waiting to see what she would do. With a quick plea to the universe, she gripped the doorknob and twisted it open. A nightlight plugged into a socket near the floor illuminated a dim path to the end of the short hallway, leaving her to wonder what lay beyond. She closed the door behind her, not wanting Shilah to follow. Before venturing any farther, she waited to see if Shilah would bark and alert Rafe to her movement.
The bark never came. Katie stood completely still and strained to catch any noise that would signal that Rafe was awake. Nothing. All she could hear was the sound of her pulse racing, and the rush of adrenaline through her veins. The silence quickly turned oppressive, startling her into action. Frightened or not, somehow the thought of doing something seemed so much less terrifying than continuing to stand there dumbly.
Her legs quivered as she crept down the hall and turned left to find another hallway, this one with two doors, one open, one closed. The open door was a bathroom, which she was sorely tempted to use. She hadn’t peed in a long time, as far as she knew, and the very thought made her bladder burn. Unfortunately, she would have to wait just a little longer. If she wanted the freedom to explore the cabin without attracting Rafe’s attention, making a pit stop wasn’t exactly the height of stealth.
Pushing aside her biological needs, Katie moved past the closed door on tiptoes. There was a good chance that was Rafe’s bedroom. The thought stirred an unwelcome tug of arousal that she couldn’t begin to explain. Surely the fact that Rafe was definitely a liar and probably a crazy person should mitigate her inexplicable attraction to him. Right? So the fact that one part of her wanted to push open his bedroom door and crawl into bed with him had to mean that she was crazy, too. Or that he really had drugged her.
Sickened by the thought, she made her way to the end of the hallway and found herself in a large room that had been sectioned off into a kitchen, a dining area, and, separated by a long bar complete with stools, a sitting room with a couch and fireplace. The light from the nearly full moon shone in through the room’s windows, allowing her to make out the dim shape of the furniture, though not the details of the pictures she could see hanging on the walls. What struck her was that everything looked so normal. Nothing about this man’s home suggested that he was insane or murderous—though, she wasn’t exactly sure what she’d expected to find. A pile of bodies? Guns and knives? A sex dungeon?
Did it really matter that Rafe’s cabin wasn’t littered with evidence of evil intent? She knew what she’d heard. Determined not to linger in the common area any longer than absolutely necessary, she made a slow circuit around the room, starting in the kitchen. She searched the counters for a telephone, dismayed when she couldn’t find one. She’d nearly convinced herself that Rafe had been lying about not having any way for her to contact her parents or her sister, but maybe he was telling the truth. She found a flashlight in a drawer next to the pantry, which she took. Then she raided the pantry, taking some beef jerky that looked homemade, a package of crackers, and a banana. It wasn’t much, but she wouldn’t last in the elements for very long, anyway. If she didn’t find shelter before running out of food, she was as good as dead.
More and more, that seemed like the most likely outcome to this situation. Stay or go, she would be lucky to make it home alive.
She performed the rest of her search in efficient silence. From what she could see in the low light, Rafe was a man who enjoyed reading, photography, and music. His bookcase overflowed with fiction and non-fiction, still more framed nature photos lined the walls, and he had an expensive-looking sound system—by far the most modern piece of technology she’d seen in the place. The fact that he liked such human diversions made him only slightly less ominous. There were probably plenty of serial killers and rapists with good taste in music. The fact that their music collections were nearly parallel—plenty of classic rock, with a smattering of 80’s gothic rock favorites—meant nothing. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill her if that’s what