Page 106 of Beneath the Surface

But he didn’t come back.

Minutes passed.

Quinn counted them by the digital clock on her nightstand, watching the glowing numbers change. 11:47. 11:48. 11:49.

Five minutes.

Nathan still hadn’t reappeared.

11:52. 11:53.

Ten minutes.

Quinn’s hands were shaking so hard now she could barely grip the curtain. Her breath was coming in short, shallow gasps that made her light-headed.

Where was Nathan?

She should call someone. Do something.

But instead, she stood at her window and waited for Nathan to come back, her forehead pressed against the cold glass, her breath fogging and clearing in rhythmic patterns.

Waited and waited and waited.

But the yard stayed dark and empty and silent.

And Nathan didn’t return.

11:56.

Fifteen minutes.

Something was very, very wrong.

Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. Quinn tore herself away from the window and reached for her phone on the nightstand, her fingers fumbling in the dark. She needed to call 911. Now.

The phone’s screen lit up, painfully bright in the darkness, and Quinn had just pulled up the keypad when she heard it.

A sound from somewhere in the house.

Quinn froze, her thumb hovering over the 9.

Not the front door—Nathan had left through there and it had never closed. The distinctive click of the latch would have carried in the silence.

Something else.

A soft creak of hinges. A whisper of movement. The back door? The one with the broken lock that Nathan had said he’d fix tomorrow?

Tomorrow.

Always tomorrow.

Quinn’s breath stopped in her chest, trapped there like a bird in a cage.

Someone was in the house.

Her mind raced, thoughts tumbling over each other in panicked disorder. Should she call? Should she hide? Should she run?

The floor creaked—an old house sound she knew intimately, the particular groan of the board just inside the kitchen doorway where the wood had warped slightly over decades.