Shelby was next to me, still on all fours, her eyes on the bedroom door. We couldn’t both be wrong. We’d heard something. A moment later, we heard it again. Loud, rustling, deliberate movement, things being shifted around. There was someone out there, and I didn’t have…

My phone.

It was on the coffee table, on top of the latest set of lottery tickets, where I always left it. We had never owned a landline, and for the first time, I wondered why we thought it was okay to give up on that small, simple standard of living. It could be burglars, of course, which meant that my best option was to burrow in the bedroom until they left—they wanted stuff, not people, right?—but the events of the past few days made me pause.

It could be a burglar.

But what if it wasn’t?

I thought about Hooks’s face as he sat in my car. Had Keith told him that he’d be in Indianapolis today?

Was it possible…?

Shelby jumped down and walked over to the door. I could see that her entire body was shaking as she stood there, snarling. I looked over to the small window, which faced the brick wall of the house next door and was covered by junk: an old massage cushion that didn’t work, a box full of batteries, some books. We rarely used that window; in the summer, we either turned on the AC or the fan. I knew that chances of someone hearing me if I opened it were slim, and it would alert the burglars that I was awake.

If that’s who they were…

The rustling started up again, and I walked close to the door. Shutting my eyes, I pushed as quietly as I could until the door was closed completely. It didn’t lock, and I looked around the room to see what I could push up against it to barricade myself in.

Shelby remained next to the door, and I didn’t realize what she was about to do until a minute too late. She growled lightly and then suddenly opened her mouth and barked, an angry, loud warning, which made my blood run cold with fear.

“No, Shel—”

She barked again, this one even louder, and then she let loose, a barrage of yelps exploding from her small body.

“Shel!” I hissed, trying to calm her down, but when I touched her, she flinched and kept her eyes trained on the door. She barked again, a loud, forceful sound, and I knew the person—or people—in my house had heard her.

Which meant they knew she was in the bedroom and anyone with her was awake.

She stopped, and then I heard a loud crashing noise in the living room. I swallowed, the blood pumping through my body furiously, and I felt both incredibly alert and dangerously close to losing consciousness.