Caught in Darkness by Rose Wulf Page A

she’d even known his name. Needless to say, she was more attracted
to him now than she’d been a week ago. Not that it’ll ever happen, she reminded
herself as she stepped up to her front door and stuck the key in the lock. But,
hey, a girl could dream.
    Veronica pushed the door open
easily, but she didn’t register the strange niggling feeling in the back of her
mind until after she’d closed it behind her. Her hand paused over the doorknob,
and something told her not to lock it just yet. The hair on the back of her
neck was standing up and suddenly there was a rapidly-growing pit in her
stomach. The smile fell from her face as she tried to look around the open
living room and kitchen areas of her house. She felt like her insides were
shrinking and her instincts were screaming at her to turn and run as fast as
she could.
    She was frozen as she realized
that, somehow, she just knew that there was someone else in her house.
    Holding perfectly still, Veronica
prayed her eyes would adjust as she tried to discern the shapes of her
furniture in the darkness. Light switch, her mind whispered, as if even her
thoughts were susceptible to being overheard. There was a light switch along
the left wall, just a few feet in. All she had to do was reach it.
    Okay, I can do this. She swallowed
past a lump that had formed in her throat sometime after she’d stopped
breathing, released her pent up breath, and slowly moved forward. It occurred
to her call out, but then she wondered if that wouldn’t be incredibly stupid. If
someone was going to break into her house they certainly weren’t going to panic
and run away if she called out to them. In that regard, turning on a light
wasn’t likely to help, either—but at least she’d be able to see.
    Her hand slid along the wall, palm
flat and probably clammy, until she finally found the cool plastic of the
switch cover. Another inch over and she was able to slip her thumb beneath the
switch and shove it up a little harder than was necessary. Fluorescent light
immediately flooded the kitchen, covering a decent amount of the living room
space as well, and for a moment Veronica had to squint against the intrusion. Between
her squinted eyes she saw another blur of movement, but before she had time to
really register the sight there was someone leaning over her and snarling.
    He was standing so close that each
exhale sent a wave of hot, heavy breath rolling across her face. Dark, angry
eyes locked onto hers and it was in those eyes that Veronica realized exactly
who he was. Gregory Richards. The man who had tried to
threaten her in the park the day before. The man who
had talked about killing people.
    “H-how did you get in here?”
Veronica heard herself asking. Her voice was a bit shaky, but she figured that
was understandable. “What do you want?”
    Richards narrowed his glare at her
and all of a sudden he had one hand wrapped around her throat and was pinning
her to the wall, the toes of her shoes just barely touching the carpet. “You
screwed things up for me, Veronica,” he hissed, leaning closer as if she needed
help hearing him.
    Her blood ran cold at the
realization that he knew her name. What else did he know about her? What was he
going to do to her?
    “What’s wrong?” Richards taunted,
lips lifting at one corner in a heartless smirk. “Cat got your tongue?”
    Veronica choked when she tried to
speak around the hand at her throat but she managed, “Get…out.”
    Richards’s eyebrows rose at her
apparently-unexpected show of backbone. “Do you really think telling me what to
do is a good idea for you right now?” He shook his head almost before he was
done and added, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter, ‘ cause I’m gonna kill you. And then I’ll ‘get out’.”
    Her heart stalled in her chest, the
once-delicious food in her stomach suddenly thinking about making a second
appearance. She hadn’t expected him to say his intent so casually. It didn’t
matter that