Who grabbed a book with a grasp hard enough to break a wrist?
But she’d wanted to believe him, she guessed. Because she’d stayed. She’d been a stay-at-home wife back then and had let him take her to the emergency room, telling the doctors that he’d accidentally broken her wrist as he saved her from tumbling down the stairs.
Once again he’d come out the hero.
And now, here she was, in the middle of the night, pondering a book choice and still looking over her shoulder for Steve. She’d come full circle.
But this time she was going to make a different choice. She was going to choose a book, instead of giving them up.
Studying the spines, she pulled one out, returned it and then pulled out another. There were so many choices.
She heard something. Heart pounding, she froze, trying to ascertain just where the sound had come from.
Outside? Or did the noise come from within the house?
It had sounded like a scrape. Like metal against wood. A window jamb being jarred?
Slowly, Jenna let go of the book she’d been about to pull out and turned, looking for signs of anything amiss.
Both of her housemates’ doors were closed. She prayed the women were safe behind them.
Had Steve found her? Had he grown bold enough to breach a shelter in his quest to have her?
And then she heard it again. Definitely a scraping sound. Coming from outside. As if someone was trying to get in.
The inside grounds of The Lemonade Stand were completely secure, accessible only by personnel with individual key cards for tracking purposes. There were also security locks and alarms on all of the windows and doors.
None of which would stop a man like Steve Smith, who knew all of the devices on the market and how to manipulate them. How else did you rescue a young victim from a pedophile kidnapper?
Steve would know how to disarm the devices.
But how had he gotten inside the grounds? Even he wasn’t able to scale ten-foot high walls and become invisible to the security cameras set up all over the grounds. Those cameras were manned twenty-four hours by the police.
And there were four security guards on duty at all times, too.
As she moved toward the kitchen, the sound came again. Not from that direction, but as if it was coming from Carly’s suite. Heading quickly toward that part of the bungalow, she stopped only long enough to pull her cell phone out of her bra and send a 911 call to the Stand’s emergency broadcast line. She gave only their bungalow number before hanging up to lessen her chance of being overheard.
Then, without waiting for help, fearing that Steve would get inside and hurt Carly, she quietly opened the younger woman’s door, entering slowly.
Carly was wide-awake, frozen in her bed, staring at Jenna as she came in.
The scraping sound came again, loud, now, and was clearly coming from the window.
Dropping down to her hands and knees, Jenna made her way to the side of the bed opposite the window.
“Slide out of bed,” she whispered to Carly. “I’ll get in.”
“What?” Carly mouthed the word. “No.”
“He’s not coming for you,” she whispered as fiercely as she could without making noise. “It’s me he wants. Get out of here, now. I’ve already called for help. They’ll probably be here before he gets inside, but just in case, go to Latoya’s room and stay there with her. Quickly.” She pulled at Carly’s wrist just enough to get the girl moving.
Within seconds, Carly was out of the room, closing the door behind her, and Jenna, in the nightgown she’d borrowed from the clothing room, was lying beneath the sheet and comforter on Carly’s bed.
Waiting.
I should be afraid, she thought.
But she wasn’t.