A Flicker in the Dark(64)

The woman below my window is me.

Panic starts to surge through my chest as twelve-year-old me stares into the eyes of myself, twenty years older. They’re completely black, like the eyes of Bert Rhodes. I blink a few times and look down at the shovel in her hand, covered in a red liquid I somehow know in my gut to be blood. Slowly, a smile forms on her lips, and I break out into a scream.

My body shoots upright, and I’m covered in sweat, my screaming still ringing throughout the house. But then I realize—I’m not screaming. My mouth is open, panting, but there’s no sound coming out. The sound I’m hearing is coming from somewhere else; it’s a loud, screeching sound, almost like a siren.

It’s an alarm. It’s my alarm. My alarm is going off.

Suddenly, I remember Bert Rhodes. I remember him in my home, sticking sensors on my windows, pointing his drill in my direction. I remember his warning.

I never wondered what it was like to lose my life. I’m talking about taking one.

I fling myself from bed, hearing the frantic sound of footsteps downstairs. He’s probably trying to disable it, stop the ringing before coming upstairs and strangling the life from my lungs the same way he strangled those girls. I run toward the closet and fling open the door, my hands searching blindly across the floor for the box that holds Daniel’s gun. I’ve never used a gun. I have no idea how to use a gun. But it’s here, and it’s loaded, and as long as I can have it in my hands when Bert walks into my bedroom, I’ll feel like I have a fighting chance.

I’m flinging dirty clothes across the floor when I hear the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Come on, I whisper. Come on, where is it? I grab a couple of shoeboxes, opening them up before tossing them to the side when I see nothing but boots nestled inside. The footsteps are closer now, louder. The alarm is still blaring through the house. The neighbors are surely awake, I think. He can’t get away with this. He can’t kill me with the alarm going off like this. Still, I keep searching until my hands find another box pushed into the corner. I grab it, yank it closer, inspect it in my grip. It looks like a jewelry box—why would Daniel have a jewelry box? But it’s long, slender, about the right size for a gun, so I open the lid quickly, feeling the presence of a person just outside my closed door.

My breath catches in my throat as I look down at the box now opened in my lap. Inside, there is no gun, but something far more terrifying.

It’s a necklace with a long silver chain, a single pearl on the end, and three small diamonds clustered at the top.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN




Chloeeee.

I hear a voice outside my bedroom door, barely audible above the shrieking of the alarm. It’s calling my name, but my eyes are still glued to the box in my hands. The box I found pushed to the back of the closet. The box that holds Aubrey Gravino’s necklace draped gently inside. All of a sudden, the sounds swirling around me evaporate away and I’m twelve again, sitting in my parents’ bedroom, watching that tiny ballerina twirl. I can almost hear the chimes, that rhythmic lullaby lulling me into a trance as I stare at the pile of jewelry ripped from dead skin.

CHLOE!

My eyes glance up just as my bedroom door starts to creak open. Instinctively, I shut the box and slide it back into the closet, throwing a pile of clothes on top of it. I look around, looking for something, anything, to arm myself with when I see a man’s leg step into the bedroom, followed by a body. I’m so sure I’m about to see Bert Rhodes’s dead eyes and outstretched arms come barreling toward me that I barely even register Daniel’s face as he turns the corner and stares at me, huddled on the floor.

“Chloe, my God,” he says. “What are you doing?”

“Daniel?” I push myself up from the floor and start to run toward him until I stop in my tracks, remembering the necklace. Wondering how the hell that could have found its way into our closet unless someone put it there … and I know I didn’t put it there. I hesitate. “What are you doing here?”

“I called you,” he yells. “How do you turn this fucking thing off?”

I blink a few times before pushing past him and running down the stairs, pounding a string of numbers into the system and shutting off the alarm. The deafening siren has now been replaced with deafening silence, and I can feel Daniel behind me, staring at me from the stairs.

“Chloe,” he says. “What were you doing in the closet?”

“I was looking for the gun,” I whisper, too afraid to turn around. “I didn’t know you were coming home tonight. You said tomorrow.”

“I called you,” he says again. “Your phone was off. I left a message.”

I hear him walk down the stairs and make his way over to me. I know I should turn around; I know I should face him. But right now, I can’t look at him. I can’t bring myself to look at his expression because I’m too terrified of what it might reveal.

“I didn’t want to stay away all night,” he says. “I wanted to get home to you.”

I feel his arms snake around my waist, and I bite my lip as he pushes his nose into my shoulder, inhaling slowly before kissing the side of my neck. He smells … different. Like sweat mixed with honey and vanilla perfume.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he says. “I missed you.”