He wasn’t a good man and hadn’t bothered pretending to be for a long while now. But there was something about Sloane that reminded him of another time, a long, long time ago, when his mother held him in her arms and read him stories when she tucked him into bed. Sloane reminded him that softness was possible. That goodness was possible.
And he wouldn’t let anyone—not Olezka Tereshchenko, not anyone, hurt her.
So he took another long deep breath and he picked his weapons carefully from his bag before heading into the house on quiet, mouselike feet.
Chapter 8
SLOANE
Sloane held her hand out as the man advanced up the stairs. “Stop. Wait. I’ll call the cops!” She held up her phone and started dialing.
The man just grinned. “Good luck with that.” He continued approaching.
What the hell did that mean? Sloane finished punching in 911 and then hit the green button. But nothing happened. She tried again. And again. But by that time he was already halfway up the stairs.
“What did you do? Who are you?” she screamed, backing up several steps.
“Cell signal jammer. I’m not stupid. And don’t you recognize my voice? It’s me. Olly.” Then his voice deepened as he smiled. “Or do you prefer my new nomme de plume. Saint.”
Sloane’s eyes widened in horror and then she turned and ran. She headed for the one room she hadn’t shown him in the upstairs tour—the bathroom. His laughter followed behind her.
“Oh, are we playing hide and seek now?” she heard him call after her right before she slammed the door shut, her heart hammering a hundred miles a minute. Shit. Shit! How had he found out where she lived?
And why, in all her million calculations of the things that could go wrong if she stepped foot out her door, had she never considered that the danger might come inside one day?
This was the one scenario she didn’t have a contingency plan for.
Ridiculously she thought of the conversations she and Nicholas had had the first night they met. He’d been trying to make a point about how you could never prepare for every disaster and she’d been so sure she’d accounted for everything, that she was so secure, so safe.
And now there was a madman stalking her in her own house.
For long moments she couldn’t hear anything. Please. Please, just let him go away. It was a stupid, desperate plea, but she could feel herself starting to hyperventilate. Her breaths were turning into the short, hiccupping kind that happened right before a full-on panic attack.
Shit, keep it together! She couldn’t afford to go catatonic right now. Later. Later she’d give herself permission to freak and scream and pass the fuck out but right now she had to think. Think. Think!
But as she looked around the bathroom in a panic for anything she could use as a weapon, it was depressingly bare.
She might have grabbed a hammer or a tool from one of the other rooms where the renovations were being done, but had she thought that far ahead? No. She’d come to the one room in the house where there was nothing. Nothing!
She reached down and threw open the cabinets.
It was just full of Aunt Trish’s dusty old medicines, an ancient box of tampons, and a toilet plunger. Desperate, Sloane grabbed for the plunger and held it out in front of her.
Right in time, too, because the next moment the doorknob rattled. “It’s time for me to get to know the real you. Sloane. I wish you would have told me your name. Instead I had to find it out from your bank records. That was disappointing, darling.”
Bank records? Sloane clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. It was him. He’d been the one who’d stolen her money. It had to have been him. How long had he been stalking her?
“Then I gave you the chance to come clean with me. The Olly you first met was pathetic. I understand that. But I’m a man now. You helped me become the man I was always meant to be. I couldn’t come for you right away because I had some business to attend to, but I’m here now. And I was always watching. Now we’ll never be parted again.”
Sloane backed up all the way to the wall, plunger held out like a weapon, her arm shaking so much she could barely keep it steady. There was a window but it was a two story drop, and even if there wasn’t, she couldn’t jump out of it anyway. The outside was still… the outside.
She blinked, sweat beading on her brow as the doorknob rattled again, and then something else scratched. It was a wimpy lock and an even flimsier door. It wouldn’t hold.
Maybe if she climbed in the shower, she’d be able to leap out and surprise him?