Now, the house was quiet, and that was what mattered.
I stepped out into the hall, ignoring the other bedroom doors on this floor. I already knew they’d still be locked.
I went down the stairs slowly, placing each foot carefully, and still managed to slam my toe into a small cabinet at the bottom.
The pain shot up my leg so fast I nearly yelped.
“Son of a—” I hissed under my breath, hopping once on the other foot. My whole body went rigid as I listened.
Nothing. I exhaled shakily and forced myself to stand still.
I flexed my toes inside my slipper, which did absolutely nothing to help, and continued toward the kitchen with the faintest limp.
There was a door just past it. It looked newer than the rest, the frame reinforced. A small keypad sat beside it, with no doorknob in sight.
I’d noticed it on my first night here when someone came out of it, though I couldn’t tell if it had been Nico or Tony, whom I still hadn’t met.
I wasn’t exactly a tech guy, but I wasn’t blind either.
I’d saw the cameras outside when they first brought me here. Inside, the living room had been full of complicated wiring and more equipment than a normal house needed.
If my hunch was right, Tony and Nico weren’t just regular pack members. They probably had access to Pecan Pines’ security systems, patrol routes, camera feeds, maybe even internal communications.
If I could get even one piece of that, would that be enough? Enough to finally be done with all this?
The thought tightened my chest. Screw laying low and earning their trust. If I could get what Daniel needed now?—
I leaned in and pressed my ear lightly against the door.
At first, I heard nothing. Then a faint, muffled sound, like the low whirr of a machine.
It carried strangely, hollow and distant, as if it wasn’t coming from a single small room behind the door at all, as if the space stretched farther than it should.
Was it leading to a basement?
My pulse picked up. I shifted my weight, trying to catch more of it.
Click.
For half a second, my brain refused to process what it meant. Then the door moved, and suddenly there was nothing holding me up.
It all happened in a blur of slow-motion horror. My body pitched forward, then overcorrected backward, my heel slipping against the tile.
My back hit the edge of the kitchen counter first, knocking the breath out of me, and then my head smacked into the upper cabinet. The sound that followed was a dull, solid thud.
I did not want to know if that noise had been my skull or the wood. For one horrible second, all I could hear was ringing.
“Oh my God—are you okay?!”
I blinked my eyes open. Nico stood in the doorway, eyes wide. He dropped to his knees beside me so fast it startled me more than the fall had.
“I’m fine,” I croaked automatically. I was not.
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes from the sharp, blooming pain at the back of my head.
I tried to glance past him into the room, but he’d already stepped forward, blocking most of my view. The door had swung close behind him.
I groaned softly, and it wasn’t entirely from the pain.
