Page 6 of Wild Thorns

That was his particular genius. Not outright violence, he was too smart for that, too careful about leaving marks. Just presence. Just the constant, suffocating reminder that I was never really alone, never really free, never really mine.

I blocked the number. Deleted the message.

How? The question clawed at me. I’d bought this phone with cash at a gas station outside Birmingham. New carrier, new number, told no one except Tara and Janine. Had he cloned my old SIM? Planted something on my laptop that scraped my contacts? I turned the phone over in my hands, fighting the urge to throw it out the window. But if I ditched it, I’d lose my only connection to Tara. To anyone.

Sat in the dark for a long time, arms wrapped around my knees, trying to remember how to breathe.

He can't find me here, I told myself. I was careful. I left no trail.

But I'd told myself that before. In Atlanta, in the apartment I'd thought was safe, the one with the new locks, the security system, and the restraining order still working its way through the courts. I'd told myself I was careful then, too.

Then I'd woken up with a rose on my pillow.

The memory hit like a fist: white petals against my pillowcase, the ghost of his cologne in the air, the sick certainty that he'd been there while I slept. That he could have done anything. That the locks, alarms and all my careful planning meant nothing against someone who believed, with absolute conviction, that I belonged to him.

Below, the back door of the main house opened.

A shape moved across the yard. Tall, dark, broad, moving with that predatory grace I was starting to associate with the oldest brother. He paused at the edge of the preserve, head tilted, and I could swear he was scenting the air. Reading it the way you'd read a page.

No. Not scenting. Listening. That's what people did.

But his eyes caught the moonlight wrong. A flash of gold where there should have been dark brown, there and gone so fast I couldn't be sure I'd seen it at all.

He turned. And even in the dark, even from this distance, I felt the weight of his attention land on me. Not hostile. Not threatening. Just aware. Like he'd known I was there all along, had been tracking me the way I'd been tracking the shadows in the trees.

For a strange, suspended moment, I didn't feel afraid.

As if something in me recognized something in him. As if I weren’t meant to be here in this moment…

Then my phone buzzed again, Tara checking in, and the spell broke.

I was just a woman on a porch. He was just a man in a yard. And I was exhausted, paranoid, seeing things that weren't there because that's what happened when you spent three years learning to fear.

I went inside. Locked the door.

Checked it twice.

But as I turned away from the window, I noticed something I'd missed before. On the sill, where the moonlight pooled like spilled milk, there was a single white rose petal.

My hands went cold.

I hadn't brought roses. I hadn't unpacked flowers of any kind. And when I'd checked the apartment earlier, that sill had been empty.

I checked it twice more. The deadbolt. The chain. The windows.

Sleep, when it finally came, was thin and restless. And in the morning, when I looked again, the petal was gone, as if it had never been there at all.

Chapter three

The Science of Pie

Day four. A knock on the door.

My laptop was balanced on my knees, the Morrison logo on-screen. A sudden knock startled me so badly that I nearly dropped the computer, my heart rate spiking the way it always did at unexpected sounds.

It's not him, I told myself, even as my hands went cold. He doesn't know where you are.

I set the laptop aside. Crossed to the door. Made myself look through the peephole instead of just throwing the deadbolt and pretending I wasn't home.