I don’t like the sound of that at all.

We end the call.

My stomach is clenching and twisting. I feel prickled with anxiety.

Why did Josh take off all of a sudden?

He must know that we found out what he’d done. But how could he know that?

Is it a coincidence? Was he always planning to take the money and run, once he’d amassed enough?

I don’t believe in coincidences that big. He disappears the very day we come looking for him? That seems off.

Maybe he found out that Lucy sent me those files. I never told her to keep it a secret.

I remember how Raylan reacted when I told him about the emails back and forth. He seemed uncomfortable with it, like I’d made a mistake. Is it possible to trace an IP address? If I emailed Lucy from this laptop, could someone locate where my email came from? Could they have found out where I’m hiding?

I tell myself I’m just being paranoid. I’m safe here—that’s why Raylan brought me all the way to the ranch.

It was just an email.

Still, I wish Raylan were here beside me, and not all the way out in the fields, rounding up the horses.

Quietly, I slip out of my chair and walk over to the counter, where Celia’s knives are all fitted neatly into their slots in a carved wooden block. I pull out one of the knives—not the cleaver, which is too large and unwieldy. I take a fish knife instead—long and slim and deadly sharp. Then I go back to the table again.

The kitchen is getting quite dark. I could turn on the light, but something tells me not to. Instead, very quietly, I close the laptop screen, snuffing out the last bit of illumination.

Then I sit in the dark, listening.

I hear a tiny creak from overhead. I know the ranch house pretty well by now. I think that noise came from the guest bedroom. My bedroom.

I remember how the Djinn lay in wait for me in the swimming pool. How he waited almost an hour, quiet and still, on the bottom of the pool. He must have seen me slip into the water. He watched me stroke back and forth across the pool, over his head. Watching me from below like a shark. No . . . like an eel in a cave.

The Djinn is an ambush predator.

He likes to hide himself, waiting and watching. Taking pleasure in his victim’s obliviousness. Letting them wander closer and closer.

Then, when the moment is right . . . he pounces.

My heart is thudding against my ribs. This could all be complete fantasy. There’s no reason to think the Djinn found me here. No reason to think he’s hiding upstairs in my room, just because I heard a couple of creaks.

But I can’t get that picture out of my mind—a dark figure lying in wait under my bed. Waiting for me to lay down and sleep, so he can rise up from below and wrap his arm around my throat again.