Chapter 32 · Somebody Had a Key

The key turned again.

Slow. Deliberate. Like whoever was holding the brass wanted me to sweat.

I grabbed the iron poker off the hearth before my bare feet even hit the floor. Cold oak under my soles. The storm was rattling the master wing shutters like teeth in an old skull. Two forty in the morning, and someone was opening a deadbolt I never cut a spare for.

The tumbler gave with a sound like a knuckle cracking.

The door swung inward, and Helen Crowe collapsed right through the gap.

I caught her before she cracked her skull. Don't ask me why. Nineteen years in trauma bays means my hands move before my common sense wakes up. Her knees hit the rug, folding under her, and I grabbed a fistful of her damp cardigan to jerk her back against the baseboard.

She'd been gutted shallow. Four inches, maybe five, right under the left ribs. A clean slice. The kind that bleeds like a hog to cause maximum panic without hitting an artery on purpose.

Her blood coated my wrist. Hot. Sticky.

"Ruth."

Owen's voice came out of the dark hall, pitch-black and level. No shirt. Sweat on his collarbone.