Page 46

Moscow, Idaho

A s soon as she wakes up and sees the half-light shining through the slit of a window in Bethany’s bedroom, Dylan remembers him.

The firefighter. His bulging blue eyes that caught hers. His thick, dark eyebrows.

And the mask.

Her dreamlike memory of the night before begins coming back to her in hazy snippets.

She remembers falling into a half sleep, half stupor. At around two a.m., she’d heard everyone come home. Kaylee and Maddie had chatted on the couch in the living room.

Late last night, she heard the girls say the name of Kaylee’s ex: Jack, Jack, Jack.

Dylan now thinks Maddie and Kaylee stayed up for a while. She heard them stomp up the stairs to the top floor. And then…

She thought she’d heard that cry. Was it Kaylee?

“There’s someone here.”

Given her soporific haze, Dylan can’t be sure of the timing, but she thought it sounded like Kaylee had said those words just moments after going up the stairs.

Then Dylan had opened her door and peered out.

Nothing.

She thought she could hear Xana moving around, doubtless getting a food delivery like she always did after a big night out.

It wasn’t unusual for people to pop in and out of King Road even at four a.m. It was a party house.

And people knew to come in through the sliding doors by the kitchen.

Everyone in their circle, even their parents, knew that the lock was broken.

You just had to lift the mechanism up and the door released.

So Dylan went back to bed.

But as she lay down, she thought she heard Xana crying.

She opened her door again—and she thought she heard an unmistakably male voice say: “It’s okay. I’m going to help you.”

Then there was a thud. A whimper. And Murphy began barking and barking.

Murphy never did that in the middle of the night.

Dylan shut her door, freaked out.

Her heart thudding, she waited some more.

She opened the door a third time. And then she saw him. The firefighter.

Or that’s what she thought he must be, since he wore a mask and was clad head to toe in black. He had something in his hands. A vacuum, maybe?

Was there a fire? Where was the smoke? She was confused.

He was walking toward the back sliding doors. Their gazes locked for a split second.

Dylan was momentarily frozen. But she quickly closed her door and locked it, heart pounding, waiting for further sounds. She remembered being scared. And looking around her room for her Taser. The battery was dead.

She listened and listened at the door. But after that… there was just silence.

Whoever he was, whatever he’d been doing, he was gone.

Dylan wondered in that moment if she’d gone crazy. How wasted was she?

That was when she reached out to Bethany. And the others. And, eventually—after getting no reply for ten minutes and seeing that her phone was dying—she’d gulped, opened her door again, and raced down to Bethany’s room, where she’d locked the door and climbed into bed with her best friend.

Her other housemates must be sleeping, she told herself. And she fell into an uneasy slumber.

When she woke up around eight a.m., early for a Sunday, Bethany was already awake. She’d spoken to her parents and told them about Dylan’s panic—paranoia most likely—the night before.

Dylan has had crazy thoughts before, when completely drunk. So at first she thinks it must’ve been a nightmare, which now has passed, just like the dark.

She and Bethany lie in bed, both on their phones. Dylan tools around on Instagram and then on Indeed. At 10:23 a.m. she texts Maddie to see if she’s up.

No biggie, she thinks, when there’s no answer.

But the clock ticks on and, as Dylan sends messages on Instagram and Snapchat, there’s still no noise from upstairs. At 11:29 a.m. she texts Kaylee. Still nothing.

Now the panic from last night sets in again.

Dylan turns to Bethany: What if whatever Dylan saw… was real?

Bethany calls Jenna McClure, one of their besties. She says she’ll come over.

And Dylan decides to phone Emily, her “Big,” the person she trusts the most on campus.

Surely Emily will fix this. She has to.