CLAIRE
The scream jolted me awake at one-fourteen in the morning.
It wasn't a loud scream. Not the type you hear in horror films, full of intensity and drama. This was something worse. It was small. Strangled. The sound of a child attempting to scream but forgetting how to use her voice, resulting in fear manifesting as a broken, jagged fragment of sound that sliced through the silence of the penthouse like glass scraping against tile.
I was out of bed before my mind could catch up with my legs. My feet hit the cold hardwood floor, and I was moving, down the hallway, past the bathroom, toward Chloe's door, which was ajar by exactly six inches. I pushed it open wide.
Chloe was sitting up in bed, her sheets tangled around her legs, her arms stiff at her sides. Her eyes were open, yet th
