Willow had stopped growling. She had positioned herself between Elsie and the door. To move anywhere else in the house would put them both in even more danger. So she waited.
A creak on the floorboards, and Elsie was certain the sound was moving away from her. She risked tiptoeing back toward the bedside table and grabbed her phone. Shielding the brightness of the screen from the doorway, she texted Lindsay.
Someone’s inside my house. Going to try to call 911.
Then she pressed the numbers 9-1—
Creaking. Closer.
She pressed another 1, then set the phone facedown.
“911, what’s your emergency?...911...what’s...?” The voice was muffled by the carpet, then by the pillow Elsie dropped on top of it.
“Stop hiding, Elsie. We were always going to find you. You were never supposed to survive. It’s time to stop hiding now.” The voice was a man’s. Low, rough, nondescript.
No one she recognized.
Willow leaned forward in the darkness, and when Elsie reached out a hand, she could feel the dog’s body begin to shake.
Elsie took a slow breath in. Let it out.
Willow yelped.
Elsie tried to run, but it was too late. Hands clasped her face. She fought, struggled, until they moved to her neck, started to tighten. She let out a scream.
Snarling. Growling.
This time it was the intruder who yelped, his hands coming loose from Elsie’s neck. Willow, trained in protection as well as search and rescue, was doing well.
But Elsie’s neck throbbed and panic nearly paralyzed her. Willow might be trained for this, but she wasn’t.
Please let 911 have sent someone on the way... She prayed, for the first time she could remember, and continued to fight against the darkness, scrambling away from the intruder and hoping she’d be able to hide from him until help arrived.
Wyatt listened to the dispatcher’s voice on the radio as he finished off a bowl of after-dinner cereal. Working as a contract pilot for the Alaska State Troopers and several other organizations meant that it was useful to know what was happening in the area. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything else going on. It was listen to the radio or sit on the couch doing nothing. Eat. Sleep. Work. He needed to get a life. At least, that was what his sister told him every time they talked. She didn’t understand that he couldn’t risk going back to his old life, partying, only caring about himself. It was easier to just...be alone.
“But maybe I need a few friends or a hobby or something,” he said as he carried his bowl to the sink. There had to be a balance between who he’d been in high school and the decade beyond and...this. He was thirty-one and living like an eighty-year-old hermit.
Sven, his massive brown malamute, groaned from his place on the couch.
“Yeah, you’re my friend, I know.”
He could have sworn the dog rolled his eyes as he flopped onto his other side, leaving another patch of dog hair on the couch. Eat. Sleep. Work. Clean up after his dog. That was a more accurate summary of Wyatt’s life.
The radio crackled again.
Female resident reporting distress. West side of the bay, Destruction Point...
Wyatt sat up straighter.
Elsie.
Surely not, he tried to tell himself as he hurried from the couch to pull on his boots and jacket. Behind him, Sven grumbled with interest.
“You have to stay. I’ll be back soon.” His first thought had been for Elsie, but it could just as likely be one of the older retirees who lived out that way. Still, his sister’s friendship with Elsie made her come to mind first. No matter who was in trouble, Wyatt knew it was likely he could beat the police there. Besides, if there was some kind of scale, Wyatt could use as many good deeds tipping out his previous bad ones as possible.
He was out the door and to his dock in seconds. The boat roared to life without issue—something that couldn’t always be said for it—and he started off across the bay. It wasn’t a wide body of water, just enough to be separated from the main part of town, functionally speaking. He tried to breathe deeply as he navigated the waves. The ocean wasn’t too rough tonight, but the spray drenched the bow of his boat as he cut across the water as fast as he dared in the growing darkness.
Elsie’s cabin stood just at the edge of the woods, close enough to have an unobstructed view of the ocean, but far enough away that even the most dramatic tides didn’t reach it. He thought he remembered Lindsay telling him once that the cabin was a century old. He couldn’t imagine building something, doing something, that would last that long. Her cabin was someone’s legacy, tangible and still standing. Did anything in his life have half a chance of outliving him, besides maybe the terrible reputation he’d worked to earn in his younger years for going through women and alcohol like a chain-smoker went through cigarettes?
Forcing himself away from that thought spiral, he beached the boat, tied it down and hurried to her cabin.
The front door was ajar. He crept inside, wishing he’d taken time to grab a weapon, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly when he left. Hopefully the years he’d spent in outdoor pursuits had honed his muscles enough that he could still hold his own in a fight. He hadn’t been in one in half a decade and had never thought he’d need the skills again. Wyatt sure hoped they’d show up for him if he needed them now.
Indecision gripped him as he stood still, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. Should he call out to her? Or try to surprise whoever was in the house?
Because the fact that 911 had been called for someone in this area, added to the fact that her door had been opened... Wyatt no longer thought he was overreacting. Making a split-second decision, he went with this second option, moving forward slowly, conscious of how easy it would be to step in such a way that the old wooden floor creaked under his steps.
“Where are you?” a voice called out, drawing out the vowels in a way that put Wyatt in mind of childhood nightmares.
Shivers chased down his spine. This was more than a random occurrence, and that thought caused the terror in his stomach to turn cold and icy.
Rather than focus on how it made him feel, he moved toward the voice. The cabin didn’t look big from the outside, but the layout made the most of the space, rooms connecting to each other in a way that older settlers in Alaska had been fond of. Many of these cabins had loft areas, too—was that where Elsie’s bedroom would be? Chances were good she’d been asleep when someone broke in...
He moved into another room, movement up ahead catching his attention. A silhouette that sent shivers up his spine. Someone was stalking her, hunting her in her own house.
Why? Who?
No time. He had to stop them.
