was dark, wreathed in shadows that suddenly looked menacing. The room behind her was dark, lit only by the lamp on her father’s desk, and the night seemed to reach right through the window to wrap her in its cold grasp.
Shivering, she rubbed her arms. And that was when she saw it. Flitting through the garden at the edge of her sight. Something ghostly and gray. She swore under her breath. If that was her father coming back to haunt her, she was going to give him a piece of her mind, all right. He’d had no business condoning the shenanigans of that committee. Miscellaneous Activities, indeed.
There it was again. Except this time it wasn’t an it. That was a person out there. Someone was creeping around in the garden and doing a freakishly good job of blending into the shadows. Stories of hit squads and covert ops teams fresh on her mind, panic ripped through her.
She pressed herself back against the wall beside the window in abrupt fear. Who was out there at this time of night? George, the gardener, went to bed at about nine o’clock, and it was after midnight now. Her mother hadn’t even made it downstairs for dinner, and Louise had the night off. Not that the shadow outside looked even remotely female. The intruder was tall and athletically built from what she’d glimpsed.
Willa crept around the margins of the office, hugging the wall, careful to stay out of the line of sight of the windows. She reached the desk and crouched down behind it as she picked up the phone. Quickly, she dialed 9-1-1.
“9-1-1. Please state your emergency.”
“This is Willa Merris. There’s an intruder in our back garden. A man.”
“I’ll send a unit over to have a look, Miss Merris...err, Senator. I need you to stay in the house. Is there a room you can lock yourself in?”
“Yes. My bathroom.”
“Go there and lock yourself in. Wait for an officer to call through the door and tell you it’s all clear.”
She hung up the phone and crawled on her hands and knees for the hallway door, staying out of sight of the garden. When she reached the foyer’s cavernous darkness, she climbed to her feet and ran for her life. She flew up the stairs, through her bedroom and into her bathroom. She leaned against the locked door, panting in relief in the dark.
Who on earth was in the garden? A reporter looking for a scoop? Some kid just messing around? Or was it more sinister? Someone out to silence her, perhaps? Except she’d barely been a senator for a single day. And everyone knew the appointment was purely a formality until the election could take place. Oh, God. What if it was James Ward out there? Memory of the madness in his eyes shuddered through her. Had he come to take revenge on her for pressing charges? Or even to kill her?
She waited in an agony of suspense for the police. She looked around her bathroom for something to defend herself with and came up with a toilet brush and a can of hair spray. Not exactly inspiring weapons. The mansion creaked and groaned around her, but she swore she detected the stealthy sounds of someone moving around downstairs. Probably just the police. She held her breath to listen more closely.
The faintest whisper of sound came from the other side of the door, in her bedroom, as if someone was breathing very lightly and very carefully only inches away. She was separated from whoever it was by no more than a thin, wooden panel. Why didn’t the policeman identify himself? The only possible answer froze Willa in place in sheer, dumb terror. Because that wasn’t a policeman.
On cue, the faint scream of a siren became audible in the distance, and grew quickly in volume. The police hadn’t even arrived yet! Whoever belonged to that thread of breath on the other side of her door was not a cop.
Fear for her life roared through her. This went so far beyond any panic she’d ever experienced before, it deserved its own word to describe it. Death-panic, maybe.
Her bedroom floor creaked once as if someone had stepped on a loose board, but then silence reigned. So frightened her legs would no longer bear her weight, she slid down the door to sit on the cold tile floor, huddled in a tight little ball as she squeezed her knees to her chest.
Who’d been out there? What had he