Read on for a sneak peek of the next book in the
Rocky Mountain K9 Unit series from Katie Ruggle
“I don’t trust him.”
Kaylee stared at her friend—her apparently insane friend. “How can you not trust him? Haven’t you seen his cheekbones? And those eyes? And pretty much his entire face? He looks like a freaking Disney prince. How can you not trust a Disney prince?”
“Pretty is as pretty does,” Penny muttered, shoving dresses aside with a little too much force.
Kaylee snorted, reaching toward the rack despite the risk of losing a finger to Penny’s violent sorting. She grabbed a dress and moved out of the closet so she could toss it on the growing pile on her bed. Not for the first time, Kaylee was grateful for her expansive walk-in closet. Not only did it hold her excessive amount of clothes and a truly extravagant number of shoes, but it also made it possible to give a wrathful Penny some space. The woman had pointy elbows and knew how to use them. “You’re channeling your Grandma Nita again.”
Yanking another dress off the rack, Penny used the hanger to point at Kaylee. “She’d totally agree with me on this. You’re blinded by hormones and can’t see that your prince is actually the villain—or at least the semi-villain. I deal with men like him every day. I know what I’m talking about.”
Crossing her arms, Kaylee leaned her shoulder against the closet doorframe. “Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the guys you come into contact with at work are making you a little bitter and jaded? I mean, it’s an emergency women’s shelter. That’s a pretty skewed sample of the male population.”
“I’m not bitter and jaded.” Penny paused before adding, “Not yet, at least. And I’m really good at spotting a toad in prince’s clothing. It’s my superpower.”
Despite her best efforts at keeping Penny’s gloom and doom from darkening her mood, doubt tugged at Kaylee. Trying to hide her sudden frown, she turned to stare at the mound of dresses on the bed, a rainbow of silky fabrics and wonderful possibilities.
The California sun streamed through the window, making the entire room glow and turning the white bedding silver around the edges. When she’d been searching for a condo two years ago, Kaylee’s top requirement had been light—a lot of it. After spending her childhood in a cramped Midwestern basement apartment, she couldn’t get enough sunlight. Her condo was everything her home growing up had not been—warm and bright and clean. She’d spent too many years cold, poor, and helpless, and she wasn’t going to go back to that…ever.
The scrape of a hanger against the rod brought her back to the present.
“It’s been so long since I found a good guy,” Kaylee said wistfully, keeping her gaze on the dresses. “They’re out there, though, and I need to believe that Noah is one of them. After all, he invited me to his uncle’s house, and the man pretty much raised Noah. A toad wouldn’t invite me home to meet his family, right? You just need to give him a chance.”
Risking another glance at Penny, Kaylee hid a half smile. She knew that scowl. It meant her friend was seconds away from caving. “Please? Let me have my fairy tale for a few more dates? If he turns into a complete ass, then I’ll even let you say ‘I told you so’ while we throw darts at his picture—the really pointy, dangerous darts that they’ve banned in the U.S. because too many kids lost their eyeballs. Please?”
“Fine,” Penny grumbled. Kaylee had known that she wouldn’t be able to resist. Besides peanut butter ice cream and motorcycles, Penny’s favorite thing in the world was being right—and getting to crow about it. Now if Noah could keep acting like the perfect boyfriend he’d promised to be, then Penny would be proven wrong, and Kaylee’s story could have a happy ending. “Here.” Penny thrust a dress toward Kaylee.
“Oh, Penny…you’re the best!” As soon as she accepted the hanger, Kaylee knew it was the one. The dress was simple and elegant and just perfect. Pressing it against her front, she did a little spin, her happiness bubbling out of her. The dress felt silky and sinfully good under her hand, and she couldn’t help but remember all the thrift store hand-me-downs she’d had growing up—all the thin coats and musty-smelling boots and scratchy blankets that never managed to be warm enough. The memory of that bone-deep cold was the main reason she’d fought so hard to be here in California, a place where winter never came.
Penny snorted a laugh. “What’s with the dress-dancing? Are you trying to be an ethnically ambiguous Sleeping Beauty right now? Since that makes me the helpful rodent, I’m not loving this theme.”
“No,” Kaylee huffed, although she couldn’t hold a straight face. “You’re the twittery bird.” Grinning, she dodged Penny’s mock punch and twirled around the bedroom again. “I’m just happy. Everything is going right. I have a job I love, a home I love, a Penny I love, a dress I love, a new boyfriend I…”
Narrowing her eyes, Penny warned, “Don’t say it.”
