she said, her tone a little sharp, “I don’t want to inconvenience you any more. I’ll just deal with it tonight and wait for Mr. Messenger tomorrow.”
He straightened, pulling away from the car wall, and held out an arm so the elevator doors wouldn’t close. “I’m sorry?”
“Well, I can tell you’d rather be elsewhere. Clearly something about me repels you.”
Both his brows lifted. Then he astonished her with a laugh. “You’ve got that exactly backward.”
“What?” Now she felt confused.
“Nothing about you repels me,” he said flatly. “Quite the contrary. And I insist on checking out your apartment. Jude wants me to, I’m concerned about what you’re feeling, and if possible, I’d like to experience it, too. Unless you really do want to go back there by yourself tonight?”
Her jaw dropped a little. Had she totally misread him? His body language had definitely made her feel that he wanted to be away from her. But he’d told her the exact opposite was true. What was she to believe?
Finally, she managed a shrug and let him follow her to her door. Pat had recommended Jude Messenger, and Jude had vouched for Creed, so there was absolutely no reason on earth to suspect this man of anything except a desire to help her.
She must be too stressed, must be reading things wrong. Certainly she was short on sleep.
She swiped the key card at her door and pushed it open.
And the minute she stepped inside she felt it. Only now it was stronger than the sense of being watched. It was as if something dark loomed over her, threatening her. “Oh, God,” she whispered.
“Stay here,” Creed said. “Keep the door open.” He slipped past her into her condo.
As if she could have moved anyway. The sense of a presence overwhelmed her. The air thickened with menace, and it was stronger than she’d ever felt it before. She would not, could not, walk farther inside.
She waited with a hammering heart, straining to hear, but hearing nothing. Then, almost too quickly to be believed, Creed reappeared.
“Nothing?” she asked, knowing damn well it was something.
“I wouldn’t say that.” He pulled his cell phone from a belt clip and pressed a button. “Jude? That thing? It’s been here. Recently. Yes, I can smell it.”
“What thing?” Yvonne asked, barely able to whisper the words because her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t seem to get enough air.
Creed didn’t answer her. “Okay,” he said, then put away his phone. When he did, he looked at her.
“Can you handle a few more minutes?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to search your apartment.”
A shudder ripped through her. “For what? You’d have seen anyone who was there.”
“I need to look for some other stuff. And that brings me to your options.”
“What options? I don’t have any.” Some part of her hated the weakness and fear she heard in her own voice.
“You can stay at a hotel tonight, or you can stay at my place. I have a decent couch you can use. But I have to warn you, if you stay with me.”
“Warn me about what?” She was having trouble absorbing all this. What had he sensed? She needed answers. Her brain was still stumbling over the fact that he had smelled something, something he referred to as that thing. How could she decide what she should do tonight when she had no idea what she faced?
“I’m … ill,” he said. “My skin reacts badly to bright light. I won’t bore you with the medical stuff, but suffice it to say that at dawn I lock myself in my bedroom and I don’t come out again until dusk. I can’t. So if you stay with me, I can offer protection only for a few hours. After that, you can stay as long as you like but don’t come back here.”
She nodded slowly, feeling punched, her thoughts scrambling. She didn’t want to accept favors from Creed Preston—or anyone for that matter—but she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone given what she was feeling right now. What if this thing, whatever it was, could follow her?
Her mind stuttered to a halt, then focused on the one certainty in her life, the one thing she loved beyond all else. Her thoughts seized on it as an anchor, stilling. “Can I at least have my laptop? So I can work?”
“I’ll get it. Anything else?”
She thought of nightclothes, a change of clothing. Did she want him pawing through her things? But did she want to be stuck in what she was wearing forever? “I need to come in. I need a change of clothes.” She hated that she could hear fear and reluctance in her own voice. This was her own condo, for Pete’s sake. She couldn’t even begin to sort through the welter of emotions that reminder caused her. Afraid to go into her own home? Afraid to spend just a few minutes packing? But her feet felt glued to the floor.
He hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “No. I’ll get them. Trust me, I was married once, and had daughters, and I’ll treat your things with respect. And I won’t see anything I haven’t seen before.”
The thought of walking farther into that miasma, into that threatening heaviness, forced her answer. “There’s a suitcase on the shelf in the closet.”
He nodded. “Step outside. You’ll feel better.”
She followed his direction and discovered that indeed, just a few steps away from her door, she felt better. Now how was that possible? The question was almost enough to make her walk back into her apartment. Almost.
But the memory of the feeling that had slapped her the instant she crossed the threshold proved stronger than any desire to check it out. She knew she hadn’t imagined it. Her imagination ran almost entirely to the books she wrote, and rarely affected what she considered to be an otherwise pragmatic view of life.
At least she hoped it was. She hoped the fantasies she spun for her readers weren’t beginning to affect her brain.
No, of course they weren’t. For heaven’s sake, she knew the difference between her imagination and reality. The two only met on the pages on her computer screen.
Suddenly from within her condo, she heard a bang. Instantly she forgot everything else and started back in. One step. Two steps. Then she froze as a blackness seemed to wrap oily tendrils in her brain. No. No!
She tried to back up, but couldn’t. It was as if some force tried to drag her forward, deeper within her condo, away from the relative safety of the hall.
And that noise. Something not quite curiosity, something almost like compulsion, wanted to drag her toward it. Feeling almost like a stranger within her own head, she sought the only thing she could to break the spell or whatever it was. She called out, “Creed? What happened?”
Her voice sounded odd, as if it had emerged from the depths of the ocean. But that was impossible. Her ears hummed. Maybe the loud noise had dulled her hearing for a
