CHAPTER 1

ABIGEAL

THE NIGHTMARES were the same as always. 

That didn’t stop me from waking up with a start, drenched in cold sweat. I pressed my fingers to my eyelids, trying to push the screams to the back corner of my mind.

The dream was so realistic that I could taste the acrid smoke at the back of my throat, could hear the beeping sound of a bomb about to go off. 

I got up from my bed and stumbled towards the front door and the incessant pounding coming from it. I pulled the door open and was immediately confronted by my landlord’s pot belly.

For some reason, I couldn’t look away from it. It fascinated me. How much beer does one have to drink to get a belly like that? 

He scratched said belly and burped. I held back a wince. “I’m raising the rent,” he said without preamble.

“What do you mean you’re raising the rent? For this dump? People should be living here for free.” I was astounded by the audacity of the man.

“Lady, you should be grateful you have a roof over your head. Lots of homeless people out there, you’re welcome to join them. Believe it or not, I have a waitlist on these apartments.” He grumbled out of his bushy beard, beady eyes glaring at me. 

It should’ve been hard to believe that anyone would want to live in this woebegone place, but such were the living conditions in New York.

“So what’s the rate now?” I asked, resigning myself to my fate. He mumbled the amount, and I just stared at him as I mentally calculated.

“What? That’s over 40% of the former rate. I should call the DHCR. You’re robbing us at this point,” I folded my arms.

He shrugged “Pay up four months advance by the end of the weekor clear out. This is why I wanted to tell your roommate instead, she’s not as bitchy as you.” He shuffled away.

My eyes followed him as he walked to the stairs. For a brief moment, I wished he’d trip and fall.

“Anna, why didn’t you answer the door?” I called out to my roommate as I headed to her room.

Anna, my roommate, was a textbook klutz. She was always involved in one mishap or the other yet kept up this peppy, sunny personality that grated on my nerves constantly.

I distrusted people who smiled too much. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d somehow gotten tangled in her bed sheets and couldn’t get out.

The door was open so I just looked in, catching her in the act of trying to stuff something under her pillow.

She stared at me and I looked back at her, my gaze dropping to the papers still peeking out from under the pillow.

“What are those?” I asked, mostly because there was something weird about her body language.

When she didn’t answer, I walked over to her bed and pulled the papers out before she could reach them.

My back instantly went rigid as I scanned the documents, lifting my eyes to look at her. “Annalise, what the fuck are you doing with my documents?”

I sighted the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes before she lifted her chin. “You refuse to tell me anything about you, so I took matters into my own hands. You never said you were in the military, and that you have-”

I held up a hand. “And you think that gives you the right to look through my things?” I demanded, my voice getting colder by the second.

Before she could say anything else, the smoke alarm in the kitchen went off and her eyes widened. “Oh shit. Our breakfast”  

We both left her room, Anna running into our closet of a kitchen while I paced the living room. This was why I didn’t like people. They invaded your privacy and got to know things that were meant to stay hidden.

Anna came out holding a pan with a long handle. “Abigeal, it’s on fire.” She said, then proceeded to blow on it, expecting for some reason that it would be sufficient to put out the fire.

When it only increased, she yelled and let go of the pan. I watched as it fell on the couch, the only one we had. Watched as the flames spread across the surface.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. I could only stare at it, hearing the screams that weren’t so distant anymore.

I was transported back to that place I didn’t want to be in, feeling the panic clawing its way up my throat as I tried to run from the ever increasing flames.

****

“Zeke, get out of there!”  

The panicked answer, “I can’t!”   

****

“Abigeal!” The sound of my name snapped me back to the present. I realized then that I had moved until my back was pressed against the wall, and I was covered in sweat.

“Abigeal, I’m so sorry. It just kind of…surprised me,” Anna said. I looked at her, and decided I’d had enough.

“Get out.”

I moved past her, took a quick shower and got dressed. I was going to be late for work if I didn’t hurry.

I was never late, but due to the two strikes I already had from ‘hostility’ to customers, it could get me fired. Anna walked in while I pulled on my boots.

“Look, I realize I was wrong for snooping through your things, but don’t you think you’re taking it too-”  

“By the time I get back today, I expect you to be gone and a check waiting on the table. For my couch.” I cut in, my voice cool and steady despite how badly I was shaking. I grabbed my keys and walked out, Anna trailing after me

“Abigeal-”   

“You heard me. Fuck off.”  

I got to work just in time to replace the night shift clerk. Barely two minutes later, my first customer of the day walked towards me.

The expression on her face telling me that I was going to have to restrain myself from strangling her by the end of our interaction.

As I looked down to check the cash register, something in the newspaper stand caught my eye. I plucked one out, my eyes reading the few lines of text almost hidden at the bottom of the front page.

I paused and reread it, refusing to believe an opportunity I’d been searching for for months had just been dropped into my lap. It was a job ad for a security agent and the pay was almost three times what I earned here.

I made my decision quickly, walking out of the store even as the customer yelled after me. I took the subway and arrived at the address listed in under twenty minutes.

If it was odd that it brought me to the middle of an abandoned estate in front of a building that had been left to rot and probably housed gangsters or drug addicts, I paid it no mind. I had six years of military experience behind me and nothing to lose.

With a deep breath, I knocked, opened the door and took two steps in before an arm wrapped around my throat in a headlock and something cold touched my temple.

“Password?”