Page 60 of Rich Little Liars

The gravel crunches under my feet, too loud in the morning quiet. Each step feels exposed, like I’m walking across a stage with an audience I can’t see. I scan the house for signs of disturbance – broken windows, forced doors, anything that would indicate the intruder came back to finish what they started. But everything looks intact. The boarded kitchen window. The front door with its gleaming brass knocker. The potted plants I’ve neglected since moving in, their leaves brown and curling.

Then I see the footprints.

They’re by the front door, pressed into the soft earth of the flower bed that runs along the front of the house. Muddy impressions that weren’t there before. Large, deep, the tread pattern of boots rather than shoes. Someone stood here. Stood right outside my door, close enough to touch it.

My breath catches. I take a step back without meaning to, my body reacting before my mind can process what I’m seeing.

Someone was here. Right here. Inches from where I’m standing now.

I crouch to examine the prints, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I can feel it in my throat. The prints are fresh – the edges still crisp, not yet softened by rain or time. They lead from the gate to the door and then… where? I scan the flower bed, the path, the gravel. More prints, fainter now, tracking round the side of the house towards the garden.

Towards the boarded window.

I should leave. Should walk straight back to the road and call a taxi and go somewhere – anywhere – that isn’t here. Every instinct screams at me to run, to put as much distance as possible between myself and whatever’s waiting round that corner. My legs tremble with the urge to flee.

But something holds me in place. Some need to know and see for myself what’s been happening while I’ve been gone. The same terrible curiosity that makes you look at car crashes, at crime scenes, at the wreckage of other people’s lives.

I follow the prints.

They curve round the house, skirting the trash cans, pressing deep into the muddy strip between the wall and the fence. The path is narrow here, barely wide enough for one person. Whoever made these prints wasn’t just passing through. They were moving with intention towards a destination they’d already chosen.

The air feels different back here. Colder. Thicker. Like the temperature has dropped ten degrees in the space of a few feet. I wrap my arms around myself and keep walking, each step heavier than the last, my pulse loud in my ears.

And then I hear it.

A sound. Small. Behind me.

I spin round, my heart lurching into my throat. The path stretches back around the house, empty. Just mud and fence and the corner I came round moments ago. Nothing there. No one there.

But I could have sworn…

I hold my breath. Listen.

Silence. Just the distant hum of traffic from the main road. The rustle of leaves in someone’s garden. Normal sounds.

Except nothing feels safe any more.

I turn back towards the boarded window, moving faster now. The need to see has become something else – the need to get this over with, face whatever’s waiting so I can stop imagining it. My legs feel weak, disconnected from the rest of me. My hands won’t stop shaking no matter how tightly I grip them together.

The boarded window comes into view. The plywood is still intact, nails still driven deep into the frame. But there’s something on it now. Something that wasn’t there when I left.

Writing.

Red paint – or something that looks like paint – smeared across the boards in uneven letters. The handwriting is crude, childish almost, like someone writing with their non-dominant hand or in the dark… or both.

My mouth hangs open as I read the horrific message:

I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME

21

NOW

My fingers find Harvey’s card before my brain catches up.

It’s still in my pocket – crumpled now, soft at the edges from being handled too many times. I pull it out and try to read the numbers. The red letters swim in my vision every time I blink. I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME. Like they’ve been burned into my retinas and I’ll see them forever now, no matter where I look.

I dial. The phone rings twice, and I’m already convinced he won’t answer – that I’ll get voicemail and will have to leave some stammering message about paint and threats and please, please, someone help me⁠—