Page 162 of Paranoid

Groaning, trying to stay awake, Cade felt someone touching him, sensed someone leaning over him. Breathing rapidly. A woman. One he knew. He blinked, thinking outrageously that it might be Rachel as he struggled to focus. She was bending over him, touching him gently.

“Rachel?” he whispered.

“No . . .” she said and her voice cracked. “It’s Kayleigh. Detective O’Meara.”

But he couldn’t focus and was slipping further into the comfort of the darkness.

She was ordering him to respond, yelling at him, maybe crying, but he couldn’t respond, didn’t want to. If he could just close his eyes . . .

“Ryder! Stay with me!” she screamed. “Ryder? Cade? Do you hear me? Damn it, you stay with me! Don’t you dare leave me!”

CHAPTER 37

Thud!

Rachel’s eyes flew open.

She was sweating, her heart racing, the dream so real and vivid.

In many respects it was the same as the others. She was twenty years younger and in the vacuous cannery with the others. She’d looked down, seen the gun in her hand, and seen Luke fall, but this time as he glanced up at her, he morphed, his image altering from one man in her life to another, from Luke to Lucas to Dylan, then her father, and finally Xander Vale. Still, she’d squeezed the trigger and the pistol had gone off in her hand and Luke was staring up at her again.

Now she was awake. Something waking her. A noise that was out of place.

A gunshot?

For a second, she listened, lying still on the bed, ears straining over the rapid-fire beat of her heart, then heard the sound of a car’s engine. So probably she’d just heard the vehicle backfire, which had crept into her nightmare and jarred her awake. But that was odd, wasn’t it? How many times did you hear a car backfiring these days?

And the sound had been different, muted.

And coming from inside the house.

At the foot of the bed, Reno stretched, then hopped down and padded to the door. He looked over his shoulder as if to say, “What’re you waiting for?” His cue that he wanted to go outside. “It’s the middle of the night,” she admonished, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

He wasn’t budging. Started to whine.

She was about to call him back to the bed when she heard something. A scrape against hardwood? Footsteps? Someone was up? Her heart kicked into double time even though she told herself it was probably Dylan, getting something out of the fridge. Sometimes he did that, staying up late on the computer and then being suddenly “starved” and raiding the refrigerator.

But the thump?

What was that?

Reno started to paw at the door.

“Okay, okay,” she whispered. She stepped into her jeans and threw a sweater over her nightshirt.

Scraaape.

The screech of metal on metal was audible.

What was that?

Rachel didn’t move a muscle. She strained to listen, hear anything out of the ordinary. And there it was, the soft scrape of metal on metal . . . like the sound of the back slider opening and closing . . . or . . . a window?

No!

Was Harper sneaking out again?

She wouldn’t!