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Chapter Four
RYAN
My phone buzzed on the nightstand, and I sat up in bed and looked at the clock. It was two in the morning. No one would be calling me in the middle of the night unless it was an emergency.
Reaching for my phone, I saw Morgan’s name. My gut clenched as I quickly answered.
“Morgan? What’s wrong?”
“Hey, Ryan!” she said in a voice that was far too chipper for the middle of the night.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, scrubbing a hand over my face.
She paused for so long, I started to panic. “Morgan? Are you okay?!”
“I am! Sorry. And everyone else is fine.”
“Okay,” I slowly said. “Then why are you calling me at two in the morning?”
I heard a nervous laugh come through the phone. “It’s…well…I’ve got this problem. It’s not a big problem, just a little one.”
I threw the covers off me and swung my legs over the side of my bed. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Well…you see…I was trying to prove you wrong.”
“Prove me wrong about what?”
“Um…the podcast…”
Closing my eyes, I attempted not to sound frustrated. “You started listening to The Dark Night, didn’t you?”
“In my defense, I thought you were being a little over the top with the whole ‘you live alone and you’ll get scared’ bullshit!”
“But?” I asked, now smiling because I simply couldn’t help myself.
“Their damn tagline is ‘danger lurks beneath the covers.’ I’m scared to death to get out of bed and I have to pee! Really badly!”
I laughed. “So you want to pee with me on the phone?”
She paused for a moment before she spoke. “I’d like to pee, but…mostly I don’t want to be here alone. I’m so creeped out!”
Frowning, I asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“I was thinking you might be able to come over and, you know…check around the apartment and make sure no one’s here? I called Hunter, but he didn’t answer.”
My mouth fell open.
“Ryan?”
I pushed a hand through my hair. “You want me to drive into town, so I can check your apartment for murderers?”
“Also so I can pee!”
“Morgan…have you been drinking?”
“What? No!”
I sighed. “I’m not driving over there in the middle of the night. You have an alarm; you’d know if someone had gotten into the house.”
“But this is all your fault!”
“How is this my fault?” I asked with a disbelieving laugh.
“You all but dared me to listen to the podcast!”
“What?” I huffed. “I told you not to listen to it. I told you it would scare you.”
Morgan made some kind of growling sound. “You said it was because I was a woman, and you eluded to women being scaredy cats!”
“And I was right.”
A muted crash sounded from the other end of the line and Morgan let out an ear-piercing scream.
“What was that?” I asked when I heard the sound of an alarm. I got up and started pulling on sweatpants and a T-shirt so fast, I was positive I did it in record time. “Morgan?”
“The alarm for the shop is going off! I think someone threw something through the glass down there.”
“Is your alarm on?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice riddled with fear.
“Do not move. Lock your bedroom door and stay in that room, do you hear me?”
“Y-yes. Ryan?”
I grabbed my keys and raced down the steps to the barn and out to my truck. “Yes?”
“I’m really scared now!”
“I’m in the truck, sweetheart. I’ll be there as fast as I can. Call the police.”
“I hear sirens. I think the police are already coming.”
“I don’t care, Morgan. Call nine-one-one. I’m on my way.”
“O-okay. Be careful.”
“Hang up, sweetheart, and call right now.”
There were a few beats of silence before she replied, “’Kay. Bye.”
The moment she hung up, I called Blayze.
“Ryan?” he mumbled sleepily. “What’s wrong?”
“The alarm at the store is going off. Morgan said it sounded like the glass was broken. She’s calling the police now.”
I could hear Blayze already moving on the other end of the line. “Hold on. Georgiana got a call from the alarm company a couple minutes ago, but her phone was on silent.”
Fuck! “I’m already on my way there,” I said as I blew past stop signs and pushed harder on the gas.
“Wait—Morgan called you first?”
I wasn’t sure how this was going to sound, but at the moment, I could care less. “I was already on the phone with her when it happened.”
“And she’s okay?”
“When I last talked to her, she was. I told her to lock herself in her bedroom, then I made her hang up and call the police. Wait, she’s calling me back now.”
“The alarm company just notified Georgiana that the police have arrived. We’re on our way.”
“Okay, see you there in a few.”
I hit End and picked up the other call. “Morgan?”
“The police are here. I mean, they’re down in the store and here in my apartment. One officer said it looks like someone threw a big rock through the window.”
