“Yeah, Uncle Oran told us about her. She was at work—said she hadn’t talked to him that day. We took her phone, tried texting and calling him. No answer. We made her give us her key and searched her flat. Fucking nothing.”
I don’t like the sound of that at all.
We end the call.
My stomach is clenching and twisting. I feel prickled with anxiety.
Why did Josh take off all of a sudden?
He must know that we found out what he’d done. But how could he know that?
Is it a coincidence? Was he always planning to take the money and run, once he’d amassed enough?
I don’t believe in coincidences that big. He disappears the very day we come looking for him? That seems off.
Maybe he found out that Lucy sent me those files. I never told her to keep it a secret.
I remember how Raylan reacted when I told him about the emails back and forth. He seemed uncomfortable with it, like I’d made a mistake. Is it possible to trace an IP address? If I emailed Lucy from this laptop, could someone locate where my email came from? Could they have found out where I’m hiding?
I tell myself I’m just being paranoid. I’m safe here—that’s why Raylan brought me all the way to the ranch.
It was just an email.
Still, I wish Raylan were here beside me, and not all the way out in the fields, rounding up the horses.
Quietly, I slip out of my chair and walk over to the counter, where Celia’s knives are all fitted neatly into their slots in a carved wooden block. I pull out one of the knives—not the cleaver, which is too large and unwieldy. I take a fish knife instead—long and slim and deadly sharp. Then I go back to the table again.
The kitchen is getting quite dark. I could turn on the light, but something tells me not to. Instead, very quietly, I close the laptop screen, snuffing out the last bit of illumination.
Then I sit in the dark, listening.
I hear a tiny creak from overhead. I know the ranch house pretty well by now. I think that noise came from the guest bedroom. My bedroom.
I remember how the Djinn lay in wait for me in the swimming pool. How he waited almost an hour, quiet and still, on the bottom of the pool. He must have seen me slip into the water. He watched me stroke back and forth across the pool, over his head. Watching me from below like a shark. No . . . like an eel in a cave.
The Djinn is an ambush predator.
He likes to hide himself, waiting and watching. Taking pleasure in his victim’s obliviousness. Letting them wander closer and closer.
Then, when the moment is right . . . he pounces.
My heart is thudding against my ribs. This could all be complete fantasy. There’s no reason to think the Djinn found me here. No reason to think he’s hiding upstairs in my room, just because I heard a couple of creaks.
But I can’t get that picture out of my mind—a dark figure lying in wait under my bed. Waiting for me to lay down and sleep, so he can rise up from below and wrap his arm around my throat again.
I’m frozen in place, wanting to go out to Raylan, but afraid to cross the dark fields alone. I’m gripping the handle of the fish knife in my fist, rigid and motionless in the kitchen chair. My ears straining for any other sounds that might tell me if what I’m imagining is real, or only just a paranoid fantasy, like a child who runs up from the basement, thinking there’s a monster at their heels.
Silence. Total silence.
I’m an idiot. I’m just making myself scared, sitting alone in a dark kitchen.
Still, I want Raylan more than I’ve ever yearned to see anybody. If he were sitting next to me on the deck, with a drink in each of our hands, I wouldn’t be scared of anything.
He’s got to be almost finished with the horses by now. I’m going to go out to meet him.
Still holding the knife, almost forgetting that I have it, I walk swiftly toward the kitchen door. It’s so dim that I reach out half-blindly, fumbling for the knob.
Right as my fingers close around it, an arm locks around my neck.
I hadn’t heard anything. Not a creak. Not a breath.
The Djinn grabs me from behind and jerks me back off my feet.
His arm is a steel bar around my throat, closing off my air in an instant. He lifts me up off my feet, inhumanly strong. And he squeezes harder.
It’s all too familiar—we’re in air instead of water, but I’m plunged back exactly where we were. I’m drowning again, choking to death in the arms of the Djinn.
His other hand is clamped over my mouth. It doesn’t matter—without air, I can’t scream. And even if I could, Raylan is too far away to hear me.
The Djinn watched and waited. He knew I was alone in the house.
The loss of air is so sudden that my limbs go weak. My fingers loosen. I almost drop the knife.
Almost . . . but not quite.
With every last shred of control, I grip it tight. I blindly swing backward, aiming for his body.
The fish knife plunges into his side. I hear a grunt of pain and fury in my ear. The first sound I’ve heard him make. But he doesn’t let go.
I keep hold of the handle and wrench the knife out again, then swing it back toward him. He jerks away with his body, avoiding the blade. But he has to loosen his hold on my throat.
As soon as I feel his forearm loosen, I turn my chin to the side and drop down with all my weight, slipping out of his grasp. I swing the knife wildly, and this time it sticks into his thigh. I lose my grip on the handle. The Djinn gives a strangled yell and backhands me in the side of the face, knocking me backward.
I slide back across the kitchen tiles. For the first time, I get a good look at the Djinn, in the flesh. Or at least, as good a look as I can get in the dark. He’s dressed in a skin-tight black suit, not so different from the one he wore into the swimming pool. His head is covered by a tight hood, and his eyes look monstrously enlarged like a house-fly, because he’s wearing night-vision goggles. The fish knife protrudes from his thigh.
That’s all I see, before I scramble to my feet again and run for the door. I wrench it open and sprint out of the house, into the backyard. I’m running barefoot across the path between the vegetable and flower gardens. I scream as loud as I can, “RAYLAN!!!” I have no idea how far away he is, or if there’s any chance he can hear me.
We’re so far away from anything. If I try to run to the main road, I’ll have to go over a mile down the driveway. It’s pitch black out, the only lights located directly around the barns and stables. I can’t stomach the idea of running alone through the dark. Especially when I know the Djinn can see much better than I can.
So I run toward the stables instead. I slip inside, smelling the warm scent of the horses, clean hay, and scattered oats. I can hear the horses shifting around in their stalls, their feet thudding gently on the wood floor.
I find Penny’s stall, and I go inside with her. She recognizes me, giving a soft little whicker. She rubs the side of her head against my body.
I say, “Shh,” very quietly.
I stand next to her, heart racing.
I’m regretting not looking around for some kind of weapon—even a shovel or crop. I wanted to get in here as quickly as possible, afraid the Djinn would pull the knife out of his thigh and come out of the house, so he could see where I’d run.
I listen closely, without hearing anything. That doesn’t mean much—I’ve already learned how quietly he can move.