* * * *
Belle woke from her dream, certain that she was no longer alone in the house. Her hands shook. Her heart drummed in her chest. Pure fear threatened to choke her.
Move! Don’t just lay here.
As quietly as she could, she kicked the covers away and swung her feet, moving slowly so the wooden floors wouldn’t creak. Belle shivered with every step, but forced herself to keep moving. When had the room gotten so cold? She wrapped her arms around herself and she could practically see her breath, as though the air around her was freezing. She’d turned the ancient heater on a few hours ago. Had it stopped working?
In the short time she’d been in this house, Belle had quickly realized that she had plumbing, electrical, and flooring problems. Now she could add the HVAC unit to that long, expensive list. That was before she tackled updating the décor.
Something loud banged downstairs, startling her. She shrieked. Her hands shook in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. Fear iced her veins. Someone was in the house.
Where the hell had she put her cell phone? Sir was suddenly right at her heels, yipping up at her. Did he think it was play time?
“Keep quiet,” she hissed under her breath as she remembered she’d left her new cell phone on the charger downstairs since that seemed to be one of the few electrical sockets currently functioning. She’d decided to find the fuse box in the morning and see if she could trip the breakers and get some of the upstairs sockets operational. She’d been too tired to deal with it before going to bed.
The moment her head had hit the pillow, she’d fallen into a deep, thick slumber where she’d had horrible nightmares of dead women swinging from the rafters of her house. Different girls in different eras, but all hanged in the same room from the same beam. Creepy. She’d let Gates’s warning get into her head. Even now, Belle tried to shake away the vestiges of the dreams. They had seemed so real to her.
The lawyer had said young women committed suicide in this house. Her dream had clearly shown a murder. Belle really hoped she hadn’t gotten her grandmother’s gift. She hoped even more fervently that she hadn’t dreamed about her own violent end.
Was someone really in her house or was she just freaked out? Who would have broken in? Squatters? The place had been vacant so long maybe some of the homeless thought they could just move in. Despite what Mr. Gates had suggested, it couldn’t really be ghosts.
She tiptoed through the bedroom and toward the stairs, trying to control her runaway breathing. Until she reached her phone, she didn’t have a way to call 911. Right now, she didn’t even have a weapon to fight off an intruder. What the hell was she going to do? What time was it? She wished she knew if there was any chance that there were still people on the street outside to hear her call for help.
Belle paused, trying to decide if she should risk going for her phone or just get out of the house. Then she realized that everything around her had gone quiet. She didn’t hear footsteps, per se. She didn’t see shadows or movement, but every creak and groan of the stairs brought fresh terror. Was someone here?
Maybe she really was just overreacting because the dreams had provoked her imagination. They’d started as soon as she closed her eyes. One vivid nightmare bled into the next in a terrible montage.
Helplessly, Belle had watched pretty young women being pulled through the house, screeching and pleading and fighting with every step. Each had been utterly helpless to stop a noose from winding around her neck before a dark figure hauled them high up the stairs. Finally, the assailant tightened the rope around the poor women’s throats and shoved them over the banister, leaving them to dangle to their death.
As the last had been pushed, her neck broke. A jarring crack had jolted Belle awake.
Except that noise hadn’t been a byproduct of her dream. Had it? She’d heard another sound awfully like it since she crept from her bed.
Even if the noise had been real, that didn’t mean someone had broken in. Old homes shifted and groaned. She had to get used to that fact. Her newish apartment in Chicago hadn’t been noisy until the middle school kid living with his single mom above her had taken up the sax.
At the top of the stairs—the very stairs she’d seen in her dream—was a small umbrella holder. She’d noticed her grandmother’s canes stashed there earlier in the day and she inched one out of the little bucket triumphantly. At least now she had some kind of weapon.
Sir barked again.
“Shh.” She tried to shush him, but if she died because her puppy couldn’t stay quiet, she was going to kill Kinley. She just was.
She managed to sneak to the first floor, wincing with each step down. Just another few tiptoes, and she would have her phone in hand. If she was simply hearing things, who cared? She was terrified, and if the police laughed at her, so be it. She wasn’t going to put off calling for help just because she wasn’t absolutely positive she was about to be killed.
As her eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light filtering into the house from outside, she made out the small table in the kitchen where she’d stashed her phone. Ten steps to the table, then she could dash out the servant’s door and call for help. It didn’t matter that she was in her nightgown. This was New Orleans. Surely they’d seen freakier things than a woman in her PJs emblazoned with martini glasses and shoes all over it, decorated with the words Girls Night In across her boobs.
Once she was on the street, she wouldn’t be alone, she prayed.
She was almost to the phone when the light over the back door flickered on, pouring light through the big kitchen window and blinding her for a moment.
Then she felt something—or someone—brush past her. Not around her ankles. Sir couldn’t stir the air like that. No, this had been done by something terribly near her torso.
Belle screamed, the sound coming from deep in her gut. There was another loud crash, then something that sounded like metal wrenching, then a splintering sound. Sir barked madly, placing his little body in front of hers with as much of a menacing growl as four pounds of canine could manage.
Acting on pure instinct, Belle swung out, hefting the cane and trying desperately to whack whoever was coming after her.
“Belle, baby, stop,” a familiar masculine voice commanded. Suddenly, warm, strong arms wrapped around her. “It’s all right. It’s just me.”
Tate? When had he gotten here? How had he found her? Belle didn’t care. She threw her arms around him, taking in his familiar scent, his comfort. His big body was warm and safe against hers.
“Let’s go check the rest of the house to see if there’s any sign of an intruder.” Kellan brushed past her, leading Eric along. “Tate, don’t take your eyes off her. If you see anything out of place, beat the shit out of it.”
After a moment of fumbling against the wall, light flooded the L-shaped kitchen, and she could see again.
Tate’s arms tightened around her. “Baby, what happened? You screamed, and we could hear you from outside.”
“I think someone might have been in the house.” Her words shook. Now that she knew she was safe, the adrenaline bled from her veins, leaving her weak with relief. “We should call the police.”
Though she didn’t know what they could tell her at this point. Whether there’d been some forced entry and where? Maybe she could hope for prints. Or maybe they would tell her there was no sign of anything other than her overactive imagination.
Kellan walked back in the room. “It was just the screen banging open and shut with the wind. Looks like it’s bent and the latch is broken. The door itself was locked but the screen made a hell of a lot of noise. I’ll jimmy it so it will stay secure for tonight.”