Pull You In (Rivers Brothers Book 3), стр. 5
I thought I would find it scenic, cozy. Instead, as I drove along, white-knuckling the steering wheel, I felt an odd sort of creepy dread settling upon me.
It only intensified as I got to the cabin, and found no other cars around.
Granted, I had set out early, always preferring to be early rather than late. The others might not have been so keen on getting up at three in the morning to get their days going.
It was fine.
Fine.
There had to be a host or something inside. At least, that was what I was telling myself as I took a deep breath, parking as close to the front walk as possible, and cutting off the engine.
Mentally, I took a second to scan my belongings and the contents of the car, trying to decide if there was anything to use to defend myself on the walk up to the front door. From what, I wasn't sure. Bears, coyotes, crazy mountain people, all toothless gums and stringy hair.
But there was nothing.
"You're being ridiculous," I decided, looking at the lamppost near the edge of the walk. It didn't light the whole thing, but it wasn't a long walkway either. I was just being a baby.
So on that thought, I grabbed my carry-on bag and my rental key, and threw open the car, trying to walk deliberately toward the front door, but breaking into a dead run when there was some sort of rustling in a nearby bush.
I grasped the doorknob with a sort of horror-movie-style desperation, heart lodged so far up my throat I felt like I was choking on it before the knob turned in my hand, and I could throw myself inside.
Into complete and utter darkness.
Chest heaving, my hand groped at the wall to my side, finding a switch, flicking it on, making a hideous antler chandelier brighten above my head.
It was right about then, too, that a new, horrifying thought flashed across my mind.
The door was unlocked.
I could walk right in.
So could anyone else.
You know... like the toothless mountain people I had imagined earlier.
Taking a deep breath, I crept along the front wall, glancing into the room to the left—a spacious dining room with a massive table meant to seat twenty, and sideboards that spanned the entire far wall. There was a doorway that I imagined led to the kitchen.
Steeling my nerves, trying to remind myself how absurd I was being, I moved around the dining room, reaching in to flick on the kitchen light, feeling my chest loosen a bit to find it empty.
It was another oversize space with its light cabinets that matched the log walls, its stainless steel countertops and appliances, and the island that made all other islands feel inferior.
I moved into the kitchen, opening and closing drawers until I found the one I was looking for. The knife drawer. I grabbed the biggest one, hand tightening on the handle.
Overreacting? Yes.
But as the house groaned around me, I decided it was always better to be ridiculous than ambushed and murdered.
And because I had seen more than a few horror movies in my day, I decided not to be the idiot girl who went down into the basement—inexplicably in her underwear—to investigate strange noises.
Nope.
I held onto my phone.
And I sat and waited for someone to rescue me from my neurosis.
The minutes turned into hours, marked by a cuckoo clock somewhere in the house, a sound that would normally have made me smile, but given that I was alone and creeped out, I went ahead and decided it was freaky.
Then I heard it.
Crunching.
Like shoes on the gravel driveway. Followed by silence as, I imagined, those same feet made their way up the front path. Right up to the door I'd stupidly left unlocked behind me.
Taking a deep breath, I stayed exactly where I was, knife raised, waiting as the sound of clunky feet moved through the foyer, then the dining room, following the path of light I'd stupidly left.
Big, male feet.
When I worked at an almost exclusively female company.
I was seconds from darting through the blackened part of the rest of the house, hoping I could make my way outside and into the relative safety of my rental car when the footsteps came into the kitchen.
And there he was.
Our sole male employee.
Rush Rivers.
The best looking man the entire world had to offer, if you asked me, anyway.
Tall and fit in a way that said he definitely hit the gym on occasion, with dark hair and these velvety smooth dark eyes that were framed with impressive lashes, he was in jeans and a black thermal, hair disheveled from travel.
His gaze fell on me, going almost immediately to the knife in my hand, making me drop it as though it was suddenly burning me.
"Little creeped out, huh, Katie?" he asked, giving me that boyish smile that made all the women in the office fawn over him.
Katie.
He was the only person in the whole world who called me Katie.
My hand went to my heart, and I couldn't be sure if it was from the fear or the excitement that filled my body when I was around him. Which was rare. And it had been a while since I'd seen him. Working the night shift, he and I rarely had cause to run across each other.
"I, ah, it's very, you know, empty," I mumbled, words tripping over one another. "And there could have been like... bears or cannibalistic mountain people."
"Cannibalistic mountain people, huh?" he asked, eyes dancing.
"I well, no, I guess not. Since, clearly, they would be toothless."
"Clearly," he agreed, lips tipping up.
"So maybe just... murder-happy. I watch too much true crime," I rushed to add even though I typically didn't, save for the occasional new documentary on Netflix that was too hyped up to ignore.
"It's a little creepy out here," he agreed,