I checked on Jade, and she was still sleeping, so I wandered around the house, searching for a place to crash for the night. I opened a closed door down the hall to find another bedroom, Elissa’s bedroom.

   I hesitated, my hand on the knob, wondering if I should go inside, but my curiosity got the best of me, the way it always did. So I turned on the light and slipped into the room.

   It was your typical college girl’s room. Colorful clothes were strewn all over the unmade bed, while plastic baskets full of fresh, clean laundry sat in front of the open closet, waiting to be hung up and put away. A stuffed brown bear wearing a blue T-shirt with the words Ashland Community College on it perched on the corner of a white vanity table cluttered with textbooks, pens, notepads, jewelry, and nail polish. Photos were stuck in all around the edges of the vanity table mirror, showing Elissa with her friends. I leaned in for a better look.

   In every single photo, Elissa was grinning and looking into the camera, as though she were staring directly at me. After a few seconds, I shivered and dropped my gaze. I couldn’t bear to look at her smiling face right now, not when I knew how much danger she was in and how very slim my chances were of finding her.

   I shifted on my feet, feeling like I was trespassing again and expecting Jade to come barging into the room at any second, demanding to know what I was doing in here. I even glanced out into the hallway, but the house was as dark and quiet as before. Jade was still sleeping. I’d already violated her and Elissa’s privacy by coming in here, so I pushed my guilt aside and decided to do something useful.

   I searched Elissa’s room.

   Slowly, carefully, quietly, I opened all the nightstand and vanity table drawers, rifled through all the clothes in her closet, and checked every single place where she might have hidden something that she didn’t want her big sister to see. But there was nothing. No hidden stashes of cigarettes, no drugs or alcohol, not even so much as an old-fashioned diary with a locked heart for a clasp. Elissa Daniels was exactly what she appeared to be in all the photos—a happy college girl with big plans, dreams, and hopes for her future.

   A future that was rapidly running out unless I found her.

   Frustrated, I plopped down on her bed and looked around the room again, but everything was the same as before. Clothes, books, furniture. Nothing that would tell me anything about Elissa that I didn’t already know and absolutely nothing that would lead me to her kidnapper—

   Rattle-rattle.

   The sound was soft, no louder than a whisper. But as an assassin, I’d slipped into enough places to recognize the sound of someone jimmying a lock.

   Someone was breaking into Jade’s house.

14

   In an instant, I was up off the bed, a knife in my hand. I hurried over to the open bedroom door and peered out into the hallway beyond. I looked toward the front of the house, but the office was dark and still.

   Crunch-crunch.

   Another sound came from the back of the house, but it wasn’t the doorknob turning again. No, this sounded more like someone stepping on broken glass—like the shards that littered the kitchen floor where Jade had dropped her drink earlier.

   I slipped out of Elissa’s room and headed in that direction, tiptoeing past the bedroom where Jade was still sleeping. I didn’t know who might be breaking into her house, but she’d been through enough already, and she needed her rest. I just hoped that I could kill the intruder quietly enough not to wake her up—

   Creak.

   Of course, I stepped on a loose floorboard, one that seemed to screech as loudly as an owl in the dark quiet. I winced, realizing that I’d lost the element of surprise, and hurried on.

   I reached the end of the hallway and stopped, peering into the kitchen beyond. A nightlight was plugged into an outlet on the kitchen counter, and the soft pink glow illuminated the area, including the scattered shards in front of the glass double doors that took up the back wall.

   But no one was there.

   No one was in the kitchen. No cat burglar dressed all in black, no low-level thug sporting a cheap suit and a cheaper gun, no guy wearing a hockey mask and clutching an overly large knife.

   So who—or what—had made that telltale noise?

   My knife still in my hand, I sidled over to the doors and looked out through the glass—

   Rattle-rattle.

   I froze at the sound, and it took me a second to realize that one of the doors was cracked open. The winter wind gusted in through the opening, making the glass rattle in its frame and sliding some of the broken shards across the floor. Well, that explained the noises.

   Still, I frowned. I was almost certain that the door had been closed and locked when Jade and I were in the kitchen earlier, but now here it was, standing open. Perhaps someone had gotten inside after all and had been scared off when I stepped on that loose floorboard. Only one way to find out. I eased the door open, wincing at the rattle-rattle that it made, and slipped outside.

   The doors opened onto a stone patio, which gave way to a large backyard, before the woods took over fifty feet away. I slipped off the patio and crouched down in the shadows at the corner of the house. The moon and stars shone big and bright in the night sky, painting everything a ghostly silver, from the white wicker patio furniture, to the short, stubby grass, to the tops of the bare, skeletal trees in the distance. A heavy frost had already crusted the ground, gleaming like metallic snow, and the cold wind cut through my clothes, chilling me from head to toe.

   I scanned the patio, the yard, and the woods beyond, but I didn’t see or hear anything, not so much as a stray cat padding through the grass, searching for shelter for the night. In the distance, the houses on either side of Jade’s were also dark, and no cars rumbled down the street. Everyone was in bed, except for me.

   Still, I couldn’t help but feel like someone was here, watching me.

   It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. No trampled patches of grass, no man-shaped shadows that shouldn’t be here, not even someone’s breath steaming in the chilly night air. But an uneasy finger of dread crept down my spine all the same, and I pressed my back up against the wall so that no one could sneak up on me from behind and take me by surprise.