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“I stay here with them or I bring them with me to yours,” Kate reminds him.
“The more the merrier,” Trevor mumbles. “So I’ve heard. Just don’t tell Billie.”
“Of course I’m going to bring Billie. She’s the one I’m most worried about—”
“No, babe. I mean don’t tell her the guys are coming. If she knows Preston will be here, she won’t come. Best not to mention it’s also his unofficial guys-only-party.”
“It’s his birthday tomorrow? Billie will know that.”
“His birthday is the day after tomorrow,” he says. “This is just an excuse to drink. Maybe hit up the Joint after.”
“Alright.” Kate reaches out for the door and checks the lock. It doesn’t budge, and that small coil of anxiety in her tummy eases somewhat. “I do have to go, now. I hate to leave her down there by herself.”
“I know, I know. Talk tomorrow.”
“Bye.”
And she ends the call with a press of button. A beep. Then she’s stepping into the steamy shower, tugging off the last of her dress and underwear as she goes.
Once she’s under the fall of hot water, she’s so enveloped in clouds of steam that she can barely see the crack in the tile right in front of her face. She reaches up for the showerhead and, with a tug, pulls it downwards—keeps the spray of water from messing with her wig.
Kate wasn’t lying on the phone to Trevor. She doesn’t like leaving Billie down there, alone. But something in the steam of this shower draws out the exhaustion in her very bones, and she fights the urge to slide down the tiled wall to just… sit.
Yes, she fights the urge. But still, her movements are slow. She’s slow to lather up the soap on the loofa, slow to run it over her shoulders—
And slow to react when a thud shudders the walls of the terraced house.
A few moments pass, once the floor and tub have stopped their faint rattling, and Kate frowns. She turns that frown to the locked bathroom door, her mind churning and chugging away—
Sounded like a door slamming. A heavy door.
A front door.
2
TV static is the only light in the lounge, a constant flicker of grey and white and black. A death sentence for anyone prone to migraines.
Billie balls up her hands under the thick woolly scratch of a blanket that’s thrown over her. Hadn’t been there before, when she managed to stay awake for … a handful of minutes into the movie? Or maybe she passed out before the film? She doesn’t remember.
But she does remember that she hates wool. The feel of it against the skin. Her legs move with the weariness of sleep still clinging to her, and she lazily kicks off the blanket. It thumps to the floor in a heap just as she rubs her balled-up hands against her eyes.
Her fists drop to her lap with a faint smack and, blinking heavily, she fights back a yawn—
She stiffens.
Bloodshot eyes strain. Her gaze is fixed ahead, at the open arch between the lounge and the foyer. A shadow disturbs the archway—a tall, broad figure looms there.
The darkness of the foyer almost swallows the figure up. Almost. It’s the grey and black flickers of the TV that illuminate him, barely—but enough. Enough for Billie’s heart to skip a beat and her belly to start churning with those sickly butterflies she drinks to kill.
She blinks.
Somehow, the shadow clears enough for her to make out that this… this man, with his towering height and broad shoulders, is sheathed in all-black clothes, down to the boots and leather gloves…
Gloves that are fisted. One, fisted around nothing but air. The other… fisted around the hilt of a threatening hunting knife.
Billie’s breath shudders out of her, trapped for too long, and with that one last blink, she looks up at him—at his face.
There is no face to be seen. Only a mask. A hood… one slick with blood.
