Page 36 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

He had checked to make sure the apartment was vacant.

He had checked to make sure the garage was empty.

And now he was probably going to break into her mother’s house.

Andy furiously patted her pockets, even as she realized that her phone was upstairs, dead where she had left it. Laura had gotten rid of the landline last year. The mansions on either side probably didn’t have phones, either. The bike ride back to Gordon’s would take ten minutes at least and by then her mother could be—

Andy’s heart jerked to a stop.

Her bladder wanted to release. Her stomach was filled with thumbtacks. She carefully stepped off the bike. She leaned it against the wall. The rain was a steady snare drum now. All that she could hear over the shush-shush-shush was her teeth chattering.

She made herself walk to the door. She reached out, wrapped her hand around the doorknob. Her fingers felt cold. Was Hoodie waiting on the other side of the door, back pressed to the garage, arms raised with a bat or a gun or just his giant hands that could strangle the life out of her?

Andy tasted vomit in her mouth. The water on her skin felt frozen. She told herself that the man was cutting through to the beach, but nobody cut through to the beach here. Especially in the rain. And lightning.

Andy opened the door. She bent her knees low, then peered out into the driveway. The light was still on in Laura’s office. Andy saw no one—no shadows, no tripped floodlights, no man in a hoodie waiting with a knife beside the garage or looking through the windows to the house.

Her mother could take care of herself. She had taken care of herself. But that was with both hands. Now, one arm was strapped to her waist and Laura could barely walk across the kitchen on her injured leg without grabbing onto the counter for support.

Andy gently closed the garage door. She cupped her hands to the glass, the same as Hoodie. She looked into the dark space. Again, she could see nothing—not her bike, not the shelves of emergency food and water.

Her relief was only slight, because Hoodie had not walked up the driveway when he’d left. He had turned toward the house.

Andy brushed her fingers across her forehead. She was sweating underneath all the rain. Maybe the guy hadn’t gone inside the bungalow. Why would a burglar choose the smallest house on the street, one of the smallest in the entire city? The surrounding mansions were filled with high-end electronics. Every Friday night, dispatch got at least one call from someone who had driven down from Atlanta expecting to enjoy a relaxing weekend and found instead that their TVs were gone.

Hoodie had been upstairs in the apartment. He had looked in the garage.

He hadn’t taken anything. He was looking for something.

Someone.

Andy walked along the side of the house. The motion detector was not working. The floodlights were supposed to trip. She felt glass crunch under her sneaker. Broken lightbulbs? Broken motion detector? She stood on tiptoe, peered through the kitchen window. To the right, the office door was ajar, but just slightly. The narrow opening cast a triangle of white light onto the kitchen floor.

Andy waited for movement, for shadows. There were none. She stepped back. The porch steps were to her left. She could enter the kitchen. She could turn on the lights. She could surprise Hoodie so that he turned around and shot her or stabbed her the same way that Jonah Helsinger had tried to do.

The two things had to be connected. That was the only thing that made sense. This was Belle Isle, not Atlantic City. Guys in hoodies didn’t case bungalows in the pouring rain.

Andy walked to the back of the house. She shivered in the stiff breeze coming off the ocean. She carefully opened the door to the screened porch. The squeak of the hinge was drowned out by the rain. She found the key inside the saucer under the pansies.

Two French doors opened onto her mother’s bedroom. Again, Andy cupped her hand to glass. Unlike the garage, she could see clear to the corners of the room. The nightlight was on in the bathroom. Laura’s bed was made. A book was on the nightstand. The room was empty.

Andy pressed her ear to the glass. She closed her eyes, tried to focus all of her senses on picking up sounds from inside—feet creaking across the floor, her mother’s voice calling for help, glass breaking, a struggle.

All she heard were the rocking chairs swaying in the wind.

Over the weekend, Andy had joined her mother on the porch to watch the sun rise.

“Andrea Eloise.” Laura had smiled over her cup of tea. “Did you know that when you were born, I wanted to name you Heloise, but the nurse misunderstood me and she wrote down ‘Eloise,’ and your father thought it was so beautiful that I didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d spelled it wrong?”

Yes, Andy knew. She had heard the story before. Every year, on or around her birthday, her mother contrived a reason to tell her that the H had been dropped.

Andy listened at the glass for another moment before forcing herself to move. Her fingers felt so thick she could barely slide the key into the lock. Tears filled her eyes. She was so scared. She had never been this terrified. Not even at the diner, because during the shooting spree, there was no time to think. Andy was reacting, not contemplating. Now, she had plenty of time to consider her actions and the scenarios reeling through her mind were all horrifying.

Hoodie could injure her mother—again. He could be inside, waiting for Andy. He could be killing Laura right now. He could rape Andy. He could kill her in front of her mother. He could rape them both and make one watch or he could kill them then rape them or—

Andy’s knees nearly buckled as she walked into the bedroom. She pulled the door closed, cringing when the latch clicked. Rainwater puddled onto the carpet. She slipped out of her sneakers. Pushed back her wet hair.

She listened.