Running Scared (Letters From Morgantown Book 1)

  First Edition, 2016

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents depicted in this collection are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is coincidental.

  Cover design by Damonza

  Edited by Nicole Ayers of Ayers Edits

  www.traciepuckett.com

  Joseph,

  I love you more.

  Prologue

  “Wait here.”

  Those were the last two words I heard from Gary before he slipped into the back of the house, leaving me to wait on the small sofa. He’d been gone for five minutes already—five excruciating minutes, and I sat there alone, waiting for his return.

  The faint whispers from two rooms away told me he wasn’t alone. He was talking about me—again—and I didn’t need to hear the conversation to know what it was about; they were discussing the important details of my protective custody.

  It was all about keeping me safe and protecting my best interest. I was in hiding, and it was up to them to—

  My eyes shot upward at a sudden creak at the ceiling. There was movement on the next level; someone was upstairs, shuffling around the room, making their way across the second floor.

  “It’s a guest,” I said, careful to keep the words under my breath.

  I didn’t need Gary to hear me talking to myself. He was already convinced I had more problems than I could handle, and I couldn’t have him thinking schizophrenia was one of those things, among the many.

  Still watching the ceiling, I listened to the activity upstairs.

  “It’s a bed and breakfast,” I whispered. “Don’t overthink this. It’s a guest. It’s just a guest.”

  It’s a rational explanation, I reasoned with myself; if the floorboards upstairs were anything like the ones on the main level, of course they would creak. The old wood was hard and worn, and it was probably original to the structure—much like everything else in the house. I couldn’t let my imagination run wild. I could rationalize this. So where were we? What was this place?

  I had a small idea; it was a safe house. I remembered that term from a call I’d overheard last week. Back at the motel, Gary had mentioned—

  A throat cleared, another anomaly jarring me from my thoughts. I turned a look over my left shoulder, focusing on the area at the back of the house. The hushed voices continued from a distance, and I knew now without a doubt that Gary was back there with someone. But who?

  I had little to go on—only a vague idea what was happening.

  I turned back to the bay window at the front of the room, and I inched myself deeper into the couch. Relaxing my shoulders, I focused on every deep breath passing in and out of my body, hoping to find my center.

  It was a vain attempt to keep my thoughts grounded, because the panic set in again as I replayed the events of the morning back in my mind. The motel, the drive, the dark sky . . .

  Another cough from the back of the house caught me off guard. My eyes snapped shut. My pulse quickened. Every sound that cut the silence twisted something deep inside of me. It stirred the fear. It awakened the pain. The horrors flooded back.

  I pulled my legs off the floor and onto the couch, hugging them to my chest. Burying my face into my knees, I kept my eyes closed. I counted. I hummed. I rocked myself back and forth, swaying, praying that Gary would come back in the room.

  The longer I held myself that way, balled up on the corner of the sofa, the heavier my chest felt the pressure. Where was he?

  The floorboards creaked upstairs again, and my hands rushed to cover my ears. My fingers raked into my hair as my palms muffled the sounds of the house, and I rocked harder.

  Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  I pressed my hands against my head, praying for silence, but the moment the sounds of the house were gone, the taunting echo of the letters came back.

  Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  I could see the writing. I could hear the words, snaking through my memory.

  Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  There was no fight against it; I was left with the torturous reminder of what I’d loved and lost. The haunting memory of a real-life tragedy on replay.

  There was someone out there—someone who had robbed me of a life with my father, and the very person who’d stalked and taunted me. He’d played his games, materializing in the dark of night to leave his mark. He’d watched me. He’d hurt me. He’d toyed with my sense of security.

  Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  Even with several states between me and the man who’d stolen my world, I still couldn’t escape him. He was everywhere. He was there when I woke up, and he was there when I closed my eyes.

  He lived for the hunt, and he reveled in the scare. It was a game to him, and he was out for the win. He’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted from me—he’d sent me running, scared for my life.

  And even when the chase was over, and I was far away from the physical threat he posed, the emotional torment still carried into every moment of my life.

  I was crumbling, falling apart . . . and he was winning.

  I was letting him win.

  No one can help you now.

  Chapter One

  A crash shook the room, and my eyes snapped open.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” a man said, his voice hushed. At his feet, a box of vases, picture frames, and knickknacks spilled onto the hard wood, broken into pieces. “Sorry.”

  I held myself tighter in spite of his apology, my muscles tensing with the realization that I was alone with a complete stranger.

  “Gary?” I tried to yell, but my voice broke with the one word. The jolt of alarm I’d felt with that crash crippled something inside of me. I could hardly manage a whisper. “Gary?”

  “You’re scared,” he said, observing me, and even at the safe distance he kept, I was still frozen, rigid, and completely unable to let go of my sudden anxiety. I focused on every subtle move he made in those next few moments, assessing his intent. When he dared to take a single step forward, I jerked back, and he stopped again. “I scared you? Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

  Even with another apology, I couldn’t respond.

