The Stranger in My Bed

Chapter 2

The driver's voice cuts through the dark before I even get my seatbelt buckled.

"It's Hartley," I say. "Sienna Hartley."

"Not since three o'clock this afternoon."

He pulls onto the highway. Rain streaks sideways across the glass.

"How long have you worked for Adrian?"

"Long enough."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I have."

I try again twenty minutes later, when the city lights thin out into black hills.

"Does he always send a car? Or is tonight special?"

"Mr. Cross doesn't discuss his arrangements with me."

"But he discusses window controls."

The driver's eyes flick to the mirror. Just once.

"Some parts of the house get cold," he says. "That's all."

"Which parts?"

"The ones Mr. Cross doesn't use."

---

The mansion sits at the end of a gravel drive that goes on too long. Three floors of pale stone, and only four windows lit.

A woman waits under the portico with an umbrella she doesn't offer me.

"Mrs.Cross.I'm Mrs.Harding, head of household."

"Sienna's fine."

"It isn't, actually.Staff address you by title." She turns without waiting."This way."

The entry hall swallows my footsteps. Marble, gray, cold as a bank lobby.

"Dinner's at eight, breakfast at seven. If you want something outside those hours, ring the kitchen."

"Where's Adrian?"

"Mr. Cross is working."

"On our wedding night."

"Mr.Cross works most nights." She opens a door, closes it again before I can look in."Library.You have access."

"What else is on this floor?"

"The dining room. The study. Both locked after nine."

"Meaning some rooms I don't?"

"The east wing is being renovated."

"It's midnight and I don't hear any renovation."

"When did the renovation begin?"

"Two years ago, Mrs. Cross."

"Contractors keep normal hours, Mrs. Cross."

She's already climbing the stairs.

The second floor smells like lemon oil and something underneath it, faint and sour. Old flowers. Water that sat too long.

"Your suite." She pushes open a door.Cream walls, a bed the size of my old apartment."Mr.Cross's rooms are at the opposite end."

"Opposite end."

"He sleeps badly. He didn't want to disturb you."

"Has he always slept at the opposite end?"

"That's not for me to say."

"That's considerate of him."

"He's a considerate man." She says it flat, like reading a line off a card.

"How long have you worked for him, Mrs. Harding?"

"Long enough to know what this house needs."

I set my bag down. There's a vase of white lilies on the dresser, fresh, still wet at the stems.

"Who put these here?"

"I did."

"They're my mother's favorite."

Mrs. Harding's hand tightens on the door frame.

"Mr. Cross has good instincts," she says.

"My mother's been dead eleven years."

"Then I'm sorry for the reminder."

She's turning to go. I catch the door.

"Mrs. Harding. What's on the third floor?"

"Storage."

"That's it?"

"Storage, and the old nursery."

"Adrian doesn't have children."

She looks at me for a long moment. There's something in her face that isn't dislike. It's closer to pity.

"Good night, Mrs.Cross," she says."The stairs to the third floor are locked.They've been locked for two years.Don't waste your evening on them."

---

She's wrong about the lock.

I find it at half past one, when the house has gone quiet enough to hear the pipes tick. The stairwell door at the end of the hall gives when I push it, one soft click, and the hinge sighs open like it's been waiting.

The stairs are narrow. No carpet. My bare feet stick to the wood.

The third floor hall is dark except for a strip of light under the last door on the left.

I stop.

Footsteps.

Not mine.Slow, dragging, back and forth across a small space.Someone pacing.Someone who's paced that same six feet so many times the boards know it.

"Hello?"

The footsteps stop.

"Is someone in there?"

"I'm not going to hurt you."

The footsteps start again, slower.

Nothing. Then a sound so soft I lean in to catch it — a breath let out against the other side of the wood.

"My name's Sienna," I say. "I moved in tonight."

The knob turns.

The door opens four inches, chain still on, and a face appears in the gap.A woman.Thirty, maybe younger, hair matted at one temple, mouth cracked at the corners.Her eyes are so wide the white shows all the way around.

"You came," she says.

"Who are you?"

Her hand shoots through the gap and clamps my wrist. Her nails dig in.

"Listen to me.Listen." Her voice shreds itself trying to stay quiet."He's going to kill me, just like he killed your father."

"That's not possible."

"You know it is." Her eyes don't blink. "You've always known."

The floor tilts.

"My father died in a car accident."

"On the coast road.February.Brake lines." Her grip grinds tighter."Ask him what he was doing in Monterey that week.Ask him."

"How do you know about the coast road—"

"Sienna." Her chin trembles.She knows my name.Nobody told her my name."Don't eat anything Harding brings you.Don't sign anything.Don't—"

Light floods the hallway.

The hand vanishes. The door slams. The chain rattles once and then there's nothing but a white rectangle of wall and a brass knob and my own breath going too fast.

"Sienna."

Adrian stands at the top of the stairs in shirtsleeves, collar open, a glass of something amber in his hand. He hasn't rushed. His hair isn't even out of place.

"There's a woman in there," I say.

"Come downstairs."

"Adrian, there's a woman locked in that room."

He sets the glass on a side table. Then he walks past me, unhurried, and opens the door.

It swings wide. All the way.

Bare boards.A stripped mattress leaning against the far wall.Dust in ridges along the baseboards.One bulb burning in a ceiling fixture with no shade.

No chain on the door. There's no hardware there at all — just two small holes where a chain used to be.

"Look," he says.

"She was right here."

"There's no one in that room." He says it the way you'd read a stock price. "There hasn't been anyone in that room in two years."

"I heard footsteps."

"The house settles."

"The boards don't sound like footsteps."

"At two in the morning, they do."

"She spoke to me. She said my name."

"Sienna." He turns, and for the first time his voice drops into something almost gentle, which is worse."You buried your father six weeks ago.You married a man you've known for nine of them.You haven't slept properly since March."

"Don't."

"I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm telling you what a doctor would tell you."

"I'm not crazy."

"I didn't use that word." He picks his glass back up. "You'll notice I never do."

The hall light hums. Somewhere below us a clock strikes the half hour.

"Why was the stairwell door unlocked?" I ask.

Something moves behind his eyes. Fast. Gone.

"It wasn't," he says.

"I walked through it."

"Then I'll speak to Mrs.Harding about it in the morning." He puts his hand out to me, palm up, patient."Bed.Please.We can argue about ghosts at breakfast."

I don't take his hand.

I go down the stairs ahead of him, past the lilies, into the cream room with the bed the size of my old life, and I sit on the edge of it in the dark with my heart slamming.

Then I turn my arm over under the lamp.

Four crescents, red and raw, pressed into the skin above my wrist bone. The one from her thumb has broken through. A bead of blood slides down toward my palm and I watch it go.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand.

Unknown number.

Room 34.Second floor west.Not the third.He moves her when he hears you coming.

And underneath it, a photo. Timestamped nine minutes ago.

Me, standing in that empty doorway — shot from behind, from inside the room.