Fallen Crest Forever (Fallen Crest Series Book 7)(41)

As Mason slipped out the door, tiptoeing down the hallway, I moved to the edge of the bed and stepped into the closet. I shut the door and dialed the numbers.

My heart was almost deafening, and I barely heard the operator answer my call.

“What is your emergency?”

I whispered, “Someone broke into our house.”

“Where are you?”

I gave her the address, my name, and Mason’s name. I told her everything I knew. I didn’t know if Nate was home. I didn’t know if Logan and Taylor were here. She told me to stay on the phone and stay in the closet.

That was when I hung up.

I wasn’t leaving Mason alone. I silenced the phone and put it in my pocket. Mason had held something in his hand when he left. I didn’t know if it was a weapon, but I suddenly wished I’d agreed to take gun safety class when Logan suggested it. I didn’t like guns.

My thoughts were changing.

My hands shook. I was sweating, but so cold at the same time. Fear choked me, but the thought of never seeing Mason again was worse. It propelled me forward until I saw him poised by the front closet. It was close to the stairs, and as I heard a third thump from upstairs, I realized it was the closest place he could stand without being seen.

I edged out into the living room, but Mason saw me. He motioned for me to go back.

Part of me stopped thinking now. Part of me slipped away, no longer standing in that room with him. I was back in the closet, the phone in my hands, the door locked shut. I was safe, and the cops were coming to take the bad guy away.

That wasn’t what was really going on, though.

I watched myself as Mason continued to try to get me to go back.

I kept shaking my head. I wouldn’t go.

A fourth thump above us. Footsteps.

Someone left a room, moving into another.

“Shit.”

A second whisper from someone I didn’t know.

My knees began to shake, but they weren’t making noise. Thank goodness. I couldn’t get them to stop. The girl they helped support was frozen in place.

She couldn’t do anything.

Her eyes moved upwards.

The person upstairs was moving again. Whoever it was wasn’t being as quiet anymore.

Drawers opened.

Things dropped to the floor.

A door clicked shut, and a different one opened.

A light was flicked on now, then off right away.

Someone was in the bathroom.

They moved back into the hallway.

I could see the thoughts whirling in the girl’s head as I watched myself. Her forehead wrinkled, and she bit her lip. She was biting too hard, she drew blood. She never noticed.

I watched all this, but I couldn’t tell her (myself) to stop.

She’d stopped listening to herself long ago.

The person moved in one bedroom, then the other. Only Logan and Nate had rooms up there. The person walked by the bathroom. The only other door was a closet.

The footsteps continued.

They didn’t stop at the closet.

They were coming down the stairs.

They were coming to where we were—Mason and the frozen girl.

The alert blared inside me, but I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t do anything. Then Mason lifted his hands, and the moonlight glinted off something metal.

A handgun.

He held it, poised with two straight arms and his feet braced. The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs. Suddenly red and blue lit up the room. It was small at first, then brighter and brighter.

Someone above cursed again and started down the stairs.

Everything in me paused. My heart. My breathing. My thoughts. The girl’s eyes were so wide, so frightened, but she couldn’t say anything. Her voice was paralyzed.

Mason’s finger moved as he took off the safety.

Sirens broke through the girl’s fear. She could hear the cops coming closer and closer. It was no longer just a colorful landscape. They’d parked. They were on the other side of the door. She heard another type of running. The kind that was coming to help. Those feet sounded different than the intruder’s. The footsteps were fast, but sturdy. The others had been accidental, then less tentative, and finally filled with the assuredness that they were alone in this house.

But that was wrong.

It all happened in one second. Mason was braced against the closet door. The cops would burst into the house, and the front door would hit him. The intruder was coming down the stairs and would be right there, right in the spotlight as the cops barged in.

If Mason shot, it might be self-defense.

If the cops shot—well, they might not need to.

Sam had to do something. I had to do something.

Summoning all the strength inside of me, I burst out of my paralysis. I stopped my knees from shaking, my hands from trembling. I was suddenly right here. I felt the chill in the room; I rode the upper crest of the feeling that something wrong was about to happen, something that would change lives.