Chapter 4 - The Unlatched Chain
Rhett saw the shift in her gaze immediately.
He leaned forward, adjusting the heavy folds of his black cashmere overcoat around her shivering shoulders. The fabric swallowed her slender frame, pooling across the linoleum, creating a dark, protective cocoon that blocked out the freezing drafts sweeping across the kitchen floor. He gently tucked the lapels beneath her chin, his large, scarred fingers careful not to graze the purple welts along her collarbone.
“I have you,” Rhett whispered, his voice deep, textured like gravel dragged over silk. “Focus on me, Isa. Look at me.”
Isa did not look at him.
Her breath hitched in her throat, turning into a shallow, rapid panting that made her bruised ribs heave beneath her white blouse. Her pupils dilated until the brown of her irises seemed swallowed by ink. Her gaze was locked with hypnotic, paralyzed terror onto the heavy fir door at the end of the narrow corridor.
Rhett turned his head slowly, following the line of her vision.
The apartment door stood slightly ajar, as he had left it, the gray morning light from the stairwell slicing across the floorboards. But it was not the gap in the door that had seized her soul.
It was the lock mechanism.
Mounted above the deadbolt was a heavy, commercial brass security chain. The anchor plate on the doorframe was intact; the screws were not stripped; the wood was not splintered. The chain hung limply against the casing, dangling like a dead pendulum.
The door had not been kicked in. The lock had not been breached with a crowbar.
Isa’s voice came from behind him—a fragile, reedy wisp of sound that carried the horror of a woman who had just realized her tomb was not sealed.
“He didn't break the door,” Isa whispered, her lips trembling so violently she could barely shape the syllables.
Rhett’s spine went rigid. He did not turn around, but his posture shifted, every nerve ending in his muscular frame snapping into predatory, lethal alignment.
“Isa,” Rhett murmured, his voice deadly quiet. “What are you saying?”
“He didn't break it last night,” she wept softly, her fingers clutching the cashmere coat with white-knuckled terror. “He waited for me by the mailboxes. He shoved me inside. He took my bag… he took my purse…”
She swallowed hard, a dry, choking sound that died in her throat.
“He still has a key.”
The words hung in the freezing, stale air of the apartment like an executioner’s blade.
He still has a key.
Rhett did not blink. He slowly turned his head back toward the hallway, his dark hazel eyes narrowing into slits of pure, calculated malice. The pieces aligned in his mind with terrifying clarity. The attacker had not fled the city; he had merely finished his preliminary work. He had beaten her, broken her phone, taken her identification, and walked out into the night with the means to return whenever he pleased, confident that a terrified, broken woman would never dare to change the locks or call for help before morning.
He thought she was trapped. He thought she was alone.
Rhett slowly rose from the linoleum floor.
He did not hurry. His six-foot-two frame unfolded with the silent, fluid grace of a panther rising from the grass, his massive chest expanding as he took a deep, clean breath of the cold air. His charcoal suit fell into place around his muscular contours. He stepped across the kitchen, clearing the broken glass with measured strides, positioning his body directly in the center of the archway, his broad shoulders completely blocking any line of sight between the front door and the woman lying on the floor.
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He reached inside the left side of his suit jacket, his calloused fingers settling comfortably around the textured grip of his custom Kimber .45, resting the hammer against his ribs.
And then, from the bottom of the wooden stairwell outside the apartment, the silence was shattered.
