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But it had only just gone six p.m. and the sun wouldn’t rise until just before eight in the morning, and she was not keen on staying out here for fourteen hours. Also—she checked her phone—yeah, there was no mobile service out here. Which meant she’d have to trek to Trystan Abbott’s place before calling for a tow truck anyway. Might as well bite the bullet and do it now. Better than spending an uncomfortable night in the car.
“This is so dumb,” she told herself as she got her carry-on wheelie suitcase out of the boot. “This is how people get murdered. Or eaten by animals. Or abducted by aliens. Or attacked by sharks, or zombies, or frikking vampires.”
Still, she was going to do this. She had to do this—it was the shittier of the two options available to her, but the most logical one.
She zipped up the puffer jacket she’d bought at the airport after discovering how cold it was, and put one resolute foot in front of the other as she continued to backtrack until she came to the turn she hadn’t even noticed earlier.
A reckless five-second switch to her phone’s flashlight told Iris that the road was lined with tall skeletal trees whose bare branches entangled many meters above her to form a brittle canopy above the road. The branches squeaked and scraped against each other in the strong wind, which was now blowing straight at her. The occasional gunshot-loud crack warned her that more branches were likely breaking and falling, making this foolhardy course of action even more treacherous.
One bright spot, the GPS didn’t seem to indicate any cliffs in the surrounding area, but that didn’t preclude deep ditches and holes, of course.
And now that the thought had crossed her mind, she kept imagining herself plunging into one with every step she took.
Thankfully, the howling of the wind was loud enough to drown out any potential howling from animals, which meant it was easier to put the threat of death by animal mauling and predation from her mind.
Sometimes she cursed her over-active imagination.
In fact, it was the absolute worst thing for her to have. She was trying to be a journalist over here, not an author of gruesome horrors.
She could use this in her feature. Set the scene…
It was there—among the dead trees, stormy seas, and wild animals—that I finally tracked down the elusive Trystan Abbott. The legendary actor hiding in a remote cottage in the wilds of?—
What was that?
She stopped dead in her tracks and canted her head to the side as she tried to ignore the wind and listen for the sound she thought she’d heard beneath the cacophonous wind.
A growl. She was sure of it—a low, menacing growl that?—
There it was again.
Oh God, she glanced down at her phone. According to the map, the house was straight ahead, just fifty meters away. She couldn’t see it. But it had to be there. It just had to.
She picked up the pace, but felt almost certain she was being stalked. She was practically running by now and when the trees abruptly ended and the gravel road changed to paving beneath her feet, she let out a grateful cry at first sight of the huge, creepy house, with its unlit windows, and dropped her case as she darted through a small garden toward what looked like a back door.
She pounded frantically at the door, but the lights remained dark.
She hammered on the door again.
“Open up. Please. Open the door!”
She heard the growl again, louder, closer. She gulped in terror and switched her phone to flashlight mode and swung around. There! By the fence. Eyes, illuminated by the light. She kept the flashlight focused in that direction, striving for a better look, when the phone finally died on her, plunging her into absolute darkness with a creature that looked about waist high to her five-foot-four-inch height.
She mewled in terror and plastered her back to the door, her left hand reaching for the doorknob, hoping that someone who lived this far from the rest of humanity would keep his doors unlocked. But the doorknob didn’t turn and the door wouldn’t budge.
Iris closed her eyes and asked for forgiveness for all her sins. She hoped her parents would understand what had driven her to come all this way. Hoped they wouldn’t be too disappointed in her… chasing a man, a story, a dream she wasn’t even sure was her own.
She was only twenty-six. She still had so much she wanted to do, so much to see, so much to?—
The door swung inward behind her back and Iris, weak-kneed and terrified plummeted backward into the void.
She hit the floor—arse first—hard and sat there for a moment trying to get her bearings. It was still dark and something huge stood above her, and for a second’s blind panic she was sure it was the creature, until she recognized the two tall, solid structures straddled on either side of her waist as legs.
Long denim-clad legs.
“Oh, thank you, Jesus,” she breathed the reverent prayer as she smiled up at the man standing above her. She couldn’t quite see his face or expression in the dim light, but knew it had to be Trystan Abbott.
“Not quite.” The curt voice was at odds with what she’d been expecting, and she blinked up at him.
