Page 25 of Coach (Shady Valley Henchmen #8)

Este

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

A cry rose in my throat but died there as fear squeezed my throat.

This could not be happening.

I was supposed to be safe in Shady Valley.

Well, if not safe exactly, then at least able to have some sort of heads-up. He should have stood out like a sore thumb. I should have seen him from a mile away.

Even as I thought that, though, he loomed closer.

That familiar height—almost unnaturally tall.

But the frame was different.

Much thinner than I remembered him.

Gone was at least a hundred pounds, probably more.

Could it be that simple?

Had weight loss made him not stand out to me?

Even though I knew that face? Those eyes?

Had I even been looking?

I knew the answer immediately.

No.

No, I’d been too damn distracted.

I was working, renovating, falling for Saul, spending time with my dog.

I didn’t remember the last time my gaze simply scanned the streets or the stores when I was inside them.

Could he have been here all along? Lurking around aisle end caps? Watching me from a parked car? Hiding in a corner of the pool hall?

I hated to admit it, but… maybe.

I’d been so careful. My whole life had been built around rituals that forced me to be hyper-aware of my surroundings, of everyone who was—and wasn’t—around me.

It was imperative.

It was how I knew it was time to pack and run.

And, sometimes, just run. Leaving absolutely everything I had in the world—save for my go-bag in my car—and hit the road.

When I was on top of my game, I could spot him before he saw me seeing him. It allowed me to slip away casually, so he didn’t try to chase me.

The key was to get away as quickly as possible and go as far as I could.

I’d been disappearing for years.

He hadn’t gotten this close to me in ages.

I’d gotten distracted.

Sloppy.

And I was going to pay for that.

How much, though, was still up to me.

Because he didn’t have me.

Not yet.

I still had a chance.

If I could just scramble back, get out the back door, run through the yard, get out of the gate…

I could, what?

Run away from him?

Maybe that would have been an option when he was much heavier, a lot less fit. But now? He seemed like he’d been taking care of himself. And I hadn’t run in months.

“Go ahead,” he said as I sucked in a deep breath.

Because I did have one thing. I had a neighbor who could hear me scream.

Maybe they wouldn’t come running. But they could call the police.

It was a small town with nothing going on.

The station was close. It wouldn’t take long for help to arrive. “Scream all you want,” he added.

There was something cocky in his voice that had my blood running cold. First, because it wasn’t something I’d ever heard before. He’d been shy, unsure, stammering, quiet. Second, because he sounded very sure of something, like he knew something I didn’t know.

“The brownies were delicious, by the way. Not in my diet, but I made an exception.”

No .

Oh, God, no.

He was the neighbor? With all the hammering, sawing, sanding, nailing? Day in and day out?

Was it some sort of psychological torture? Was he trying to make me sleepless? Too slow and exhausted to run for my life when he finally decided to make his move?

And how, how , could I have missed it?

I hadn’t even been the least bit suspicious that I’d never laid eyes on my neighbor, never stopped to consider how weird that was.

What the hell was wrong with me?

How could I let this happen?

No.

Dammit.

No.

I wasn’t going to take on the blame.

I’d done that once.

I’d made myself sick with it.

This wasn’t on me.

This was on him.

And his sick mind.

I knew what he’d done. He’d watched me for a while. Maybe even from the empty house across the street. He got to know my schedule, making sure he knew any of the variables.

Only then did he move in, did he start doing whatever it was he was doing next door. Planning. Plotting. Watching.

God, how often was he watching me?

When I was outside with Trix, for sure. When I was working outdoors.

But did he also look in my windows?

More horrific, did he put holes in the walls I hadn’t noticed? Had he broken in and planted hidden cameras?

In my bedroom?

In the bathroom?

Horror, cold and slimy, spread across my skin, sank inward.

You’d think you could get used to that invasion. But I never could. It was a violation each time.

“I can scream with you, if you want,” he went on. Then he sucked in a breath and did just that.

Jesus.

He was insane.

I mean, he’d always been warped. You had to be to do what he did. Especially for this long. But this was the first time he seemed genuinely unhinged.

I was glad I couldn’t see his eyes in the dark because I was pretty sure they might freeze me on the spot if I did.

For the first time in my life, I was thankful for the shadows all around me as I finally found the strength to push myself off the floor.

My heart ached at the idea of leaving Trix there on the floor all by herself. But she was alive. Breathing. She would come to. I hoped.

But I couldn’t help her, get her to a vet, if I was kidnapped or dead.

I had to save myself to save her.

I ran my fingers over her soft fur one last time, then I threw myself backward, scuttling across the floor, making my way toward one of my drawers.

