Slowly, carefully, quietly, I opened all the nightstand and vanity table drawers, rifled through all the clothes in her closet, and checked every single place where she might have hidden something that she didn’t want her big sister to see. But there was nothing. No hidden stashes of cigarettes, no drugs or alcohol, not even so much as an old-fashioned diary with a locked heart for a clasp. Elissa Daniels was exactly what she appeared to be in all the photos—a happy college girl with big plans, dreams, and hopes for her future.
A future that was rapidly running out unless I found her.
Frustrated, I plopped down on her bed and looked around the room again, but everything was the same as before. Clothes, books, furniture. Nothing that would tell me anything about Elissa that I didn’t already know and absolutely nothing that would lead me to her kidnapper—
Rattle-rattle.
The sound was soft, no louder than a whisper. But as an assassin, I’d slipped into enough places to recognize the sound of someone jimmying a lock.
Someone was breaking into Jade’s house.
14
In an instant, I was up off the bed, a knife in my hand. I hurried over to the open bedroom door and peered out into the hallway beyond. I looked toward the front of the house, but the office was dark and still.
Crunch-crunch.
Another sound came from the back of the house, but it wasn’t the doorknob turning again. No, this sounded more like someone stepping on broken glass—like the shards that littered the kitchen floor where Jade had dropped her drink earlier.
I slipped out of Elissa’s room and headed in that direction, tiptoeing past the bedroom where Jade was still sleeping. I didn’t know who might be breaking into her house, but she’d been through enough already, and she needed her rest. I just hoped that I could kill the intruder quietly enough not to wake her up—
Creak.
Of course, I stepped on a loose floorboard, one that seemed to screech as loudly as an owl in the dark quiet. I winced, realizing that I’d lost the element of surprise, and hurried on.
I reached the end of the hallway and stopped, peering into the kitchen beyond. A nightlight was plugged into an outlet on the kitchen counter, and the soft pink glow illuminated the area, including the scattered shards in front of the glass double doors that took up the back wall.
But no one was there.
No one was in the kitchen. No cat burglar dressed all in black, no low-level thug sporting a cheap suit and a cheaper gun, no guy wearing a hockey mask and clutching an overly large knife.
So who—or what—had made that telltale noise?
My knife still in my hand, I sidled over to the doors and looked out through the glass—
Rattle-rattle.
I froze at the sound, and it took me a second to realize that one of the doors was cracked open. The winter wind gusted in through the opening, making the glass rattle in its frame and sliding some of the broken shards across the floor. Well, that explained the noises.
Still, I frowned. I was almost certain that the door had been closed and locked when Jade and I were in the kitchen earlier, but now here it was, standing open. Perhaps someone had gotten inside after all and had been scared off when I stepped on that loose floorboard. Only one way to find out. I eased the door open, wincing at the rattle-rattle that it made, and slipped outside.
The doors opened onto a stone patio, which gave way to a large backyard, before the woods took over fifty feet away. I slipped off the patio and crouched down in the shadows at the corner of the house. The moon and stars shone big and bright in the night sky, painting everything a ghostly silver, from the white wicker patio furniture, to the short, stubby grass, to the tops of the bare, skeletal trees in the distance. A heavy frost had already crusted the ground, gleaming like metallic snow, and the cold wind cut through my clothes, chilling me from head to toe.
I scanned the patio, the yard, and the woods beyond, but I didn’t see or hear anything, not so much as a stray cat padding through the grass, searching for shelter for the night. In the distance, the houses on either side of Jade’s were also dark, and no cars rumbled down the street. Everyone was in bed, except for me.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel like someone was here, watching me.
It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. No trampled patches of grass, no man-shaped shadows that shouldn’t be here, not even someone’s breath steaming in the chilly night air. But an uneasy finger of dread crept down my spine all the same, and I pressed my back up against the wall so that no one could sneak up on me from behind and take me by surprise.
My knife still in my hand, I held my position and waited, scanning the landscape again. One minute passed, then two, then three, and nothing moved or stirred.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was out here—maybe even the Dollmaker himself.
It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. If the killer had Elissa, then he had her purse, driver’s license, address, phone, everything. Maybe creeping around his victims’ houses and witnessing the anguish of their loved ones gave him another sick thrill. Maybe it was all part of his twisted ritual. Or maybe he was here for me, since he’d drawn my spider runes on his latest victim.
I didn’t know, but if the Dollmaker was here, I was going to end him. So I tightened my grip on my knife and waited—just waited. All he had to do was move one fucking inch, make one more fucking sound, and he’d be mine.
But nothing happened.
No movement, no noises, nothing.
After about five minutes, even that creepy feeling of being watched faded away. If the Dollmaker—or anyone else—had been here, he was gone now, and I was all alone. I scanned the yard one more time, but it was as cold and empty as before, so I finally admitted defeat, went back inside the house, and locked the kitchen door behind me.
? ? ?
I spent the next several minutes cleaning up the broken glass and liquid from Jade’s dropped drink. I also lined up all the kitchen chairs in a row in front of the glass doors, creating a crude barricade. The whole time, I kept one eye on the backyard, but it remained as empty as before.
Once that was done, there was nothing more I could do tonight, so I curled up on a couch in the den, which was located off the kitchen, and slid one of my knives under my pillow. If the Dollmaker or anyone else tried to break into Jade’s house again tonight, I would hear him and respond accordingly.
I grabbed a fleece blanket from the back of the couch, covered myself up with it, and settled down to get some sleep. Even though it had been a long, long day with all sorts of emotional ups and downs, I still had trouble falling asleep. The image of those blood-red spider runes loomed in my mind, making me toss and turn.
Eventually, my exhaustion caught up with me, the same way it had caught up with Jade, and I fell asleep. Although sometime after that, the blackness receded, and I found myself in the land of dreams, memories, and nightmares from my past . . .
My world was on fire.