Page 35 of Yuletide Guard

None.

There were no other choices, that was the reality of the situation. They had tried using her as bait to catch him, and it hadn't worked. They had tried looking for him, and it hadn't worked. They had tried saving his victims before he could get to them, and it hadn't work. The only thing that was going to workwas her doing what he asked.

Samara wanted to do it. Anything to stop the murders. The problem was, she didn't know how she was going to accomplish it.

She wasn't worried about how she would find the stalker, she had no doubt he was finding a way to keep watch on her house and would come to her the second she was on her own. The problem was, how was she going to get out of the house and be on her own? Not only was there always someone outside watching her house so the stalker didn't get to her, but Michael watched her like a hawk. It was like he knew what she wanted to do and was ready to tie her to her bed if necessary to stop her from doing it.

Upstairs earlier, he’d said such nice things about her, and she’d thought that maybe he’d been going to tell her he liked her as more than friends.

Never before had she considered the idea of her and Michael as a couple … well, maybe she had. He’d starred in more than one of her fantasies, and they had so much fun together. Maybe she’d always hoped for more but not been willing to admit it.

Fear was holding Michael back, her too. She was just as afraid of taking the plunge from friendship to something more. She had tried to end her own life, and ever since, she had been trying to make up for it. Her suicide attempt had hurt the one person who had always been there for her, and she couldn’t help but try to make up for that whatever the cost to herself. And trying so hard never to make another mistake was a heavy burden to bear.

“Here, I’ll take your plate,” Michael said, and Samara was surprised to see that she had finished the salad. Maybe she had been a little hungry after all.

“Thanks.”

“What do you want to do this afternoon? Do you want to do your Christmas wrapping? Then we could put on a Christmasmovie, light the fire, drink hot chocolate, and just chill out tonight.”

She knew he was trying so hard to keep her mind off things, and she felt bad that she wasn't trying hard enough to work with him. She did have to wrap the gifts. After they got the message from her stalker, they’d called Chloe and Tom, then waited by the phone for news. When the agents had turned up on her doorstep, she had known without them having to say anything that they had been too late to save the stalker’s next victim.

As much as Samara wasn't in the mood to look at garishly bright Christmas boxes and wrapping paper, or watch Christmas movies, she knew she had to meet Michael halfway, especially if she wanted to look for an opportunity to sneak out later.

Summoning a smile, she nodded. “Yeah, okay, we can do that.”

“Great.” Michael smiled back, looking relieved to know that she was still holding it together. He probably thought that meant she wouldn’t do anything stupid like offer herself as a sacrifice. He was wrong, but he didn't need to know that, not until she was already long gone.

“I’ll go get the gifts, they’re still upstairs,” she said, pushing back from the table.

“I’ll clear the table and grab scissors and tape, then we can work in—” Michael broke off as the doorbell rang.

Panic immediately sliced through her, cutting away the numbness.

Was that Chloe and Tom again?

Surely the stalker hadn't killed again so soon, had he?

She couldn’t take any more of this.

*****

1:02 P.M.

“Relax, Samara, it’s only Sawyer,” Michael soothed when he saw panic flash across Samara’s face. “It’s not Tom and Chloe. No one else is dead. It’s okay.”

“Just Sawyer?” she repeated, still white as a ghost, still trembling, her eyes still full of barely controlled terror.

“Just Sawyer,” he echoed.

He was worried about her.

She was hanging on by a thread, and he was terrified that at any second that thread could snap, and she would give herself over to her stalker so no one else died.

It was stressful situations like this that made him want to turn straight back to the bottle to dim the fear that swam inside him.

If Chloe and Tom didn't find the stalker soon, then Samarawouldsacrifice herself.

It was because she thought she had nothing to live for, no one to live for, and that her life was not as important as the lives of the people her stalker had and would kill. Michael knew it had to do with her suicide attempt as a teenager, and although he had thought the attempt was because of abandonment issues, it seemed from what Samara had said earlier that there was more to it than that.

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