Pull You In (Rivers Brothers #3) - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,5

second to glance at all the directions, or else I would be stranded in the woods with no way to reach anyone, just praying someone would come along and find me.

The days were getting shorter, so by the time I found the turnoff- a simple gravel road with a set of reflective markers stationed at each side—the sun had already set low.

I thought I would find it scenic, cozy. Instead, as I drove along, white-knuckling the steering wheel, I felt an odd sort of creepy dread settling upon me.

It only intensified as I got to the cabin, and found no other cars around.

Granted, I had set out early, always preferring to be early rather than late. The others might not have been so keen on getting up at three in the morning to get their days going.

It was fine.

Fine.

There had to be a host or something inside. At least, that was what I was telling myself as I took a deep breath, parking as close to the front walk as possible, and cutting off the engine.

Mentally, I took a second to scan my belongings and the contents of the car, trying to decide if there was anything to use to defend myself on the walk up to the front door. From what, I wasn't sure. Bears, coyotes, crazy mountain people, all toothless gums and stringy hair.

But there was nothing.

"You're being ridiculous," I decided, looking at the lamppost near the edge of the walk. It didn't light the whole thing, but it wasn't a long walkway either. I was just being a baby.

So on that thought, I grabbed my carry-on bag and my rental key, and threw open the car, trying to walk deliberately toward the front door, but breaking into a dead run when there was some sort of rustling in a nearby bush.

I grasped the doorknob with a sort of horror-movie-style desperation, heart lodged so far up my throat I felt like I was choking on it before the knob turned in my hand, and I could throw myself inside.

Into complete and utter darkness.

Chest heaving, my hand groped at the wall to my side, finding a switch, flicking it on, making a hideous antler chandelier brighten above my head.

It was right about then, too, that a new, horrifying thought flashed across my mind.

The door was unlocked.

I could walk right in.

So could anyone else.

You know... like the toothless mountain people I had imagined earlier.

Taking a deep breath, I crept along the front wall, glancing into the room to the left—a spacious dining room with a massive table meant to seat twenty, and sideboards that spanned the entire far wall. There was a doorway that I imagined led to the kitchen.

Steeling my nerves, trying to remind myself how absurd I was being, I moved around the dining room, reaching in to flick on the kitchen light, feeling my chest loosen a bit to find it empty.

It was another oversize space with its light cabinets that matched the log walls, its stainless steel countertops and appliances, and the island that made all other islands feel inferior.

I moved into the kitchen, opening and closing drawers until I found the one I was looking for. The knife drawer. I grabbed the biggest one, hand tightening on the handle.

Overreacting? Yes.

But as the house groaned around me, I decided it was always better to be ridiculous than ambushed and murdered.

And because I had seen more than a few horror movies in my day, I decided not to be the idiot girl who went down into the basement—inexplicably in her underwear—to investigate strange noises.

Nope.

I held onto my phone.

And I sat and waited for someone to rescue me from my neurosis.

The minutes turned into hours, marked by a cuckoo clock somewhere in the house, a sound that would normally have made me smile, but given that I was alone and creeped out, I went ahead and decided it was freaky.

Then I heard it.

Crunching.

Like shoes on the gravel driveway. Followed by silence as, I imagined, those same feet made their way up the front path. Right up to the door I'd stupidly left unlocked behind me.

Taking a deep breath, I stayed exactly where I was, knife raised, waiting as the sound of clunky feet moved through the foyer, then the dining room, following the path of light I'd stupidly left.

Big, male feet.

When I worked at an almost exclusively female company.

I was seconds from darting through the blackened part of the rest of the house, hoping I could make my