Page 8 of The Saint

“Hello?” a man said in her ear.

Amelia jumped. In the half second since she redialed, she’d forgotten she even held a phone. “Don’t hang up,” she begged, slipping to the far side of a full-size bed and shoving herself underneath. Dust bunnies and storage boxes claimed most of the space.

“Do you have your passcode?” he asked.

Amelia heard footsteps. They moved in the opposite direction of the room she was in. “I need help,” she finally whispered.

“Passcode, or I have to disconnect.”

This wasn’t happening. This was a nightmare. No one was chasing her. Her sister and brother-in-law were safe. Amelia hadn’t broken into a house and wasn’t hiding under a stranger’s bed.

The cat slipped under the bed skirt and nuzzled her shoulder, once again grounding her in the midst of insanity. The passcode had to be the strange list of words that Hailey demanded Amelia memorize. “Banana. Light bulb. Chicken. Heart.”

“And you are?”

“Amelia. Can you help us?”

The pause hung for eons before his voice mixed indecipherably with voices in the background. “I don’t have an Amelia.”

“What about Hailey and Jonathan? The Dumonts?” she pleaded. “Because they said you would help. I need help.Help me.” Tears caught in her throat. “Help us.”

“Give me a second,” he said and muffled his voice as he spoke to someone else. “Help’s coming. I called in your location after you first called and hung up.”

“When will they be here?” She pinched her eyes. “My sister and brother-in-law are across the street. But there’s a man here too. He followed me.” Should she say that Hailey and Jonathan had Amelia sneak into a neighbor’s home? The guy hadn’t even asked what was wrong. She needed to call 911.

After too long of a beat, he asked, “Who are you?”

“Amelia Stone.”

“And…?”

“And what?”she cried.

“I have to know something more than that, lady.”

“Hailey said not to call the cops. She said to call you. That you would help, and I need help!” Her heart and lungs pummeled her chest. Amelia tried to compose herself, but the only thing she managed was to keep from crying. “We need help. I don’t know what’s going on, but I trust my sister, and she trusts you.” She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing for the millionth time that she was having a bad dream she would wake up from. “There’s a man here, and I’m hiding under a fuckin’ bed.Help me.”

“Okay, okay. I’m listening. I’m helping,” he said then to someone else said, “I don’t care what protocol says.” He cleared his throat. “Amelia? You there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me who your sister and brother-in-law are?”

“Hailey and Jonath—” The footsteps creaked in the hall. She wanted to sob but swallowed her terror. Tears leaked down her cheeks.

“Amelia?”

She whimpered. Of all the ways she could have imagined dying, this wasn’t something she could have conjured up. Shedidn’t even like to watch horror movies. Why had they watched a scary movie earlier? Everyone died. End of story—and what a predictable one at that. Amelia much preferred the predictability of rom-coms: movies filled with lots of love, the main characters didn’t die, she usually laughed, and there was a guaranteed happily ever after. God, were those going to be her last thoughts? She never should have run upstairs.

“The man who followed you, you hear him?”

“Uh-huh.” She also heard the cat as it followed her under the bed and ignored her jabs to push it away.

Not only should Amelia not have run upstairs, she shouldn’t have let the cat in the room. It would give her location away. Slipping between the boxes, the cat crawled from under the bed and back out again. She batted it away with her free hand.

“If you can tell me without him hearing: Where is he?”

“Hallway,” she managed as the cat massaged its front paws on her thighs. Amelia pushed it away. “Right outside where I am.”

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