Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(15)

Behavior that included a kiss.

She drives past her own house.

Maybe that’s for the best. If the bikers are following her, which she doubts, this gives her a chance to kill her headlights and double back. She’s made her way from the edge of the highway to her place in the dark plenty of times when she thought someone might be trailing her. Once her eyes adjust, it’s fairly easy. The line of mountains on the distant horizon is jagged enough that it’s often discernible against even the night sky, especially when there’s still a faint fringe of purple as there is now.

When the shadow of her house rises up out of the desert floor, she hits the garage door opener attached to her key ring. The light comes on inside, and she uses its bright glow to guide herself the rest of the way in. The garage isn’t covered by the security system, but any attempt to break in through the metal door would be more than visible in her headlights. Still, the minute it takes to get from her car to the alarm keypad next to the back door always leaves her feeling exposed.

Her Escape crosses the threshold. She turns on the headlights and hits the key fob. The garage door begins to descend.

Before stepping out, she scans the cement floors just to make sure no desert critters followed her in. She’s had enough contact with rattlers to know they just want to be left the hell alone. Unless you step on them. If you step on them, you’re screwed. If there’s one inside the garage with her, it’s because the tires dragged it in by mistake, in which case, it’s probably dying or in pieces.

There’s nothing in the garage with her. Just the ticking sounds of her cooling vehicle and the rattle and whine of the steel door descending behind her.

She’s home.

Safe.

And, man, does she have to pee. It’s either a result of her brush with the Sons of Anarchy or a side effect of the medication.

There’s a half bath right before the main hallway’s entrance to the kitchen. As soon as she sits down on the toilet, she realizes something feels wrong. It’s her pants. Their weight seems off. Something’s missing from the pockets.

Her phone. She hasn’t carried a purse in years, and she rarely visits town in anything other than blue jeans, so she usually tucks her phone in her front pocket to avoid sitting on it. But it’s not there. Her jeans feel light, and they slid too easily over her knees.

Did she leave it in the car?

She can’t remember having it since she wandered into Dylan’s office. She must have put it down on his desk. When she’d thought she heard it during their session, Dylan had told her the noise came from his and she needed to focus . . .

She’s not sure how to describe what she hears next.

Creak isn’t right, but it’s too half-hearted to be a footstep.

Movement.

There is movement somewhere inside her house, just outside the bathroom door she didn’t bother to lock.

And I don’t have my phone, she thinks. The same phone that would display an alert if someone messed with my alarm or, God forbid, managed to turn it off while I was gone.

Miraculously, she manages to finish peeing. But when she reaches for the toilet paper, her hand is shaking.

It feels as if a ghost has closed its fingers around the back of her neck. And she realizes that while she lives in a state of perpetual anxiety, and sometimes flat-out dread, it’s been a long time since she has been truly afraid. Not just afraid—terrified. And it’s physical, this feeling. A series of pulses traveling through her body. Like she can feel her heartbeat in her hands and feet.

The sound repeats. And the silence on either side of it is unmistakable—a silence that suggests restraint, human restraint. An effort to stay as quiet as possible. One of the bikers? Impossible. Even if they’d killed their headlights, there’s no way they could have followed her into the garage without her seeing them. Or hearing them.

But these sounds, they’re coming from the direction of the garage. Or one of the bedrooms between the bathroom and the garage.

Both her arms are tingling the same way her leg does when it goes to sleep. And yet some instinct is kicking in. Some instinct that tells her it’s best to pretend she hasn’t heard anything. Best to act as if nothing’s amiss. Then, as if she’s about to begin preparing dinner, she’ll make a beeline for the kitchen and the gun under the sink.

Everything is fine, she tells herself as she washes her hands. Her trembling hands.

She’s had physical responses to fear before, but never this strong. The tingling in her arms is almost painful now. Her hands shake as if there’s some disturbance inside the bones of her wrists.

Everything is fine, she tells herself again.

She opens the bathroom door, head bowed, as if she has no urge at all to look in either direction, as if all she wants to do is stroll into the kitchen and fix herself something to eat.

Everything is not fine, but you’re going to pretend it is until you can put a bullet in this bastard. Then things will be fine again.

It takes all the effort she has, but she forces herself to go to the fridge and take out a Diet Coke, because women who are afraid they’re about to be murdered don’t get themselves a Diet Coke. They don’t stand over the sink, taking a leisurely sip of their favorite soft drink while secretly gauging how many seconds it will take to pull their Beretta from under the cabinet at their legs. And this charade, she hopes, will give her an element of surprise.