  “I’m Chris, by the way,” he said, retreating back one step.

  He squatted to the floor and picked up some of the larger pieces of broken glass before dropping them back into the box. After picking up the bigger part of the mess, he turned his eyes back to me.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said. “You’re Sydney, right?”

  I tried to let go of the breath I held, but it caught in my throat.

  He knew my name.

  I wanted to nod, but I didn’t. I couldn’t give him any kind of confirmation.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You can talk to me. I won’t bite.”

  In spite of my silence, my heart thrummed with appreciation at his gentle tone. Gary was never soft-spoken or light in his approach with me, and it’d felt like an eternity since someone had regarded me with such kindness. I let go of that fearful breath.

  T
racing his silhouette against the dark, I tried to get a better read on him. Physically, Chris didn’t pose a threat. He wasn’t wide, and he likely hovered only a solid three inches above my five eight. He was nothing more than a darkened shadow—the features of his face barely discernible—and yet a sense of calm invaded me as I felt his eyes fixed in my direction. I hadn’t felt that in weeks. Calm.

  “Sydney?” he asked, reeling me back.

  I shook my head, putting a stop to my nonsensical thoughts. I couldn’t fall victim to my instinct. It wasn’t something I could trust; he was a stranger, and that meant he was dangerous. Everyone was dangerous.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said again, looking back to the box on the floor. “I was in a hurry; I wanted to get some of the clutter out before you got here. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

  I tried to force my eyes downward, but they kept drifting back to him. He was sorry. He hadn’t meant to scare me. The concern in his voice threatened to lure me back to that sense of peace I’d felt only seconds ago, but I had to squash it. He was a stranger. I couldn’t trust him. He couldn’t help me.

  No one can help you now.

  “Does Theo know you’re here?” he asked, lifting his wrist as if to check the time. “Is he in the kitchen? Should I show you to your room?”

  My lips parted, so close to posing a question, but Chris was still deep in thought. He scratched the back of his head, searching his mind for something else to say.

  “I can give you the tour,” he said. “But you have to go easy on me. We’re still closed down, and I haven’t gotten everything back in order. The place is a mess, but I’m happy to take you back and show you where you’re staying. You’ll have your own space—a room and a bathroom—and . . . Sydney?” he asked, his voice flattened. “You can understand me, right? You speak English?”

  This time I nodded.

  “Oh, okay, good,” he said, breathing a long sigh. “Man, you’re a lot quieter than I expected. And here I was thinking I wouldn’t have anything to say. But of course you’re quiet.” He muttered something under his breath and fell silent, but only for a fleeting second. “I know you’re not here because you want to be, but . . . maybe you’ll find some solace in knowing that Morgantown is small, quiet . . . it’s a good place to get away and appreciate the simpler things. Plus, there’s endless shopping if you’re into that kind of stuff—we’re the antique capital of the region, you know?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know anything about Morgantown, nor did I care to learn anything more than I had to. I couldn’t see how any knowledge of this town was pertinent to what was happening with my case.

  “We get our share of visitors who come through, mostly collectors,” Chris continued. “Most of the time it’s quiet. The locals are always friendly, and I hear the folks at the B&B will do their best to make you feel at home. Small-town hospitality at its best.” He waited for my reaction, but I never responded, and his posture slumped with a nervous laugh. “That’s us, by the way. You’re here, at the B&B. It was a joke.” Silence froze him when I didn’t respond to his failed attempt at getting a laugh. “Yikes. Okay. Anyway, we’ll get you settled around and—crap.” He pushed his fingers back through his hair and muttered again. “I’m bad at this. Will you please say something so I’ll stop talking? I . . . oh, man, I don’t know what to say and yet I can’t shut up. That’s perfect.”

  His nerves had gotten the best of him, and he was in good company. I wished I could talk, but I could scarcely open my mouth, let alone make conversation with this stranger. It appeared he knew things, and I wanted answers. Who are you? What do you know about me, about my situation, about why I’m here? What can you tell me?

  “I have something for you,” he said, digging into his pocket. “I picked it up at the hardware store yesterday.”

  He took a few quick steps to the couch, and I moved an inch away, backing as far against the arm of the sofa as I could go. I didn’t want to flinch; I hadn’t meant to, but my nerves were programmed to jump at every sign of movement.

  “It’s only a house key. You’ll need it for getting in and out.”

  He extended his hand forward, but I never reached up. I didn’t take it. He waited another minute before dropping his hand back to the side.

  “You don’t want it?”

  “No,” I said, my eyes fading downward to the couch as I finally found my voice—broken as it was. “I don’t want it. I want to go home.”

