Something simple, then. Something quick.
Shuffling into her kitchen, she knew exactly what to grab. One small problem, though. After going through all of her cabinets, she couldn’t find it.
Where the hell was her oatmeal?
For a second, she wondered if he’d had the time to go through her kitchen cabinets. Then she remembered that she’d run out of oatmeal on Friday. It was one of the staples she refilled when she went to the store yesterday afternoon.
The grocery bags were still piled up near her front door. After she escaped Tessa and Lucas, Grace had only bothered with the bags long enough to take out anything that needed to be refrigerated. She left the rest where they were until she was settled enough to put them away.
W
hich she did that morning while looking for her oatmeal.
She frowned when she was done. No sign of the oatmeal anywhere. Thinking back to her purchase, she remembered buying tampons and toilet paper, too. They were also missing.
Wonderful. She must have left one of the grocery bags behind in her car.
Even though it was only the beginning of October, it could be unseasonably chilly in Dayton. Grace threw a sweater on over her sleep shirt, swapping her pajama pants for a pair of jeans since she was going to have to walk all the way to the other side of the parking lot. She pulled on her sneakers and grabbed her keys, heading for the door.
As she reached for the handle, she hesitated. She shook her head angrily a second later. It was one thing to be vigilant and careful. It was another to live constantly in fear. She might have to start thinking about moving to her fourth place but, damn it, she wasn’t going to let him scare her into never leaving her apartment.
Pulling her door in, she took one step into the hall before she was forced to stop.
As she left her apartment, Grace had her gaze momentarily drawn to the floor—which was the only reason why she noticed the to-go coffee cup set neatly in front of her door. She gulped when she saw it. Before she thought better of it, she bent down, grabbed the cup and straightened, bringing the lid up her face.
The sweet scent of hazelnut mixed with a warm cinnamon spice wafted up at her. She inhaled the wisps of smoke escaping from the hole in the lid, her stomach tightening as she recognized the combination.
It was her favorite.
Turning it over in her hand, she read the name of the coffee shop written on the side of the paper to-go cup. Her stomach dropped down to her sneakers.
Oh, no.
The coffee flavor she could almost forgive. She wasn’t shy when it came to adoring the combination of hazelnut and cinnamon and it was possible—if not likely—that one of her friendly neighbors remembered how she took her coffee and left her a morning offering.
But the coffee shop alone—
She tightened her grip on the cup, squeezing it so hard that splashes of warm coffee stung her skin. There was only one person who would arrange to buy her a fancy cup of coffee from a shop more than an hour away and figure a way to keep it hot before he personally dropped it off in front of her new apartment. It was as ruthless a gesture as it was supposedly kind; he left this particular cup as a telling reminder of their first date while also proving that, no matter how far she ran, he always found her.
Even worse?
Since the coffee was still warm enough to burn her, that meant he had only just left it for her to find.
3
Grace wrapped her arms around her waist, hugging herself, anxiously tapping her fingers against her hip as she waited for someone to answer her knock. The time for discretion—the time for hiding—was over and done with.
Please, please, please.
“Hang on. I’m coming.”
A whisper of a sigh left her when she heard Tessa through the door. She didn’t know what she would’ve done if she faced Lucas alone at that moment. Her nerves were already rattled enough, and that was before remembering the way their eyes locked last night.
Lucas had known something was up and chose not to push it. She didn’t think she’d be so lucky this time.
Even so, nothing could have stopped her from knocking on their door. Because she needed to make sure they were protected, and she needed to make sure that they hadn’t seen something—or someone—that they would need to be protected from.
She didn’t want to live in fear, but there was no denying that Tommy’s actions were escalating. He’d barely gone sixteen hours between finding a way into the apartment complex yesterday afternoon to leave his gifts and then showing off with the coffee out front. She’d purposely turned her phone off last night, just in case. She could only guess what she would discover when she turned it on again.