Even Penny’s death glare couldn’t dampen Kaylee’s spirits, and she laughed merrily. “A new boyfriend I could really, really come to like. How about that?”
Penny made a skeptical sound. “As long as you don’t let that ‘like’ blind you to any creeper warning signs.”
“I won’t,” Kaylee promised. The sunlight soaked into her skin, warming her, and she wiggled her toes in delight. It was going to be an amazing night. She could just feel it.
* * *
“You really are a Disney prince,” she blurted.
Noah’s eyebrows drew together even as he laughed and leaned closer so the other guests around the table couldn’t hear their conversation. “What?”
“I mean, your hair alone is pretty much irrefutable evidence.” Kaylee fought the urge to reach over and muss it a little. It was gold and perfect, just long enough to frame his handsome face. Sure, credit could be given to a talented and expensive stylist, but Kaylee was leaning more toward princely genes. “And you open doors and pull out chairs and—”
“That’s manners, not proof that I’m animated royalty,” Noah interrupted, his mouth still curled in amusement. “If I really were a prince, I would’ve picked you up tonight. That was very unprincely of me.”
Kaylee waved off his apology as she leaned to the side, giving the server room to place a delicate cup holding her after-dinner coffee in front of her. After thanking her, Kaylee turned back to Noah. “You had a meeting, and you offered to send a car. I don’t think that qualifies as being rude.”
With a playful frown, he said, “An offer you turned down. I hate that you have to make the drive back alone.”
As smitten as she was with Noah, she had to roll her eyes at that. “It’s a thirty-minute drive. I’ll survive.” Kaylee didn’t mention that the seed of doubt Penny had planted had prompted her to decline. It made her feel safer to have her own transportation, just in case. Not that I’ll need to escape, she thought, taking in Noah’s warm smile and amused blue eyes.
Martin, Noah’s uncle, cleared his throat, drawing her attention to where he sat at the head of the table, framed by the wall of windows behind him. Darkness transformed the glass into a mirror, reflecting the enormous room back at them—as if it needed to look twice as big. The house was huge, set like an island on lush, irrigated, and landscaped acres. Kaylee couldn’t even imagine how much the sprawling LA property was worth.
As expensive as it must have been, the decorating scheme was a little too ostentatious for Kaylee’s taste. It felt as if everything had been chosen to impress visitors with the owner’s wealth, rather than to create a home. Although Kaylee had a healthy appreciation for financial stability, she was happy just to be able to pay her mortgage and buy food and have enough left over for some really nice shoes. The pushy glamour of Noah’s uncle’s home left her cold.
“So, Kaylee,” Martin said, jerking her out of her thoughts. She gave him a polite smile. “You work at St. Macartan’s College?” Although he put a lilt at the end of the statement, it didn’t sound like a question. From the look in his eyes, Kaylee was pretty sure he knew perfectly well where she worked—and a whole lot more about her. Before inviting her to their gazillion-dollar mansion, Martin had probably had her investigated to make sure she wouldn’t steal the silverware.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m in development and fund-raising.”
“And how do you like that?”
“I love it.” A warm glow of satisfaction filled her, as it always did when she thought about her job. “Scholarships made it possible for me to go to college.” Scholarships and working her tail off, but Kaylee left off that part. It sounded too self-pitying. “Now I get to raise money so that other kids have that same opportunity.”
“Sounds…noble.” There was an off note to his tone that made Kaylee stiffen, even as she tried to define it. The expression on Martin’s face was uncomfortably close to a sneer, with a wrinkled nose and curled upper lip that made him look like he smelled something foul. She knew that look, had seen it thousands of times as she was growing up, but she wasn’t sure why Martin was wearing it now. She braced herself, ready to defend her job or her background or her worthiness to even be in the same room as his nephew, but Martin changed the subject. “Where did you go to school?”
“University of Minnesota for my undergraduate degree, and St. Macartan’s for my master’s.” There was a hint of challenge in her tone, but Martin didn’t take her up on it. Instead, he just asked what her major had been.
