AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Good.
All he had to do was wait for the exact moment.
A dog was barking closer than he liked, but he forced himself not to react. He took a calming breath of the cool night air to center himself. He closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds.
Then he was ready, every muscle tense.
Go time.
He slipped his night-vision goggles from the top of his head to the bridge of his nose and voila . . . dark night became a colorless day.
Perfect.
And the familiar song from his youth rolled on through his brain.
* * *
Flipping her hood over her head, Remmi peered through the window cut into the back door that opened off her small kitchen. Nothing. No boogeyman lurking on the top landing. No ghost of Didi lingering just outside the door near the vine-covered wall. Just darkness on this side of the house. Gripping the flashlight, she headed outside and started down the steps.
Rain was beating steadily, the November air heavy and cold, the streetlights dimmed by low-hanging clouds. So far so good. No . . . wait.
She’d just stepped onto the second-floor landing when she felt a vibration. She froze, straining to see through the rain, trying to hear over the continual plop of drops and gurgle of water in the downspouts.
A noise.
A footfall?
Her throat constricted.
One soft thud, then another. More vibrations. In rapid succession.
No doubt about it now. Someone was climbing steadily upward.
Every muscle in her body tensed as she peered through the open stairs to the level below, where a dark figure of a man was ascending from the first-floor landing.
For a second, she panicked, thought of fleeing upstairs, back through the door of her apartment to safety. She could throw the dead bolt and, if he kept coming, dial 9-1-1 and alert Jade and Greta. That would be the sane move. But then she’d never know. Damn. She clicked on the flashlight. The harsh beam illuminated the staircase. She rained that sharp light straight down on the man’s upturned face. “Jesus!” he exclaimed, throwing an arm over his forehead to shade his eyes.
“Who are you?” she demanded shrilly, heart stampeding. He’d stopped dead in his tracks. “What’re you doing here?”
“What the hell is that? Turn it off!”
In that second, she recognized him.
The breath died in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Shocked, her heart pounding frantically, she found herself staring into the chiseled features of Noah Scott.
The boy from Las Vegas who had stood her up, then nearly died in the desert.
The boy who had haunted her dreams for two damned decades.
For a second, time seemed to stand completely still. Her throat turned to dust. Unexplained tears suddenly burned the back of her eyes. No words came, though a thousand questions spun through her mind. Somewhere, not far away, an engine started.
“For the love of God, Remmi, are you trying to burn out my retinas? Turn that damned thing off!”
“Noah?” she whispered, still disbelieving, raindrops splattering around her.
“Yeah, Remmi. It’s me,” he said, his voice deeper than she remembered. “Do you mind? You’re gonna blind me.”
“But why?” she asked in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
