DEAD TO ME by Kate Bold

Author:Kate Bold [Bold, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Debbie went to the front door to check it for the tenth time that evening. She knew it was silly to think she was next in line to be kidnapped, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the visit from Special Agent Hawk—she was very interested in Mark, and Mark was definitely creepy at times. The principal, too—if there were another job in town that paid the same and had benefits, she would jump on it, but there was not a lot of opportunity in the Magic City. So, she put up with being surrounded by creepy men.

The furor in town was not helping, and everyone felt suspicious.

Debbie went to the backdoor and checked that one, too. It was locked, just as she had known it would be. She laughed to herself as she took the chilled bottle of white wine from the fridge. She had closed all the curtains, and that made her feel better. That was silly, too. A man was not going to be kept out by rectangles of fabric. Still, if she couldn’t see outside, she felt there was less of a threat.

She took her bottle of wine with a glass back to her reclining chair in the living room. She settled down into her comfortable routine, switching on her reality show. If the last episode was anything to go by, a lot of the drama was going to come to a head tonight.

The show had just started when she was sure she heard a noise. Debbie wanted to ignore it, but her body moved her up and out of the chair. She stood in the middle of her living room and listened. She was glad she had closed the curtains already, but her body acted independently of her mind. She moved slowly toward the curtains, afraid to open them. Debbie went to the side of the window and pulled the curtain back a little to peek outside.

It was pitch black out there, save for the small amount of light that leaked through the slit created by the moved curtain. Debbie listened intently in the silence for the noise to repeat—it would have been the crack of someone stepping on a branch, or maybe it was someone passing by with loud footsteps. The sound had been muffled, but she was sure it came from the garden.

Debbie stared toward where her wooden gazebo was; it was hard to see in the darkness, and the large tree near the street shadowed it. She gazed intently into it, trying to decipher the puzzle of shadows. She could not look away until she knew for sure no one was standing within it, waiting for her. She gazed into it until the black resolved into varying shades, and she could make out the gazebo and no more.

She sighed in relief and smiled as she walked back to her chair.

The doorbell startled her. She could only think that someone had been hiding in the gazebo, and they had come to the door. She also knew that was a silly thought, but she couldn’t unthink it.

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