The conversation continued, so polite on the surface that it made Kaylee nervous. To be honest, Martin freaked her out a little. He had that crocodile-in-disguise manner, his eyes flat and cool even as he smiled. As soon as Martin turned his attention to an older couple seated next to him, Kaylee gave a silent sigh of relief and leaned toward Noah. “Restroom?” Martin had flustered her, and she needed a minute and some privacy to remind herself that she wasn’t that helpless, needy child any longer.
Noah tipped his head toward one of the doorways. “Turn left, then right; it’s the third door on the right. Want me to take you?”
“Oh no.” She stood, making patting motions with her hands as if to keep him in his seat. “I’ve got it. My sense of direction is excellent.” With a teasing smile, she excused herself to the rest of the guests. It was probably her imagination, but she thought she felt Martin’s sharp gaze on her back as she left the room.
Within a few minutes, she was hopelessly lost.
Kaylee made a low sound of frustration. She’d followed Noah’s directions, turning left and then right, but there had only been two doors on the right in that hall. Deciding that he’d left out a third turn, she’d made her way down another hallway, which only brought her farther into a twisted maze.
“Rich people and their ginormous mansions,” she muttered, deciding to just start checking rooms. There had to be a thousand bathrooms in this place, so she figured she’d eventually stumble over one. She tried several doors, most of which were locked, and the rest of which were definitely not bathrooms. As she reached for yet another doorknob, male voices caught her attention, and she turned toward the sound. Rounding the corner, she saw two burly men enter a room at the very end of the hall.
“Excuse me,” she called, hurrying as fast as she could on her impractical—yet very cute—shoes, but they’d already disappeared, closing the door behind them. When Kaylee reached it, she tried the knob. It was locked.
With a growl of impatience, she considered kicking the door, but refrained. Not only did she not know where a bathroom was, but she wasn’t sure how to get back to the dining room. Annoyed with herself, she started trying doors again.
She yanked at one. The handle turned with the heavy click of an automatic lock. Kaylee frowned. Why did Martin have a room in his house that could only be opened from the outside? She pulled at it, curious. The door was heavy and resisted opening at first, but then it swung toward her. To her disappointment, it wasn’t a bathroom. Instead, a flight of stairs descended to a concrete floor. She was about to allow the door to swing shut when she heard a sound.
“Hello?” she called, although her voice came out wispy. There was something about the blocky, utilitarian stairs and fluorescent lighting that gave the space an icky basement vibe. Her childhood home had left her with a special abhorrence for basements.
“Help!” someone called in a hoarse voice. The hair rose on the back of her neck. “Please help us!”
The words were so unexpected, so out of place in the glamorous mansion, that it took a moment for the plea to register. Her heart rate sped up. “Who’s there?” Forcing her feet forward, she descended a few steps. The door started to close and, remembering the automatic lock, she wedged her clutch purse against the jamb before releasing the door.
Her shoes sounded too loud on the steps. “Who’s there? Are you hurt?”
“Down here!” The voice was rough and scratchy, the urgent tone enough to make her stomach clench. How had she gone from fairy tale to horror movie in just a few hallways? Her gaze darted toward the door, and she briefly considered running up the stairs and escaping, but she told herself firmly that she was being ridiculous. This was Martin Jovanovic’s fancy-pants mansion, not a haunted house. She clomped down the remainder of the stairs with forced confidence. She was the girlfriend—well, almost-girlfriend—of the perfect man. She’d been invited to a California dream home. She belonged here, damn it. There wasn’t any reason for her to feel intimidated.
Then she saw the blood.
Oddly, the first thing Kaylee felt was exasperation. Now Penny would get to say “I told you so,” because her friend had been right…again. The mansion, the boyfriend, the food…everything had been too perfect, so it was time for reality to kick Kaylee in the face once again. Her gaze followed the dark-red trail across the floor until it reached the source of the blood…so much blood. Then her brain shut off as horror swamped her, rushing over her in a black wave as her lungs sucked in a huge breath, automatically preparing for a scream.
“Help,” a man—although he was barely recognizable as human—gasped, startling Kaylee into swallowing her shriek and turning it into a harsh croak instead. “Please.”
There were three of them, tied to chairs and facing one another in a rough triangle. Her gaze darted from one battered, blood-soaked form to the next, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. “I was just looking for a bathroom,” she whispered.
