Page 37 of Killer Summer
“I have a hard time believing that,” he said. “I happen to find you very likable.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I keep to myself that people have that impression of me.” Dani shook her head and gave him a smiley sad frown. “What’s your relatable flaw?”
“Me? Well, it seems that I’m attracted to unavailable, mysterious women,” he said. “It’s too bad, really.”
“You should work on that,” Dani said, her gaze set on his mouth.
“Maybe I will.”
Dani leaned in and planted a long, slow, kiss on his lips. She breathed him in, intoxicated with his clean laundry and dinner scent. He smelled like safety. Comfort. Home. Ethan returned her kiss with enthusiasm as she straddled his waist. In that moment, Dani let herself forget all about the past and the dangerous present as he ran his fingers through her hair. She pulled her shirt over her head and kissed him harder and deeper, allowing herself to indulge in the moment. Remembering what it felt like to be free again.
Outside her house, a vehicle idled in the dark. Watching. Waiting.
The first security sensor tripped outside Dani’s house just after 3 a.m.
Dani sat up straight in bed as the notifications on her phone and her smartwatch blared, snapping her back to the waking world. Her head spun from a combination of too much fun and way too much wine, which at that moment was traveling back up her gullet in a wave of burning bile. She pulled her covers up over her bare chest as Ethan dozed next to her, the events of the night rushing back in full force. Every cell in her body lit up as her headache and racing pulse seemed to beat in tandem.Stupid, stupid, stupid.Why had she let her guard down? How could she have been so reckless?
She grabbed her smartwatch off the bedside table and flicked open her notifications. The black and white security footage from her side gate camera flashed on the screen, the brightness instantly assaulting her eyes. Her heart jackhammered away in her chest as she watched the footage of a large man dressed in black tinkering with her side gate. He let out a yowl as the metaltool he was using touched the electrified door handle. Dani knew she didn’t have much time; the intruder would likely try one of the other points of entry next.
Dani secured her smartwatch on her wrist, threw off her covers and stepped into a pair of sweatpants that were crumpled at the foot of her bed. She reached for Tommy’s frayed and faded hoodie and pulled it over her head, then took a slow, deep breath through her nose. Now was not the time to panic. All of her years of martial arts and weapons training had come down to this moment. Part of her wanted to curl up and hide as Dani realized that the day she had been preparing for had finally come. And yet, some other feral, unknown part of her awoke in that hazy, sleep-deprived moment, pushing her timid tendencies aside. Her long-held desire for revenge was so close, she could practically smell it.
She padded toward her walk-in closet, trying not to wake Ethan. She never should have gotten so tipsy and allowed him to stay over. He deserved better than her. So did all the others. This time she vowed not to let Ethan suffer because of her mistake. She wasn’t going to call the cops this time. She was going to send a message to every single person who ever doubted her, who ever blamed her, who ever made her feel like a liar. They didn’t see her as a victim? Well then, she wouldn’t be one. Tonight, Dani was going to stick a knife deep into the chest of whoever crossed her threshold. She was going to send the message that Dani Spencer would not be fucked with.
Dani paused for a moment, weighing her options. She didn’t want to wake up her sleeping date; he would only get in the way, and she had work to do. Ethan was wonderful, and she enjoyed her evening with him far more than she had anticipated, but this washerproblem. Her greatest work. Carving a stalker up into little bits was going to be difficult, but also exactly what she needed to move on with her life. Some days, revenge was all shecould think about. She didn’t need some hero to try and get in the way and stop her.Slow. If it was Vickers or one of his army of incels, she wanted to kill them nice and slow, just like Vickers did to her parents. To Tommy. Her friends. She was going to make them suffer until their last breath.
