Okay, then. Why wasn’t the thermostat keeping up? “Great.” Just what she needed. She made a mental note to call someone to fix it in the morning. She’d just double up on blankets tonight.
In the den, she stopped, goose bumps pebbling her skin—and not from the chill in the air. The lamp on the end table next to the sofa glowed with a soft light, inviting her to snuggle under a blanket and soak in the warmth and relaxation. So why was the hair on the back of her neck on end?
She looked at the clothes on her love seat.
They were . . . wrong.
She’d done the laundry yesterday, and while she’d been too tired to put it away, she’d folded everything. Neatly.
Now, they were not so neat.
Not exactly in disarray, but . . . moved.
Definitely moved.
With dread curling in the pit of her stomach, she crept to the entrance of the hallway that led to the back of the house. Her eyes traveled to the end where her bedroom and guest room were.
Her bedroom door was cracked, not wide open like she usually left it. Now the alarm crawled up her spine and settled at the base of her neck.
Keeping her eyes on the crack, she backed up until she had to round the corner into the den. She scanned the room once more while aiming for the kitchen.
Wait a minute. Her alarm had still been armed. She’d had to punch in the code to turn it off. She’d also reset it. Relief swept over her.
For a moment.
It faded when she noticed the picture on the mantel was too close to the edge.
Pressing a hand to her belly, trying to calm the roiling ball of nerves and rising fear, she strode to the kitchen, grabbed the box of cash from the top shelf over the glasses, then opened the second drawer.
She withdrew the Glock, checked it, then dropped an extra magazine into her purse.
Get out. Get out, get out!
Her second weapon was in the nightstand next to her bed. In the bedroom she wasn’t going into.
More chills skittered up her spine.
Call the cops and get out.
Overreacting? Her gaze went back to the clothes on the sofa. The picture on the mantel. She couldn’t chance it. While the alarm system and common sense said one thing, her nerves and churning stomach said another. And she’d always had pretty good instincts.
She kept the gun close and ready while she grabbed her purse. She’d call 911 when she was safely locked in her car. Once she had her phone in her hand, she turned, and her eyes landed on the picture on the refrigerator of her, Sarah, Ava, Kat, and Brooke.
A little red dot had been drawn on each of their foreheads.
Her blood stilled.
Her breathing hitched.
Heart pounding, Heather grabbed her keys, kept a firm grip on her Glock, and headed for her garage.
It had been a week since anyone had heard from Heather, and Travis was about to come out of his skin with worry. They all were. She’d sent a group text saying she needed to get away for a while and would be in touch later.
Heather
Don’t worry. I’m fine. Or will be. You all may be in danger because of me. Please watch your backs. Talk soon. Stay safe.
Her supervisor at work had gotten a voice mail with a message requesting an emergency leave of absence. Then she’d shut off her phone and . . . disappeared.
Brooke had touched base with all of them to let them know she was looking for Heather in all the places she could think Heather might go and would be in touch as soon as she learned where she was.
Four hours after a fruitless search, she’d called each of them and together, Travis, Asher, Gavin, Sarah, and, and Caden, an FBI Special Agent, had gone into “Find Heather” mode. The few leads they followed had turned into dead ends.
Then twenty minutes ago, Caden had called Travis with news that he’d located Heather and had gotten eyes on her. “She’s in Sunrise, North Carolina. A little town that’s barely a dot on the map. I didn’t speak to her,” Caden said. “I didn’t want her to know she’d been found and give her a chance to run again, should she be angry that I tracked her down. She has a room at a little hotel that she paid cash for, but, as far as I could tell, she looked physically fine.”
“She’s not fine,” Brooke muttered after Travis and the others gathered at Brooke’s home. “She’s being Heather. She thinks she’s protecting us by disappearing. That’s the only thing that text can mean. I tried tracking her cell phone and got nothing.”
“Caden found out she withdrew the ATM’s daily limit two days before our party and then once again at 2:00 a.m. the night she disappeared,” Asher said.
“Heather must have had a plan for what she’d do if the stalker escalated,” Brooke said. “The fact that she dropped off the radar so quickly says a lot.”
“Sounds like her,” Travis muttered.
Sarah sipped her bottle of water and frowned. “So, how did Caden finally find her?”
Travis scrubbed a palm down his cheek. “Apparently, she drove to the hospital and Ubered to a rental car place. What took Caden so long was locating her vehicle, because she parked in one of the patient lots. Once he had that, he used hospital security footage to see her get into another vehicle, which turned out to be an Uber. He got the plate, then the drop-off location from the driver.”
“Which was the rental car place,” Sarah said.
“Yes. And from there it was easy peasy. She used a prepaid debit card, so there wasn’t any kind of hit on her credit cards.”
Brooke frowned. “And then drove off completely anonymous. So . . . how?”
“Nope, not anonymous. The car rental place has GPS trackers on their vehicles. He simply followed it to the little town of Sunrise, North Carolina.”
“Ah,” Brooke said, “of course.”
“Well, if Caden found her and she seems to be fine, I have a bone to pick with her,” Sarah said, cheeks flushed and eyes flashing. “I can’t believe she’d do this to us.”
Travis shook his head. “Come on, y’all. You know she wouldn’t pull this kind of stunt without having a really good reason.”
“She’s hiding from her stalker and thinks she’s protecting us at the same time,” Brooke said, her voice soft.
“But why run?” Sarah asked. “Why not just ask us for help?”
“Heather?” Brooke scoffed with a raised brow. “Seriously? Have you met her? When has she ever asked for help?”
Sarah grimaced. “I know, but I would have thought we were past all that.”
Brooke tapped her lips. “No, she won’t ask for help if she thinks it’ll put us in danger. Actually, she probably wouldn’t ask for help regardless. She’s so used to handling things on her own and being in control, she doesn’t know how to do things any other way.”
“Well, it’s time for her to understand what it means to have friends,” Travis said, “people who care about her and won’t let her leave us in the dust.”
Brooke stood and paced to the mantel to rearrange pictures that didn’t need rearranging, then back. “I think we can agree that the withdrawal of the money two days before she disappeared means she was secretly afraid she might need it.”
The others nodded.
“The fact that she disappeared means something happened after she got home that night.”