A wheezing choke—was it a laugh?—came from the man whose face was so swollen that it was hard to pick out his features. A slitted, glittering eye peered at her from the wreckage. Her lungs flattened and refused to take in any air as Kaylee stared at his battered visage. Someone had done that to him, had tied him up and tortured him…someone who could be coming back at any moment. “Good thing for us. A hand?” He tilted his head toward the table that sat in the center of the small room. When she stayed frozen, he added, “If you could grab something sharp and cut us loose, we’d appreciate it.”
His words were oddly polite, but they held an underlying plea that jerked Kaylee into motion. It was hard to think, to understand what was happening or what she needed to do, and she seized on his gently worded request. Cut them free, she mentally repeated. Cut them free.
Sucking in a much-needed breath, she rushed toward the table, her heels clattering against the concrete. Her body felt foreign and awkward, and her movements were jerky, as if she were a marionette with someone else controlling her strings. She stumbled to a halt next to the small folding table, and a small, near-hysterical portion of her brain noted how the cheap metal stand didn’t go with the rest of Martin’s decor. No wonder he hid it in the basement.
Stop. Don’t freak out. Just breathe.
She forced herself to focus on the task at hand. As her brain registered what the items on the table were, what horrific things the knives and pliers and hammer and—oh shit—the ice pick had been used to do, she couldn’t stop from returning her gaze to the first man’s ravaged face. He tried to smile at her, but the result was macabre.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said, but tension lay beneath his soothing tone. “Anything with a sharp edge will work. Let’s get out of here, huh?”
His last sentence echoed in her mind, reminding her that the people who’d done this could walk in at any time. With a hunted glance at the stairs, she grabbed a small but wicked-looking knife from the table, forcing her brain to ignore how sticky the floor was beneath her shoes, or the purpose of the other tools lined up neatly, ready to be used again in an instant. She kept herself focused as she started cutting the zip ties securing the first man to his chair.
“You’re an angel,” he said as the knife sliced through the binding around his wrist. The zip tie popped open, revealing a bloody groove where it had been. Her gaze fixed on his wrist, on that evidence that he’d struggled against his bonds. She was unable to look away from the gory sight until he cleared his throat.
Kaylee jolted at the sound, fumbling and almost dropping the knife. Recovering her grip, she squeezed the handle tightly as she gave herself a mental smack. Get it together, Kay, she commanded, reaching for the tie on his other wrist. When she noticed how badly she was shaking, though, she stopped before she accidentally cut him.
“You’ve got this, angel,” the man said, and his calm assurance helped. Taking a deep breath, she steadied her hand enough to slip the tip of the knife under the plastic tie. When she pulled up, it opened with a pop. His ankles were easier, and she cut his legs free in seconds before hastily backing up several steps. She almost felt like she’d opened the cage of a circus lion. Would he reward her help or just eat her?
“Thanks, angel.” The man stood and immediately moved to the table. Although he stumbled, his legs wobbling beneath him, he managed to stay on his feet. Grabbing another knife—this one much scarier-looking than Kaylee’s—he moved to the second man and cut his hands free. As he worked, she stared, wondering if she’d made a horrendous mistake. Two out of the three were free. What if they were dangerous criminals? What if they hurt her—or killed her? She was so worried about the return of the torturers, but what if the biggest threat was already in the room with her?
She pushed away the doubt. It was too late to worry about that now. If the men did try to hurt her, they looked to be in bad enough shape that she was pretty sure she could outrun them.
Kaylee forced her body into jerky motion. She headed toward the last guy, who was slumped to the side, only his bonds keeping him semi-upright. He was limp and still, his head lolling to the side as blood ran from his ear and across his cheek before it dripped steadily on the floor. Kaylee seized on the fact that he was still bleeding. Dead people didn’t bleed, did they?
“Please be alive. Please be alive,” she pleaded almost soundlessly. Kaylee sawed at the zip tie securing his hands until the plastic separated and released suddenly. His arms flopped to hang by his sides. Without the restraints holding him, he started to slide sideways, heading toward the floor.
With a squeak of alarm, Kaylee tried to catch him, but his dead weight—no! His unconscious weight—brought her to the floor with him. She put out a hand, trying to catch herself, but her palm slid across wet concrete. Her hip and then her head hit the floor painfully, and the man’s limp body fell heavily across her legs, pinning her. For several seconds, she lay still, stunned.
