Don't Make a Sound (Sawyer Brooks #1)(20)

She held on to the wall for support. She could see him. Smell him.

Sawyer fell back a step, nearly lost her footing. Breathe. Breathe, damn it!

Whole minutes passed before she was able to shake the memories away and stop her hands from trembling. She continued on, pausing when her hand grasped the doorknob. Her plan had been to stay the weekend. But already she saw no reason to be in River Rock. After the funeral, she would return to Harper’s home, tell her sister she’d been right, and ask her if she could stay there until she found an affordable apartment.

Sawyer opened the bedroom door, brushed her hand against the wall, and flipped the switch before stepping inside. The beat of her heart drummed faster. The bed, the dresser—everything looked the same. This was the first time she’d been in her old bedroom since Gramma came to live with them. Gramma had moved in to the cottage in the backyard, and her parents had never tried to stop Sawyer when she moved her things into the cottage and slept on a cot next to Gramma. The cottage had always smelled of roses growing right outside the window. But her bedroom had a dank, musty, unused smell to it.

The single bed with a patchwork quilt and flattened pillow had been pushed against the wall. There was also a dresser. Curtains with a washed-out, flowery print covered the small window above the dresser. A slumped-over Raggedy Ann doll sat on a straight-back chair in the corner of the room. She considered taking the quilt and pillow to the main room and sleeping on the couch.

You’re no longer a little girl. You’re in control now. You’re strong. You can do this.

She searched through her duffel bag, pulled out her camera, and scrolled through the digital pictures she’d taken at the murder scene. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she stared at the picture she’d taken of the living room. A woman’s coat had been tossed over the arm of the couch.

Had Kylie gotten home right before someone knocked on the door?

If the person didn’t have a key card, Kylie would have had to buzz them through, which meant Kylie would have been alerted. That told Sawyer that her killer had to have been someone Kylie knew. Maybe the killer had come home with her.

Another picture revealed a book on the floor. It had fallen on its spine, the pages open so that she was able to read the title page.

Hunted: A Jacqueline Carter Novel, signed by the author: “Kylie, the next drink is on me. Waylan Gage.”

Sawyer had heard of Gage. After writing for years, all the while struggling with depression and alcoholism, he’d managed to hit all the bestseller lists with Hunted.

She pulled out her phone and searched the internet for his name, then clicked on his website. The first thing that popped up was a list of dates and the cities he would be visiting during his latest book tour.

He’d already been to the Convention Center in Sacramento. She looked at the date and saw that he’d been at the convention, signing books on the same day that Kylie was murdered.

It was too late to call Palmer, but she would definitely tell him what she knew the next time she talked to him.

Her gaze shifted to the broken frame and the black-and-white photo on the floor next to the book. She zoomed in on the man in the picture, then clicked through the pictures until she found the one she’d taken of the man sitting in his truck in the parking lot. The young man in the black-and-white photo was definitely the same guy she’d seen crying.

Tired, she put her phone, along with the camera, back inside her bag, grabbed her sweatpants and T-shirt, and changed her clothes. She took her toiletries to the bathroom down the hall and brushed her teeth and washed her face.

Back in the bedroom, she shut off the light, climbed under the clean sheets, and rested her head on the pillow. Who had killed Kylie Hartford?

The boyfriend seemed the obvious culprit—too obvious. According to the neighbor, he’d spent more time in Kylie’s apartment than she had. If that were true, wouldn’t he have had time to plan? Judging by the photos, Sawyer would say this was a disorganized killing. From the looks of it, Kylie had been caught completely off guard. Would a distraught boyfriend have chased after her in a thin-walled apartment where people had seen him come and go?

As she lay there, thinking about Kylie’s last moments, unfamiliar noises drifted through the dark: a thump, a creak, footsteps? Her gaze sifted through moonlit shadows and landed on the doorknob. There was no lock on the door.

Was the knob moving, or was that her imagination?

To hell with it.

She pushed the covers off and got up, walked quietly across the room, and yanked open the door. She looked both ways.

Nobody was there. She inhaled.

After she closed the door, she picked up the chair with the Raggedy Ann doll and slid its wooden back under the knob. Satisfied that it would hold if someone tried to enter, she climbed back into bed, closed her eyes, and began counting backward from one hundred.





CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Fuck!” Malice said loud enough for everyone connected to the call to hear her.

“What happened?” Psycho asked.

“I was sitting in my car, waiting for Cleo to tase the son of a bitch so I could help her get him into the trunk. But she passed out, literally collapsed into his arms.”

“What now?” Psycho wanted to know.

Malice watched Brad Vicente’s BMW pull out of the parking lot. They had to act quickly. “Lily, are you there?”

“I’m here.”