Page 65 of Ice Covered Heart

Nine-one-one. Call nine-one-one.

Shelby shoved the phone to her ear. Her left ear. The right…

No, no, don’t think about the right. She’d been ignoring the pain and the blood that kept pouring from her right ear.

“Nine, one, one.” A woman’s calm voice. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

“We need help.” A bare rasp. Shaky words.

“I can’t hear you. Speak up.”

Dizziness hit her. The whole room spun. Her head ached. And her right ear…

“What’s the nature of your emergency?”

“They’re dead.” The dizziness got worse. And…

Something had just moved near the open kitchen door. The door that led out to the night.

Something…

Someone…?

“Help me,” Shelby begged. Then she shoved the phone into the top counter drawer. The one below the microwave. She left the phone on. You…you were supposed to leave phones on, weren’t you? So you could be traced? That happened in TV shows.

Something had moved in that doorway.

She closed the drawer, hiding the phone.

She kept her grip on the knife. She couldn’t run out the back door. She’d planned to escape that way, but…but not if someone waited out there, in the dark.

Her head swung away from the exterior kitchen door, back toward the den.

An old-fashioned, swinging door separated the kitchen from the den. Kali was in the den. With her throat cut. With the TV still playing…one of those old black and white horror shows that Kali liked to watch. The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Which way to go? Which…

“I see you.”

Her gaze flew toward the open, exterior door of the kitchen. Someone was there. She brought up her knife as she ran toward the monster in the doorway.

He caught her wrist.

“It’s all right,” Hunter told her, voice drifting in her left ear. “I have you. You’re safe.”

Her breath shuddered in and out. Fears and cobwebs clouded Shelby’s mind as she sat up in the bed.

“You’re in the hotel with me. I just climbed in bed because you were thrashing and crying out. You screamed, but only once.” His voice was steady. Reassuring. “I’m holding your wrist because you were swinging out at me. But, honestly, sweetheart, it was like you were driving down at me, not punching me. Kinda like…like the way your fingers might curl around the handle of a knife. Only there was no knife.”

Her breath still came far too fast. There had been a knife, in her nightmare.

He slowly released her hand. “I’m gonna stay right here. My back was hurting. Can’t handle the floor.”

“Liar.” Whispered.

“Yeah, fine. I can handle it, but…don’t send me back down there. Let me hold you. Just hold you.”

Her head moved jerkily. She eased down in the bed. Shelby turned away from him, moving on her side, but he eased closer behind her. One of his arms curled around her body.