Page 4 of Best Laid Plans
They’d let her watch the rest of the movie, sitting in between them on the bed, her love of horror movies cemented in that moment.
Wyatt still kept a baseball bat these days, only now it lived by the front door.
Whose location she glanced at across the room to confirmfor the second time in the last ten seconds, the sound of something scraping on the metal staircase outside rising over the din of her rapidly increasing heartbeat.
She tilted her head, her ear trying to catch the sound again. Usually, when she came to Rock Harbor, she stayed with her parents. She hadn’t been alone in Wyatt’s apartment–their childhood home–in years.
It was probably one of the overgrown maple trees near the side of the building, she told herself. Wyatt was handy, but she’d noticed the trees, lush with foliage, hanging heavy in the summer humidity when she’d snuck into town days ago.
But then it happened again.
Louder, the metal steps creaking under the weight of something that sounded suspiciously like a person.
Wyatt would have told her if he was coming back, she was sure about that much from the way they’d parted earlier today.
When she saw the locked doorknob twist slightly, her stomach bottomed out. Someone was trying to get into the apartment. All of her good thoughts from only moments ago evaporated, terrifying reality crashing down around her.
Did someone know that Wyatt was out of town? Maybe they thought that this was their chance to rob him? He did have that stupidly oversized television. And while she had no idea about his current financial situation, he was a former pro athlete. Everyone in town knew that.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up at attention, and she thought she saw the candle on the table flicker.
Fuck. She was not prepared to deal with this right now.
Except that, in some ways, she was. Life had been giving her a whole lot of lemons lately, and she wasn’t going to let this be the next one. She’d take that lemon and pelt it–hard–at whoever was trying to ruin her night of solitude.
She was a woman with a lot of pent up rage, and very soon,whoever was on the other side of that door was going to wish they’d picked another house to burgle.
Quietly, she placed the popcorn bowl back on the end table and muted the movie. She stood up from the sofa, keeping the blanket wrapped around her. Maybe she could throw it over the intruder and trap them. All she needed now was to wrap a rope around one of the exposed beams that criss-crossed the ceiling to make a pulley system, and they’d be dragged up.
No. None of this was helpful. That’s not even how that worked. The blanket would need to be on the ground and she didn’t even know how she could fashion a tripwire right now.
And more importantly, this wasn’t an episode ofTom & Jerry.
She shook her head and let out a deep breath. Her hand tightened around the blanket to stop it from shaking.
Her mind went blank as she heard something heavy drop on the landing right outside the door.
Murder tools.
No, she chided herself as she stalked across the room silently, the blanket thrown over her head like a hooded cloak. The intruder didn’t know someone was home. And that was good. She had the element of surprise.
She’d have laughed at the absurdity of her situation right now if she wasn’t worried she’d start hyperventilating.
Elle’s life had not been going according to plan, and she wouldn’t let this be another in a long line of things that were out of her control.
Wyatt wasn’t the only Pierce with a sense of responsibility. She’d protect this homestead, damnit.
She slipped over to the window next to the door, where the baseball bat was placed. Picking it up, she felt the weight in her hands.
She could do this. Shehadto do this.
It happened in slow motion. The click of the lock. The doorknob turning ninety degrees. The door opening without asound. Her blood rushed through her ears, but she focused her eyes in the darkness, waiting.
Elle wrapped her hands around the bat and balanced it over her shoulder, ready for the smash hit of her life.
When the figure came into view, Elle made, in retrospect, what she would call her only mistake.
Right before she swung the bat, she screamed.