Like the rest of her home, Dani’s closet was bare. She only owned five pairs of shoes, a small selection of workout clothes and owned only a dozen pairs of tailored pants and dresses for work. The rest of the generous walk-in closet space was reserved for her arsenal. Dani pushed the numeric code on the built-in safe that she had professionally installed when she moved into her home, and the numbers lit up with a gentle beep. The door opened, and she began to load a satchel with her weapons of choice; in her front hoodie pocket she stashed a taser and a syringe filled with something her supplier said would “take down an elephant.” In her left hand Dani held the glock that she had resisted buying for so long, and in her right hand was the weapon that she wanted to use the most; a carbon steel hunting knife with a 5-inch blade. Dani could be soft and sweet, but her romantic heart hardened when it came down to self-preservation and revenge. The prospect of sticking the dangerous looking knife deep into Vickers’s chest over and over again caused her pulse to hitch, her mouth flooding with saliva.
The security system alerted Dani to new movement at the side of the house near her spare bedroom and she shifted into stealth mode. She flicked her wrist and glanced down at the smartwatch screen to see where her target had moved to next. Sure enough, the same man was working on removing the window screen in the room adjacent to her master bedroom. He was going to break in, and she was going to let him.
Dani padded over to the spare bedroom and crawled on her hands and knees toward the wall with her weapons at the ready. Soft moonlight spilled through the curtains, illuminating theoutline of a very large man just on the other side of the window. Her heart threatened to quit beating altogether as she pressed her back to the wall. Every scratching motion the man made as he removed the window screen tremored through the walls and buzzed against her spine. Soon, he would break one of her impact-resistant window panes, undo the lock, and let himself in, and she was going to watch as he did it.
The scrape of cut glass pierced the silence of night as she held her breath. Dani gritted her teeth, cursing herself as he easily carved into her window. So much for unbreakable glass. A perfect clear circle hit the floor and a gloved hand pushed through the hole in the window to flip the latch. The frame creaked as the window was raised, and Dani held her hunting knife at the ready. A long, large leg clad in black fatigues swung over the window sill, and a combat boot landed on the carpet. Two hands grasped either side of the window frame, and a masked head pushed through like some kind of bizarre birth.
For a moment, Dani froze up much in the way that prey animals do. She stared in disbelief as the very situation that she had been fearing all these years played out in front of her. This time, she was determined not to run. This time, she would stay and fight andwin.
Dani pulled herself out of her stupor before the man could swing his other foot over the ledge and snapped into action. She held her breath, drew her arm back and plunged the knife into the intruders’ thigh with every bit of strength she had.
The blade disappeared into his thigh, and the intruder let out a distorted, muffled scream. A hot pool of blood seeped through his pants and onto her hand as she curled her fist around the handle. She struggled to unstick the knife as the man placed a giant gloved hand on her face and shoved her backwards. Dani tumbled back and landed hard on her tailbone, but she didn’tfeel anything. In that moment, she was made of pure adrenaline and instinct.
“Dani?” Ethan called out. “Is everything okay?”
Dani reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out her hand gun as the man unstuck her knife from his leg. He grunted and stared down the barrel of the gun, injured, but still very much alive. He swung his massive mitt through the air, making contact with the gun. Dani gasped as her last lethal weapon bounced out of her grip and disappeared into the dark.
All she had left was her taser. Dani reached into her pocket for the electronic device, hoping and praying that she wouldn’t fumble again. She wrapped her fingers around the handle, positioned her finger over the trigger and pointed the stun gun in his direction. Two darts shot toward his masked face and crackles of electricity filled the air as his animalistic sounds melded into shocked grunts. The effects of the taser wouldn’t last forever, and she wasn’t ready to give him a sweet injection of death just yet. She needed to get back to her master bedroom, and she needed to do it fast.
Dani released her grip on the weapon and sped on adrenaline numb legs out of the room. Before she could make it through the doorway though, she was met with another roadblock.
“What’s going on?” Ethan burst out of the bedroom, disheveled and wild-eyed. “Are you okay?”
“Shut up!” She hissed and pushed him back. “He’s here.”
“Who?” Ethan’s fist rose, ready to fight.
She closed the bedroom door behind them and locked it. “Get behind the bed!”
“A stalker.” Dani grabbed a custom sawed off shotgun from her weapons safe. “This one’s even bigger than the last guy.”
“Oh shit.”
