Mist hovered low across parts of the road while my headlights cut through the darkness.
By the time I finally spotted the cottage tucked deep in the woods, my nerves were stretched painfully tight. But then I saw her car in the driveway. Relief hit so fast it almost made me dizzy.
Okay. Good. She was home.
Maybe she really was sick. Maybe her phone died. Maybe?—
Maybe I was about to embarrass myself catastrophically by showing up at my nanny’s remote forest cottage because I’d realized I was in love with her.
Cool.
Very normal behavior.
I parked and climbed out quickly.
The cottage itself looked strangely ethereal in the dark. Ivy climbed the porch railings and herbs hung drying near one of the windows. It looked like something out of a fairy tale.
Or the exact setting where a handsome idiot got murdered in act two.
I knocked firmly. Nothing happened. Then I heard movement inside. The door opened, and every instinct in my body recoiled.
The man at the door was tall enough that I had to tilt my head to meet his eyes. He was so pale that the porch light looked sickly around him. Dark hair fell nearly to his waist, though most of it had been pulled back loosely, revealing severe features and piercing gray eyes that fixed onto me with unsettling calm.
He wore black.
For one irrational second, my brain actually thought,Oh no. Winnie has a type.
The man leaned one shoulder against the doorway casually. “Yes?”
Something about him felt deeply wrong. Predatory. Like standing too close to a tiger enclosure and suddenly realizing the glass looked thinner than expected.
I cleared my throat. “Hi. Uh. I’m looking for Winnie.”
His eyes moved over me slowly. “And you are?”
“I’m…” I stalled.
What exactly was I? Employer? Pathetic. Friend? Dishonest. Potential emotional disaster? Too accurate. “I work with her,” I finished weakly.
The man smiled faintly.
That somehow made everything worse.
“What do you want?”
“I just… She didn’t come into work today. She hasn’t answered her phone. I wanted to make sure she was okay.”
His expression remained unreadable. “How considerate of you.”
I frowned slightly. “Who are you?”
The smile widened a fraction. No answer. Instead, he just watched me in this deeply unpleasant way that made my skin crawl.
Movement behind him caught my attention. Winnie appeared in the hallway, and my stomach dropped immediately.
She looked wrong. She wasn’t herself. Her hair was disheveled and tangled, her face pale even by Winnie standards. Her eyes seemed unfocused. And when she saw me standing there, wild panic flared in her eyes. “Conrad.”
Relief crashed through me instantly anyway.
