But now her family’s quaint, quiet apartment felt like it was closing in on her. She wanted to run away so badly she could scarcely control herself. She was shaking, crashing from all the adrenaline that had surged through her bloodstream. Shiloh couldn’t stand up if she tried. So she sat on the floor, back against the thick, heavy mahogany door, staring toward the two windows that brought such bright, wonderful light into her home.
She had been at her tiger maple desk, working on a chapter on her Mac, when she’d heard the squeak of the brass doorknob being turned. She’d frozen, her gaze flying to it, the adrenaline slamming through her. It always reminded her of the same feeling she’d experienced when her mother had been murdered. And Shiloh hated it.
Rubbing her face, scrubbing away the tears, she tugged a strand of her red hair across her shoulder. Twisting it nervously around her finger, she tried to think through the fog of her dread. Her mind flip-flopped over so many ideas, but they kept coming back to one: calling Maud Whitcomb. She had been a dear friend of her mother’s. Maud had bought several of her mother’s very expensive paintings. And always, Maud, who was like a maternal grandmother to her, pleaded with Shiloh to come out to her Wyoming ranch for a visit.
Shiloh never did. She always kept in touch with Maud because she was an important person in her life. Especially since the murder of her mother. It was Maud who had flown back after Isabella’s death, and been there for Shiloh while Child Protective Services sorted out whom she was legally to be given to.
In the end, her mother’s younger sister, Lynn, and her husband, Robert Capland, had agreed to take her in because she was family. They too were shattered by her mother’s death. The good news was that they lived in New York City, just a few blocks away from where Shiloh had grown up. Maud had hung around, a lynchpin emotionally for Shiloh for nearly two weeks, making sure she was settling in at Aunt Lynn and Uncle Robert’s apartment, before she reluctantly had to leave to go back and help run the Wind River Ranch.
Shiloh never forgot Maud Whitcomb’s grit, her responsibility toward her, or the ongoing attention and care for her over the years afterward. Maud never forgot her birthday. She’d send her JPEGs from time to time of the ranch, horses, buffalo, or cattle, saying she should come out West. It would do her good. In the last six months, that’s all Shiloh had thought about: leaving New York and visiting Maud. Running away.
Chewing on her lower lip, brows dipping, Shiloh stared down at the beautiful nineteenth-century tapestry on the floor. It was from Persia, pale cream colors in the background with brilliant patches of woven flowers all across it. She loved that rug. It always lifted her spirit. Always made her yearn for the beauty of real wildflowers. What would it be like to walk through a field of them? That wouldn’t happen here in New York City, she knew. But the rug fulfilled a yearning in her for nature.
The last six months, she’d been jogging less and less on her route through Central Park. Now, June first, she knew the grass would be a vibrant green, all the trees in full leafy green wardrobe. She ached to get out of the apartment, stretch her legs, feel the wind in her face, feel the throbbing life of the outdoors surrounding her. Shiloh wrote every day, but she made a point to jog every day, too. It was balancing mental activity with physical activity. It suited her. It had worked for years. Until her stalker silently, like a deadly, toxic fog, entered her life, unknown and unseen.
Now, Shiloh felt the adrenaline leaving her body. She was exhausted. She had to do something to break this cycle.
Slowly getting to her feet, she shuffled stiffly to her desk where she wrote. The window was curtained, a transparent white chiffon that made the other skyscrapers of New York look like archetypal symbols in a fog. Every book she’d written had been written at this desk.
Looking at the phone, she wondered if she could write anywhere else but here. Shiloh had never traveled outside the city. She lived in a fishbowl, but she was happy in it, with no need to go elsewhere. Everything she needed or wanted was right here. What should she tell Maud? The truth? That she was a coward? Running away from a fight? Couldn’t take it anymore? That’s how Shiloh felt: tired, beaten, and maneuvered into a corner where there was no escape. Just as Anton had shoved her mother into the corner of the kitchen, trapping her so he could stab her to death. She had no way to escape, either.
But Shiloh did.
Suddenly, she didn’t care what Maud or her editor thought of her. She’d tried to dismiss the stalker. Tried to work with the police. But still, the stranger tormented her. Maybe if she was gone for two months, her nemesis would leave. No more faxes. No more heavy breathing over the phone. No more doorknobs twisting one way and then the other, the stalker wanting in to get to her.
With new determination, Shiloh picked up the phone, praying that Maud would allow her to travel to Wyoming for a visit to see her. It was the only hope she had left.