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What if they hurt Mason?
“Hannah.”
“Okay,” I whisper, letting out a squeak when the man bangs somewhere near the back of the house. Then . . . everything goes silent, again.
“I’m on my way.”
“Okay.”
The taps start again, louder now. More deranged and uneven. Desperate.
“Hannah.”
I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out but a breath of air.
“Breathe.”
I nod as if he can see me and tiptoe toward the kitchen.
“Where is he?” Mason’s voice is sharp, demanding my attention while I struggle to listen for the intruder.
“I—I don’t know,’ I stammer, tiptoeing into the kitchen and slinking along the counters to peek out the window in the backyard. Nothing. “It’s dar—”
Another bang sounds, this one only a couple feet from where I stand at the knife block and I let out a squeak in terror before I can stop myself. Immediately, I look toward the back door and with the sinking feeling of full-body dread, everything in me runs cold.
“Hannah. Get to the fucking bathroom,” Mason growls, practically feral on the other end of the line.
“The back door’s unlock—”
Just as I rush for the door, the knob twists in my hands and the man hurtles through, slamming into me and knocking me to my ass on the kitchen floor.
I scream as he topples over me, but all the breath leaves me with the weight of his body. He claws at me in the darkness and my phone skitters along the floor under the table.
That time with Missy flashes back to my mind, when she attacked me in her bedroom all those years ago.
”Help. Me,” he roars, his face looming over mine in the darkness. I can’t see much, but I can smell him. The powerful scent of either ammonia or cat urine on his skin. His breath washes over me, a nasty combination of decay and poor hygiene as I fight against his hold. “Youdid this to me!”
I don’t know whosheis, but I manage to knee him in the groin and roll when he cries out in pain. I try to scramble to my feet, but before I can, he grabs my hips and drags me back, a feral sound leaving his lips.
“You did this,” he snarls, tugging at my hair until I feel strands rip free. “You made them do this to me.”
I twist in his hold, throwing my head back as hard as I can and despite the pain, the sickening crunch of his nose is what rattles my brain. He screams in agony, his hold lessening just enough for me to try to escape, hair be damned, but whatever he’s on either dulls the pain or makes him impervious to rage. He grabs me, pinning me down with his body weight on my back.
Deathly cold fingers clamp around my throat when I scream and it comes out a sputtering choke as he forces the breath from my lungs, cutting off my air supply. Tears leak from my eyes, and my skin burns from the lack of oxygen, but he doesn’t stop.
He’s going to kill me.
I croak, clutching at the linoleum, his fingers around my throat—clawing him, but he won’t budge. My vision blurs and then the edges start to grow dark, peppering like an old film when suddenly, the fingers are gone and I’m sucking in air like I just swam from the bottom of the Pacific.
I cough, gasping for breath as I try to come to in the commotion of the darkness surrounding me.
There are the cries of my attacker, but there’s also the feral animalistic growl of a very pissed off, verybigMason Carpenter, as he beats him into the floor on what used to be the table not even five feet away from me.
When the man’s cries turn to quiet whimpers, something big and dark skids across the floor with a metallicthunk.
Holy shit.
A tire iron.