Then the weight disappeared from her legs, jerking her back to reality. The first man was pulling his unconscious friend’s arm over his shoulder. The second supported the unresponsive man’s other side. Her gaze landed on his face, and she flinched so violently that the back of her head bumped against the floor again. There was a gory mess where one of his eyes should have been. Bile rose in her throat, forcing her to swallow several times. Barely able to keep from vomiting, Kaylee ripped her gaze away from the empty, bloody socket.
“Up you go, Angel.” The man with the swollen face offered the hand not holding on to his unconscious buddy. When she grabbed it, he pulled her up, almost lifting her to her feet, and she scrambled to get her wobbly legs to support her. “Let’s get out before our friends come back, yeah?”
Kaylee couldn’t speak. The best she could do was a jerky nod as she moved to follow the trio. The stairs were too narrow for three big guys to stay side by side, so they were forced to turn sideways. The unconscious man’s boots struck the edges of the treads, and each thud made Kaylee flinch as she climbed the steps behind them. Every sound seemed thunderous, too loud to not be heard everywhere in the mansion, and each step they made, each inch farther that the men dragged their unconscious friend, felt horribly, painfully slow.
When they finally reached the door, all the air left Kaylee’s lungs so quickly and completely that her head spun. After a quick glance into the hall, the men slipped through the doorway. Kaylee hurried up the final few steps, not wanting to be left behind. The thought of being trapped alone in the bloody basement made her stumble forward, rushing to flatten her hands against the opened door.
The man with the swollen face glanced at her as he hitched the unconscious man higher. “Better not go back to the party like that.”
Confused, Kaylee glanced down and saw that, on her hip, a white section of her color-block dress was now smeared with dark red. Blood. The salmon she’d eaten earlier threatened to climb back in her throat.
“You have a car here?” he asked.
She stared at him without seeing his face. All she could see was blood. It was only after he repeated the question that it finally penetrated. Kaylee nodded.
“Head that way.” He jerked his head to the left. “Turn right at the T, and you’ll get to some stairs. They’ll take you to a back entrance.”
“What about you?” Her voice was a husky imitation of its usual self. Her throat felt as rough and sore as if she’d actually been screaming the entire time, instead of just wanting to. “How are you getting out?”
His half grin contorted his abused face, twisting the cuts and bruises and making his eyes almost disappear. “We’re going out the other back door. Good luck, Angel.” He and the other man started making their painful-looking progress in the opposite direction, the unconscious guy slumped between them, his boots dragging across the polished hardwood floor.
The sight of them walking away, leaving her alone, sent a surge of panic through her. She had to bite the inside of her lower lip to keep from calling after them. They were strangers, but it had felt like they’d been on her side. Now she was on her own.
At the thought, the voice in her head screamed at her to get out of the nightmare house. As she moved out of the doorway, Kaylee stepped on something and stumbled slightly. She glanced down and saw her silver clutch. Her fuzzy brain wondered how it got on the floor, until she recalled that she’d used it to prop open the door. Automatically, she bent to grab it.
Once it was in her hands, she remembered that it held her phone. “I can call the police,” she called in a carrying whisper to the retreating men.
They stopped abruptly. “Won’t help,” the one missing an eye said. His voice was raspy, too, and she wondered if he had been screaming. The thought made her shudder. “The Jovanovics have deep pockets and a wide reach. Just get out and get far away from these people.”
It felt wrong, not calling for help, and Kaylee’s fingers tightened around her clutch. Urgency was building in her, panic expanding like air inside a balloon, stretching her tighter and tighter. She needed to get out before she broke. Turning away from the men, she hurried in the opposite direction. It was hard to believe that Noah’s family had the entire police force on their payroll, but she’d wait to contact them, just in case. Later, after the men had a chance to get out and she was safe, Kaylee would call. The thought of being out of this nightmare mansion, of being home, made her hurry her steps.
As she reached the end of the hall, she snuck a quick glance behind her. The men were nowhere to be seen. Sucking in a shaky breath, she turned right toward the stairs…and what she hoped was safety. She refused to think about how she’d gotten so terribly lost in the rabbit warren of a mansion just a short time earlier, or about how easy it would be to get turned around again. The thought of running through Martin’s gilded house, frightened and trapped, made her throat close. There was a door right in front of her, but would it lead to escape or a continuation of her waking nightmare?
