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twenty-nine
Tabitha woke to a cold, dark room. The smell of the woods, and a dead fire, filled her nostrils. At first, her foggy brain took her back to Girl Scout camp at Bonnie Lake. But then the night came back to her, the scent of Hobbs’s aftershave still inside her and the feel of his hands on her body still on her skin. She sat up in bed and saw that Hobbs had covered her with a blanket, even though they’d fallen asleep on top of the covers.
But the spot next to her was empty.
“Chris?” As her eyes adjusted to the dark, a quick scan revealed that he was not in the room. “Trinity?” Dog tags jangled, and a moment later, the pittie was staring at her from the floor. “Good girl.” Tabitha kept the blanket tight around her body as she got out of bed and stepped onto the cold floor. “Chris?” she called again, going into the only other room in the cabin.
The bathroom was empty.
Tabitha’s heart started a quick thud in her chest. She found her jacket on the couch and fumbled her phone out of the pocket. It was after midnight. There was a text from Hobbs.
Stay tight. Keep the door locked. I’ll be back.
Tabitha’s throat felt thick. She called Hobbs, waiting with tight breath for him to answer. After five rings it went to voice mail. She shot off a quick text.What’s going on?Then she scrambled into her clothes.
Just as her hand lit on the doorknob, Tabitha thought about the text. If Hobbs had just said, “Stay tight. I’ll be back,” she might not be having this reaction. Why the line about keeping the door locked? She thought about doing just that, but then she got that gnawing in her gut, her radar going crazy. Tonight, Tabitha’s intuition was telling her to go to Hobbs’s house. Maybe he was there. Maybe something had happened with Victor or Hannah.
Hannah.
Tabitha fired off another text, this one to Hannah.Everything okay?
Stupid, maybe. If everything was okay, Hannah was probably asleep. If everything was not okay, she probably wouldn’t be able to text.
Tabitha poked her head out the door and was met with the dead silence of the forest. The snow had stopped and there were no sounds coming from the trees. She called Trinity to her side and made her way down the path, which was covered in a light dusting of powder. As they passed by the house, Tabitha could see that the party had ended and all was quiet. Christmas Eve had become Christmas Day, and everyone had gone home to bed. The parking lot out front was empty except for a handful of vehicles. Hobbs’s truck was not among them.
Tabitha checked her phone again as she reached her car, but there were no new texts or missed calls. She opened the trunk, dug her trainers out of her gym bag and swapped them out for the glittery heels. Then she got in the car and drove as quickly as she could with the fresh snow on the road, sliding only twice, and made it to Hobbs’s house in twenty minutes. His truck was not parked out front, the driveway empty. Tabitha’s instincts told her to park at the curb and kill the lights, which she did. There were too many other cars around to tell if anything stuck out; they could all be neighbors’ vehicles. She sat there in the darkness, unsure what to do. She could knock on the door, but if Hannah was inside, asleep, Tabitha would be waking her for no good reason. She tried Hobbs’s number one more time, but again, she got voice mail. She was just about to head home, where she’d wait with twisted nerves until she heard from Hobbs, when her phone rang.
“Chris!” Tabitha snapped out his name. “Where are you?”
“On my way home.” He sounded out of breath. “Victor and I both got sent on a wild-goose chase. We got texts from an unknown number, telling us to come out to Oakwood Park to talk about the texts Hannah’s been getting. We ran into each other in the parking lot, but nobody else ever showed. Now we’re worried about Hannah, who Victor left at the house. It has to be her ex. He’s found her, just like he promised.”
Tabitha put the pieces together. Someone had texted both brothers, hoping to empty out the house and get to Hannah. Whoever it was knew that they wouldn’t risk taking Hannah with them on what might be a dangerous trip. And now here she was, all alone in the house.
“Stay put,” Hobbs was saying. “Just stay in the cabin. I’ll be back there as soon as I can. I’m about half an hour from the house.”
Tabitha debated what to say next. Did she tell Hobbs she had ignored his directive and now sat in front of the house? Just as she went to speak, something in the yard caught her eye. She rolled her window down and squinted into the darkness. Tabitha sucked in her breath. “Okay, be careful,” she said, then hung up the phone. No point in telling Hobbs where she was. He couldn’t get here any faster.
She opened her door and leaned down to pet the cold, shivering dog. “Gracie,” she whispered. “How did you get out?”
Tabitha told Trinity to stay in the car, then toured the entire perimeter of the house, but couldn’t find anywhere Gracie might’ve slipped out. When she reached the front again, she squished through the snow and underlying mud in the front yard to the windows that lined the living room and peeked inside, through a gap in the curtains. The room was lit and Tabitha could see Hannah, sitting in the armchair in the corner. Beside her was a giant Christmas tree, decorated with glass bulbs and white garland. She held George in her lap, clutching him to her midriff, her face contorted, and what looked like a large, fresh bruise spreading near her mouth. Across from her, perched on the edge of the sofa, was a man Tabitha had never seen before. He was slim and wiry, had a head of glossy, light brown hair and wore dark clothing. Tabitha could hear him talking, his words clipped and harsh, though she couldn’t make out what he said.
Tabitha backed away, her first instinct to knock on the door and distract him. He’d obviously hit Hannah once already and seemed ready to do it again, the way he leaned forward in his seat, his body taut, his hands fisted. But after careful thought, Tabitha knew that wouldn’t go well. A knock on the door would probably just be met with silence. Either way, it would give away her position, and that was not a smart move. She quickly did her tactical breathing, only one round, as that was all she had time for, and felt her heart rate slow. Then she dialed 9-1-1 and waited until the operator popped on.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
Tabitha quickly explained about a break-in and gave Hobbs’s address.
“Stay on the line with me, ma’am.”
Tabitha was just heading back to her car when she heard Hannah’s scream from inside the house. She was so startled she dropped her phone to the wet grass. She grabbed it but stuffed it in her pocket, the dispatcher calling out, “Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you there?” as Tabitha slunk around to the backyard for the second time. Gracie, who’d been at her heels the entire time, followed. The door hadn’t been ajar on her first pass, but Tabitha was hoping it was unlocked. She knew she should get in her car, lock it and wait for dispatch, but what if Hannah was dead by then?
No. Not on Tabitha’s watch.
She tried the handle of the back door, but it didn’t budge. Tabitha did one more round of breathing while she looked around the cold, dark yard, in search of something to help get her inside. A rock through a window might work, but that would do more to alert Hannah’s attacker than anything else. Tabitha had just let out her breath in a long exhalation when she spied it: a dog door.
A newly installed dog door for a large-sized breed.
Tabitha looked down at Gracie. “So that’s how you got out.”
