Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96206 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96206 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
As she dashed through the kitchen, she caught sight of the intruder—a man in a ski mask stomping toward the door, gun in hand. Terror iced her veins. As she feared, this wasn’t a simple burglar looking for jewelry or cool electronics he could fence. He was armed and furious.
Laila managed to crouch down before he caught sight of her, but the sudden blast of a gunshot, followed by the shattering of glass, had her shrieking involuntarily and clinging to whatever shadows she could find in the morning light.
As the man stepped through the wide-open window, Laila raced to Trees’s bedroom, praying she hadn’t been spotted, and eased the door shut behind her. She only had one possible hope of staying unharmed now.
Shaking from head to toe, she fought to catch her breath as she crept into Trees’s closet and shoved aside his clothes. The keypad to his panic room and dungeon gleamed in the semi-dark. The code. She’d seen him punch it in. And she’d committed it to memory, just in case.
Since the safe house she’d shared with her sister and her nephew in St. Louis had been breached months ago, she’d plotted escape routes everywhere she went. The grocery store. The mall. The movies. And especially anywhere she slept.
But she’d felt so safe with Trees. Oh, he’d terrified her since he could make her body crave things that unsettled her and make her heart ache in ways that unraveled her. But he’d given her a sense of security—one she hadn’t had for nearly a decade. She’d rationalized that no one would think to look for her in the middle of Nowhere, Louisiana, out on property that had every security precaution imaginable. So she had gotten complacent. She hadn’t planned an escape route. Laila hadn’t thought she would need one.
What a horrible time to realize she’d been wrong.
She stared at the keypad, dragging in ragged breaths that sounded way too loud in her ears, as her thoughts raced. She knew the damn code. Why couldn’t she remember it?
Taking a minute—and a risk—Laila closed her eyes, forced her respiration to slow, and pictured Trees in front of his panel, punching in the numbers to his underground lair.
The digits swam though her head as another gunshot, this one inside the house, disturbed the air. She bit her lip to hold in a scream. Then she heard footsteps tromping through the place. She had to reach the panic room before the intruder found her.
Finally, she recalled the numbers and lifted her fingers to the buttons, but the whine of electronic devices signaled that the prowler had cut the power.
Oh, god. How would she access the panic room when the panel she needed to open the door was dead?
The worry had barely crossed her mind when electronic devices all over the house began to clink and chime on again. The panel in front of her lit up once more, and she almost cried with relief. Of course Trees would have a generator. In his hidden room, the man kept years’ worth of freeze-dried and canned food. It stood to reason he was prepared for any eventuality, including power loss.
As the intruder’s footsteps approached the bedroom, she quickly punched in the code with trembling fingers. A low, humming buzz warned her that her first fumbled attempt was wrong. Panic ratcheted up. She almost started hyperventilating. She forced herself to be calm and tried again.
Her finger pressed the last number as she heard the squeak of Trees’s bedroom door open. Footsteps paused inside. The opening to the panic room appeared with a whisper. Relief swept over Laila as she squeezed through the crack, moved Trees’s clothes to cover the panel again, and eased the door shut—just as the closet door jerked open.
Her hammering heart chugged as fast as her runaway thoughts. What if the intruder had heard her? Or saw Trees’s clothes swinging on their hangers or…any of the other hundred things she could think that would tell him he wasn’t alone in the house?
Seconds ticked by. With her hand pressed against her rattling chest, she stood frozen, not even daring to creep down the stairs. Since she couldn’t risk turning on a light, she closed her eyes and tried to breathe through the suffocating darkness.
Finally, she heard a door slam and his stomping footsteps retreat to the kitchen, where he banged cabinets and broke glass. With every sound, Laila felt this man’s rage, and she felt horrible for Trees. He wasn’t here to defend his house. He’d likely moved away from the city to avoid crime and people, for privacy and peace.
That was all being defiled and defaced now, because of her.
The sounds crossed the house, getting fainter as he moved farther away, but no less violent. Then she heard more gunfire—multiple blasts. Whoever was above her clearly had an agenda. Destroying Trees’s house wasn’t enough for him. He wanted blood.