Turning the knob with shaking fingers, she didn’t know whether to be grateful or scared that it wasn’t locked. The door opened to a neatly kept yard, lit by an almost-full moon and discreet landscape lights. She was out. Relief flooded her, even as a hundred other emotions—fear and paranoia and horror—pounded through her veins. The cool night air felt good on her flushed cheeks, and Kaylee bent at the waist, trying to catch her breath and make her brain reboot. A revolving chain of images flashed in her mind—blood and knives and the one man’s ravaged, empty eye socket. Her next inhale sounded like a sob, and she forced herself to stand up straight.
There was no time to fall apart. She was out of the house, but Kaylee definitely wasn’t safe yet. Even though he’d been sitting innocently at the dining table with her and the rest of his guests all evening, Uncle Martin had to have given the order for those men to be tortured. After all, they were in his house. Her memory of his flat stare seemed even more menacing now, and she hurried to follow a flagstone path that led to the front of the house.
With every step, Kaylee’s shocked brain was tuning back in to reality, her fear spiraling into panic. Surely they would’ve noticed her extended absence by now. What if the men’s escape had been discovered? How fast would they put the two together?
Her breaths were getting quicker, louder, and she forced herself to slow. Hyperventilating until she passed out was not a good escape plan. In fact, it was a very bad escape plan. When the panicked haze had cleared slightly, she hurried along the path again. Her shoes were loud on the flagstones, and she shifted her weight to the balls of her feet.
The path ended at the entrance to what looked like a garage. Kaylee wasn’t about to go through another unknown door leading to who-knew-what horrors, so she turned, stepping onto the grass and staying close to the exterior of the building.
Her heels sank into the soft, sprinkler-fed lawn, and she shifted to her toes again. A light flickered to life right above her, and she froze, feeling like she was a cat burglar caught by a police spotlight. Clenching her jaw against the need to scream, she looked away from the glare, not wanting to lose her night vision.
No one yelled or chased her or shot her or did any of the horrible things she was expecting. Instead, the night remained quiet except for the chirping and buzzing of nocturnal wild things.
Must be motion-activated, she decided, and her pent-up breath escaped in a whoosh. All the creatures around her went silent, and she hesitated again, hoping her relieved sigh hadn’t been loud enough to catch someone’s attention. A small walkway peeked from around a corner, taunting her with its normalcy.
She forced her feet forward, heading toward the small paved path. As she rounded the corner, Kaylee could see the lights from the front of the estate. She was hit by concurrent feelings of hope and fear, the need to get into a populated spot warring with the panic that someone knew, that she would be grabbed as soon as she stepped into the closest puddle of light—grabbed and taken to that horrible basement room. This time, she’d be the one tied to the chair, the one with the swollen face and empty eye socket and—
It was too much. Kaylee turned off her brain and jogged toward the front entrance, silently praying as hard as she could. The valet startled as Kaylee walked toward him. She’d lengthened her stride and was trying to project confidence, although she didn’t know if she was succeeding.
“Can I…help you?” the valet asked, his voice squeaking a little in the middle, even though he looked many years past puberty.
“Yes, please.” Oh God, not the quivery voice! Kaylee pinched her arm hard, trying to shove back the tears. All that did was make her want to cry harder. “Could you get my car? It’s the Infiniti Q50. And hurry? Please?”
Instead of running off like a good valet, he visibly swallowed and took a step closer. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I just…I need to leave.” Her brain frantically grabbed for an excuse to explain why she was running out of Martin Jovanovic’s mansion, shaking and near tears and streaked with blood—oh God, the blood. How could she explain the blood? Quickly, she shoved her hands behind her back and hoped that the stains on her dress wouldn’t be that noticeable in the poor light. “My boyfriend’s been cheating on me, so I broke up with him, but he’ll be following me, and I need to be gone before he makes it out here and tries to convince me that he’s the perfect guy that I thought he was, so if you could hurry, that would be great, and then you won’t have to watch a really uncomfortable scene with yelling and tears and drama, okay?”
The valet blinked rapidly before turning and jogging away. Kaylee hoped he was heading toward the parked cars and not just running away from the crazy girl. Now that she was alone with only night sounds and the fading footsteps of the valet, she could hear her heartbeat pattering in her ears. She was breathing too fast, each inhale catching on a tiny bit of a sob.
“Calm down,” she muttered. “Calm down, calm down, calm do—”
Someone grabbed her arm and yanked her toward the house.