“Are you looking for the knives?” he asked, voice chilling.

I knew before I even put my hand in the drawer that it was empty, that he’d been prepared for this.

I would bet good money that my meat tenderizer, my rolling pin, and my large pepper grinder were all also missing. Hell, probably even my pots and pans.

But this was a house under constant renovation. I had tools everywhere. Some of them not even sitting out where he could easily find them to stash them somewhere.

I’d been trying to fix a lower cabinet near the sink. But Trix had interrupted me by bringing one of her stuffies over to play with. I’d left the screwdriver there. And since I had a dozen others, I’d never needed to go back for it.

The problem?

My attacker was now standing between me and the sink. To get the screwdriver, I would have to do the unthinkable: I’d have to move closer to him.

If I wanted to use it, though, I’d have to be close enough to slam it into some part of him.

My lungs squeezed tighter, my heartbeat thundering in my ears as I flew forward.

I dropped low when I got close, yanking open the cabinet, and feeling around inside.

A hand shot down, fingers clawing at my hair, grabbing a handful of it, and yanking hard enough back to make tears flood my eyes.

The pain was sharp and all across my scalp. Every nerve ending was begging me to lift up, to ease the sting.

But I had to fight against that; I had to pull harder, stretch further away.

My hand met some mystery fluid, making me note that if or when I got out of this situation, I needed to check that out.

And then, finally, finally, my fingers found the hard plastic handle of the ancient screwdriver.

I tightened my fist around it, brandishing it like a knife, then whipped around, and swung in the dark.

For one stomach-dropping second, I thought I’d struck into nothing but thin air.

But then the tip of the screwdriver met resistance.

My stomach lurched.

I bit back bile as I forced my hand to press in harder, deeper, even as a yowl of pain escaped my attacker, as he released my hair.

Free, I let the handle of the screwdriver go, then scrambled on all fours two feet away, four.

But just as I was pressing down to push myself to my feet, there was an exploding pain across my back as my attacker kicked me hard enough to send me flying forward with no hopes of breaking my fall.

My face cracked against the hard floor, making sparks flash behind my eyelids as the shock of impact became a throbbing pain across my cheek and up through my temple.

With each breath I sucked in, though, the pain throbbed deeper until it felt like it was an icepick to my brain itself.

I fought back a wave of nausea and pushed up to crawl forward.

But the hand was in my hair again, tugging viciously back. White-hot pinpricks of pain tracked across my head as he pulled harder and harder, dragging me up onto my knees, then my feet.

Tears flooded my cheeks even as the sudden position change had my head spinning.

That was a concussion, wasn’t it?

Not that it mattered.

Because his arm wrapped around my center, pressing hard enough to make my ribs scream, wringing any remaining air from my lungs.

It wasn’t good enough for him, though.

His arm cinched tighter, grinding bone against bone until every shallow breath scraped like broken glass in my chest.

Panic welled up, animal and mindless, the primal understanding of how close I was to unconsciousness, to death, as the air died in my lungs.

I clawed at him, nails raking skin, hot, sticky blood coating my fingertips.

I kicked, jerked, writhed with a frantic strength I didn’t know I had.

The edges of my vision went fuzzy, the world tilting with every strangled gasp I couldn’t quite draw in.

My heart hammered so violently it hurt, pleading with me to find air, find space, escape .

I had no conscious thought, no strategy—just the savage instinct to survive.

I twisted, bucked, threw my head back, anything to try to loosen his hold.

The scream stayed trapped in my throat, needing oxygen I didn’t have to escape.

The pressure on my ribs crushed tighter, steel bands cinching, each gasp becoming smaller than the last.

My chest convulsed against the unyielding arm, each attempt at air ragged.

Pain flared sharp with each inhale that didn’t quite come, spreading panic like wildfire through my veins.

My vision went spotty, little sparks of white crowding out the darkness all around.

A sound clawed from my throat, raw and cracked, not a scream, but the distinctive cry of something cornered, caught, caged.

My hand shot downward, seeking his thigh, balling my hand into a fist, trying to slam hard into his injured thigh.

My mind screamed louder than my lungs: Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

The command went unanswered.

The air wasn’t there.

The edges of the world collapsed inward, shadows smearing my vision.

My heart thrashed too hard, too heavy.

Then dulled.

The fight that had burned hot and frantic faltered.

My limbs grew heavy, each movement sluggish, weak.

I tried again, clawing, gasping, but my body betrayed me.

The panic turned into terror.

Then something smaller, quieter.

An awful, sinking surrender.

My last thought, jagged and desperate, was I can’t—

And then the world went dark.