“I got a package two days ago. I thought it was just a gift from Jack since the postage said Savannah, Georgia.” Tears fill my eyes. “But he wouldn’t scare me like this.”
“A stuffed cat?”
I nod. “It looks just like Axel, and the voice—he said that he thought it looked just like him.” Tears slip down my cheeks, the fear so very real. If this is a prank, it’s a good one. “He called him sweet Axel.”
My body trembles. “No one knows about Axel except you, my family, Tessa, Katelyn, Garrison, Ryker, Weston, and Jack.”
Since I don’t have social media, aside from my business page, there are no pictures of my cat online. He’s not in my website bio or anything.
“Where is it now?”
“Downstairs.” I take a deep breath to try to steady my nerves. The calmer I get, the more ridiculous I feel. This has to be a prank. Someone messing with me. “In the break room.”
He starts to pull away, but I get up, too. “I don’t want to be alone.”
Sawyer offers me a nod and threads his fingers through mine before retrieving his firearm with the other hand. As we move through my dark apartment, I watch the shadows, half expecting some faceless attacker to come lunging out at me.
When we emerge into the living room, I see that the front door has been kicked in, the wood jagged and splintered where it once connected to the hinges. “I’ll fix that tomorrow,” he says. “I didn’t have time to grab my key.”
It’s silly, but after he says it, I realize that he’s also shirtless and barefoot. “Did you run over here without shoes on?”
He glances down at his chest, then looks back at me. “You texted ‘Help.’ I wasn’t wasting a single second.”
Warmth spreads through me, momentarily easing the icy fear still clinging to me. Sawyer ran over here, barefoot and shirtless, because I needed him.
Tears burn in the corners of my eyes as he squeezes my hand. Together, we descend the stairs. My coffee shop is dark, and I hate that the place where I once felt more at home than anywhere now feels scary.
This is ridiculous. Get it together, Anastasia.
To prove to myself that I’m okay, I release Sawyer’s hand and flip on the light. It floods my empty shop. I remain where I am as Sawyer repeats what he did upstairs, checking the windows and every nook and cranny.
I turn toward the back—only to see that my back door has also been removed from its hinges.
“I’ll fix that, too,” he says quickly.
It’s funny that, in this moment when I feel so incredibly vulnerable, knowing what Sawyer went through to get to me fills me with an overwhelming sense of safety.
The front door opens, and my pulse kicks seconds before my brother comes through it, a weapon in his hand, his hazel eyes wide and furious.
“Ana—what happened?” he says when he sees me. My big brother eats up the distance between us in three long strides, and I wrap my arms around him. Aside from my dad, Zane has always felt like the safest place to be.
That is, until Sawyer.
“Someone’s been calling her late at night. She thought it was one of those automated calls until tonight,” Sawyer explains. “I ran the numbers, but since they were always a different one, coming from cell towers all over the world, I didn’t think much of it. I assumed they were overworked telemarketers.” He shakes his head angrily. “I should have known better.”
As he continues to relay what I told him earlier, I wrap my arms around myself, feeling utterly ridiculous that I got not one but two men out of bed in the middle of the night for nothing more than a phone call.
“You said the stuffed cat is back there?” Sawyer asks, gesturing toward the break room.
“Back here.” I move past them and through the back of my shop to where I’d set the cat. It’s sitting on the top of a shelf, now looking absolutely menacing despite being a cute orange stuffed animal.
“Did you like the gift?”
Sawyer sets his gun aside and lifts the cat. He turns it over slowly, then squeezes gently. “You have your knife on you?” Sawyer asks Zane. “Left mine at home.”
My brother reaches into his back pocket and offers Sawyer his Swiss Army knife.
Sawyer stabs it into the stuffed animal’s back, then slices down and reaches inside. He pulls out gobs of stuffing until?—