  My admission didn’t surprise him. Feeling his gaze on me, I wanted to bury my face back into my knees, but my eyes kept gravitating back to him. A myriad of emotions played on his soft face, but sadness was what ultimately settled in his shadowed expression.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Before either of us could say another word, a pair of loud footsteps rounded the corner and approached from behind me. I turned to find that Gary had made his return, and I sprang to my feet. As fast as I’d found comfort in his return, I just as quickly cowered at the sight of another man entering the room behind him.

  “Sydney,” Gary said. “Sit down.”

  Any sense of calm I’d felt faded with that command, and suddenly I would’ve given anything to rewind the last minute. To have Chris blubbering his way through another nervous speech was far better than listening to Gary’s abrasive orders.

  Gary turned back to the man behind him, the one stranger I had yet to meet. “Theo? Who—”

  “Chris,” the man said, offering that one name as an answer, as if it were some kind of explanation for Chris’s presence. “The owner. Innkeeper.”

  “Right.” Gary considered Chris, who was now standing a few feet away from a dropped box of broken glass, and he seemed to reach the same conclusion I’d settled on: Chris was a stranger, but he wasn’t a threat.

  “Can you hit the lights, boss?” Theo asked, and Chris reached over to the wall, flipping a switch.

  Three overhead bulbs hummed from a gold-plated fixture above us, and finally, the darkness was gone, and it was the first time I was seeing the three men clearly.

  My eyes fell first to Chris, and a strange and unexpected admiration flooded my senses. I made a futile attempt to look away, but his boyish smile compelled me to do otherwise. The curves of his lips ended in dimples at his freckled cheeks, and I noticed at once how the sincerity in that smile reached all the way to his blue-green eyes. The sun was barely up and he was dressed and ready for the day, wearing a white button-down and jeans, and his black hair was pushed back from his face.

  Had it not been for the sense of calm I’d instinctively felt in his presence, I would’ve resented him for how attractive he looked while I stood a few feet away in sweatpants and a hoodie—no doubt looking like a mess with my baggy eyes and untamed hair.

  Gary cleared his throat, and my eyes flicked back to him.

  “You done?” he asked, as if he’d known exactly what I was thinking, and guilt crippled me.

  It was disappointing to let myself down again, to know that I wasn’t stronger than my hormones. There were far more important things to focus on than boys and attraction.

  From day one, my focus had been on staying alive, getting home, and gaining justice for my father. That hadn’t changed, so I needed to straighten up. That would be the first and last time I let a distraction get in the way. You have to be stronger than this.

  I opened my mouth to speak, to apologize for my weakness, but Chris beat me to the punch.

  “Sorry for the commotion,” he said, offering an apology for the noise. I doubted the other men had even heard it from the back of the house, but Chris’s apology seemed like more of an attempt to get the pressure off me than to express his regrets. He was trying to save me from Gary’s accusatory stare, and it worked. Everyone turned back to him. “I was rushing around upstairs and missed a step on my way down, and . . . ” His eyes trailed to the pile of broken antiques at his feet. “It wasn’t a graceful landing, to say the least, but I like to
think it was a solid ten on the fail-scale. A ten’s a ten, so that’s something, right?”

  He was nervous again, trying to make jokes, and this time Theo smirked—almost laughed. “I thought you were off to town this morning?”

  “I am,” Chris said. “The truck’s loaded. I had this one last box to grab before I hit the donation center.”

  Silence settled, and everyone in the room turned their eyes on each other, working to put pieces of a puzzle together—who was who, and who knew what?

  With the exception of Gary, I didn’t know who these men were, or what role they would play in my life moving forward, and that realization disturbed what little composure I had.

  Anxiety constricted my chest. Doubts and insecurities held me hostage to memories and emotions I couldn’t escape. From the pit of my stomach, a fire ignited again, and I could feel the slow burn of bile in my throat. I swallowed hard to repress it, but the panic demanded my attention. I couldn’t escape it. There, at the forefront of my mind, the fear mocked me.

  Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  It was happening all over again—the terrifying sensation that came with every uncertainty. The paralyzing fear of being watched. The even scarier thought of solitude.

  I wanted answers. I needed answers. I needed someone to talk, to say something, to give me anything—and fast.

  “I’ll give you guys some time,” Chris said, his voice pulling me back, away from the negative thoughts that were employed by terror to destroy me. He turned to the box of broken glass, swept it up off the floor, and let it hang at his side. Still looking to me, he managed a half smile. “Formal introductions later?”

  I didn’t answer; I didn’t even nod. I was too busy wrangling with my subconscious to care about being polite.

  “We’ll give her some time to settle in, boss,” Theo said. “Formal introductions when you get back. Promise.”

  “Good, I’m counting on it,” Chris said, and he let himself out the front door, taking my last sense of calm with him.