the hall toward the kitchen. “I’ll make coffee.”
“Good,” Ace said, rubbing his eyes and handing the phone to Rad. “Because I got here so fast, I don’t think I’m actually awake yet.”
That made Willa glance at him. “I think we all feel like that.”
“I like your slippers,” Ace said with a grin, pointing to Willa’s shoes.
“They were the closest to my bed,” Willa said, unabashed by her choice of footwear. “And don’t mock duckies. They were given to me by my kids.”
“We wouldn’t dare,” Ace told her, lifting his hands in surrender.
Margo put on the coffee and turned to her unexpected, very early morning guests.
“Now that we’re all here, would you like some breakfast?” Her eyes moved to her three friends.
Margo was so touched by how quickly they’d gotten to her place, thinking she needed help. Fear pierced through Margo at how that message had gotten from her phone to them, and she had to stop herself from wanting to move through each room of the house in case someone was in there.
“I’d go for breakfast,” Ace accepted the offer and glanced at Rad. “Do you want to…”
“I’ll have breakfast,” Rad said and looked at Ace. “Yes, let’s sweep the house.”
“Please stay in the kitchen,” Ace told Margo and Willa.
“If you hear a scuffle or one of us shout…” Rad started.
“I’ll call emergency services,” Margo stated right away.
“And get out of here through the back door,” Rad finished for her. His eyes moved between Margo and Willa. “Don’t come and look. Just go.”
Before Margo or Willa could reply, Rad and Ace slipped out of the kitchen.
Willa and Margo stood staring after them for a few seconds before Willa turned toward Margo.
“I’ll help make breakfast,” Willa said, and Margo could see she was just as worried and fearful as Margo was.
Margo nodded, and they started getting the breakfast items together.
The two of them were in her kitchen before sunrise, half awake and all worried, as she and Willa moved quietly, both trying not to make too much noise so they could hear what was going on in the other part of Margo’s small cottage that suddenly felt way too big.
“Willa, I promise you, I don’t remember sending any message,” Margo said softly while measuring coffee. “I was asleep. Really asleep, having this warm cozy dream which was interrupted by you and Rad hammering on my window.”
“I believe you,” Willa said, just as softly. “I’m so glad that Ace and Rad are here. With everything that’s going on…”
“I know,” Margo agreed. “Because unless I’m prone to sleepwalking and texting, which we both know I’m not, somebody managed to mirror my messaging app from another device…”
“Or someone may have gotten into your cottage,” Willa finished. “Which begs another question, why and are they still here…”
Margo stared at her. Willa’s eyes held hers with the same fear and worry that must be mirrored in Margo’s.