“If you scream, I’ll cut you.” He held a blade up to her face, letting her feel the cold steel against her cheek.
It was as if a dark hole had opened in the floor beneath her feet and her bones turned to liquid, pulling her into it. She couldn’t break free of his grip. Even if she’d been able to, she had locked the door after Spencer had gone and the key was on top of the cabinet across the other side of the room.
Should she defy this guy and cry out for Spencer? Even if he was close enough to the house to hear her, he was on the other side of that locked door, and this thug had a knife...
“We need to have a little talk.”
Was it her imagination, or was he trying to disguise his voice? That gruff, growling tone didn’t sound natural. She didn’t think she recognized him, but her nerves were stretched so thin she barely knew her own name.
He hauled her roughly through to the living room and pushed her down onto the sofa. It flashed through her mind that this attack could be unrelated to anything that had happened recently, that this intruder’s intentions were more sinister. Was she about to be subjected to a sexual assault?
Her cell phone dug into her thigh, reminding her of its presence, but she couldn’t think of a way to sneak it out of her pocket without the intruder noticing.
“You haven’t been listening to the warnings.” He was an imposing figure, looming over her in the darkness.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Although her voice wobbled slightly, it came out stronger than she expected. The fact that her mouth worked at all under the circumstances was a bonus.
He grinned. “Yeah. I don’t want to play that game. Let’s get straight to the point. We tried the car. We did the break-ins. You still keep poking your nose in and now you have your very own cop security guard hanging around. You, lady, just don’t know when to quit.”
His use of the words hanging around made her wonder if he knew Spencer was living with her. If he didn’t, he may not know just how close Spencer was at the moment. “Sergeant Colton wanted to make sure I was safe.”
“That sounds good, except we know the truth is slightly different, don’t we?” He leaned closer, catching hold of her chin and tilting her face upward. “The handsome cop is convinced that you are an eccentric who cries ‘poor me’ every chance she gets. He doesn’t want to take care of you. He’s staying close to stop you making up any more wild stories.”
His words tore into her stomach and took over the beat of her heart. She tried counting to five, forcing herself to find the energy to breathe.
It’s not true. But she knew it was. How many times had she noticed that odd response of Spencer’s? A curious nonreaction to things she’d said and done.
“Why would he think that?”
Her tormentor laughed. “Because we wanted him to.”
Gaslighting. Wasn’t that what they called it? Perhaps it wasn’t a classic case, since Katrina wasn’t doubting her own memory, but she had been painted as something other than herself in Spencer’s eyes. And the incident with Christie Foster had made her question her own recollection of events. Because of that, her sense of self had been damaged.
And Spencer ha
d believed it. The thought left her trembling. With him, she had begun to take that first step into the chasm between fear and trust and this was how he had repaid her. Just hours earlier, he had kissed her, and her treacherous body had responded as though he was the only man in the world.
She had no idea who this guy standing over her with a knife in his outstretched hand was, or whom he represented. When he said we, he could mean the AAG, or he might be talking about someone else. Maybe this was a favor for a friend. Spencer had said these things could escalate from low-level encounters. Right now, it didn’t matter. Someone had told Spencer that Katrina was unreliable. Instead of coming to her with that information and checking it out, he had accepted it was true.
All her life, she had known what it was like to be let down. Why should it surprise her, just because this time it was Spencer Colton who was responsible for her disillusionment? She needed to put that hurt behind her and move on. Because at the moment, she had a bigger problem to deal with.
As she slid her fingers down her side and into the pocket of her shorts, she wondered if this guy knew Spencer was close by. From Boris’s barking, it seemed likely that he’d gotten into the house through the backyard. That meant it was possible he hadn’t seen Spencer’s car parked out front.
She knew how to activate her cell’s emergency function. Whether she could do it without the aggressive guy standing inches away noticing was another question.
Keep him talking. Right. How was she supposed to do that? Talk about the weather? Ask about his family? What kind of music he liked?
“Who persuaded Sergeant Colton that I was making up the threats against me? Was it Aidan Hannant?”
He snorted. “That guy? He’s on his way out of town with his tail between his legs.”
It was an interesting piece of information. Clearly, whoever was behind all of this didn’t know that Hannant was in Mustang Valley General Hospital with a police guard on his door.
If she could trigger her phone’s emergency function, a prerecorded audio message warning that she was in immediate danger, and giving her precise location in GPS coordinates, would be sent automatically to two contacts. One of those contacts was Spencer and the other was Suzie. All she needed to do was press the power button on her cell three times in a row.
“So who did persuade him?”
With her heart almost pounding its way out of her chest, she got her finger onto the power button.