Nerves on edge, Eve pushed open the bedroom door. It creaked on old hinges. “Roy?”
She heard the faintest of moans.
The hairs on the back of her neck were raised as she fumbled for the light switch. With a click, the room was instantly awash in light from an ancient ceiling fixture.
She screamed.
Roy lay on the floor by the old metal bedframe. His entire face was covered in blood, and there was a huge gash on his neck spreading a dark stain across the floor.
She stumbled forward. All she could see was blood. Dark. Black. Sticky. Everywhere.
His chest moved ever so slightly as he struggled to breathe. Eve moaned with hope. He was still alive!
“Hang on!” she cried, terror clawing through her, bile rising in her throat. “Who did this? Oh sweet Jesus…” She tried to staunch the flow of blood with one hand while dialing with the trembling fingers of the other. The phone slipped from her hand, sliding through a thick smear of blood. Pressing against the gash in Roy’s throat, she retrieved the bloody cell with her free hand and punched out 911 with sticky, shaking fingers. “Help,” she pleaded, but the screen silently mocked her: NO SERVICE.
Panic welled up inside her. She was frantic.
Calm down, Eve. You can’t help Roy without a clear head. Don’t lose it. Think! Does the cabin have a phone? A landline? The electricity’s working. Maybe Vernon keeps phone service for emergencies…. Her gaze swept the room and skated over the pinewood walls. No phone outlet, but near Roy’s head, upon the yellowed pinewood walls, was a number written in blood:
212
She recoiled in horror.
What the hell did that mean?
Had Roy written it?
Or someone else?…Oh God, was Roy’s assailant still here? Maybe in the house? She thought of the can of pepper spray buried in her purse.
She didn’t have time to waste. She had to get help. The blood seeping against her fingers at Roy’s neck had eased to nothing. Oh God…
Another low moan, and it was over. Roy took one last shallow wet breath.
“No! Oh God, no…Roy! Roy!” But the hand on his neck found no pulse. “You can’t die, oh please—”
A floorboard creaked.
She froze.
The killer was still here!
Either inside the house or on the porch.
Heart thundering in her ears, she tried her damned phone again. Come on, come on, she silently pleaded, listening for any sound, her gaze moving quickly around the room and to the doorway. If only there were a back door, a way to escape.
Another soft footstep. Leather sliding over wood.
Her insides turned to water.
She carefully reached into the purse, bloody fingers scrabbling for the pepper spray as she kept her gaze moving from the doorway to the two windows, to the mirror, to the reflection there of her own panicked face. She risked glancing down, found the spray and had the cannister out of her purse when she heard the footsteps again. Louder. Coming at her!
He knew where she was.
Get out, Eve, get out now!
She shot to her feet, adrenalin fueled by horror pushing her. She reached for the light switch, slapped it off. Darkness blinded.
She turned quickly, her shoes sliding in Roy’s blood. She fell noisily, biting back a scream, holding fast to the canister. Her leg scraped down the iron bedframe. Her head thudded against the wall. Pain exploded behind her eyes.
More footsteps!
Don’t pass out. For God’s sake, don’t lose consciousness!
She flung herself toward a window.
Pitched forward.
She saw him.
In the glass.
He was holding something in his hand. Pointing it at her.
She recognized him in a heartbeat.
Cole?
The man she loved?
Cole Dennis was going to shoot her?
NO!
Bam!
The noise slammed like a blow.
The muzzle blazed fire!
Glass shattered.
White-hot pain exploded in her head.
Her knees buckled. She crumpled to the floor. The dark room swirled around her, and Cole Dennis’s angry face was the last image burned into Eve’s brain.
CHAPTER 1
Three months later
“This is a big mistake, Eve. Big! You can’t leave yet; you’re not ready.” Anna Maria, in a bathrobe, fuzzy slippers, and no makeup, was chasing Eve down the driveway of her home.
“Watch me.” Eve wasn’t going to get into it with Anna again. Not now. It was morning, barely light, the street lamps still offering some bit of illumination as dawn crept down the manicured street of this suburb tucked between Marietta and Atlanta. Time to leave.
Holding a cigarette in one hand and a cup of sloshing coffee in the other, Anna somehow managed to keep up with her sister-in-law. “You’re not through with physical therapy, you can’t remember jack-shit about the night you were attacked, and for God’s sake, there’s a rumor, probably a good one, that Cole Dennis is going to be released. Did you hear me? The man you think tried to kill you is going to walk!”
At the mention of Cole’s name, Eve’s heart clutched. Just as it always did. And she ignored it. Just like she always did.
“We’ve had this argument a kazillion times. I need to get home.” Lugging a cat carrier, Eve made her way to her Camry as Samson, her long-haired stray, howled from within. “No matter what you think, you’re not dying,” she assured the unhappy animal as she scrounged in her purse for her keys with her free hand. The carrier bobbed wildly, and Samson, freaked out of his mind, hissed loudly. She placed the plastic crate on the driveway near the back tire of her car as she kept searching for the damned keys.
“Eve—”
“Don’t start.” Glancing up at her sister-in-law, Eve shook her head, short strands of hair brushing the back of her neck. “You know I have to leave.” She managed to slide her key ring from a side pocket, but as she did, her cell phone, tangled in the keys, popped out of the purse and dropped
