Closed for the entire weekend? All three days? I’d be stuck here for three more days? No. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be in a huge building alone for three days. This was my worst nightmare.
My heart was beating so fast now it felt like my chest was being squeezed. My lungs weren’t expanding like they should. I yanked on the chains wrapped around the handles of the front door. Pulled them with all my might. “Let me out.”
A voice in the back of my head told me to calm down before I made this worse. Everything was fine. So I was stuck alone in a library, but I was safe. I could read and jog the stairs and stay busy. There were plenty of distractions here.
In my new quiet state, I heard something behind me. Footsteps on wood.
I whirled around, pressing my back to the door. That’s when I saw a shadowy figure on the stairs, a metal object glinting in his right hand. A knife. I wasn’t alone after all. And I definitely wasn’t safe.
CHAPTER 3
I stayed as flat against the wall as possible. Maybe the person wouldn’t see me. No, that was unlikely, considering that seconds before I had been banging on the wall and pulling the chains on the door. I might as well have been screaming, I’m trapped in a library all alone and am desperate to get out!
What was my plan now? I could run somewhere. Lock myself in a room. Though as far as I knew all the rooms that had locks were already locking me out. Just when I was about to run somewhere, anywhere, to find a weapon or somewhere to hide, he spoke.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I didn’t know anyone else was here.” He held up his hands and then, as if just now realizing he held a knife in one, he bent down and tucked it into his boot.
That didn’t make me feel much better. “What are you doing here?”
“Just needed a place to stay.”
Great. I was trapped in the library with a homeless guy? A homeless guy with a knife. My heart was in my throat.
I could tell he was trying to talk in a calm voice, but it came out scratchy. “Let’s sit somewhere and talk. I’m going to get my bag. I left it at the top of the stairs. And then I’m going to come down. Okay?” His hands were still raised in front of him, like that action should make me feel perfectly at ease. “Don’t call anyone until we talk.”
He thought I was going to call someone? If I had access to a phone, I wouldn’t be here. If I had access to any communication device—a bullhorn, a Morse code machine—do those machines have names?—I wouldn’t be here. But I wasn’t going to give away my hand. “Okay,” I said.
The second he left me alone, I ran back down the stairs and past the glass doors. If he was armed, I wanted to be too.
I tucked myself behind a shelf in the back stacks. My breath was heavy and uneven and I couldn’t see a thing. I reached in front of me and grabbed the biggest book I could find. Worst-case scenario, I could hit him over the head with it.
“Hello?” he said from across the room.
“Don’t come any closer.”
“Where are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. You want to talk? Talk.” If I acted tough, maybe he’d think I was.
His voice became louder, clearer, so he must’ve been walking toward me. “There’s no reason to be scared of me.”
Why couldn’t he just stay across the room? We didn’t have to be within spitting distance to talk.
As I went to take a step back, my knee hit the shelf and one book and then another slid to the ground with a thud. I tightened my grip on the book I held and took off for the door. He was faster, though, and cut me off. I held the book over my head.
“Stop,” I said.
He took a step closer. I threw the book at him. He dodged it. I picked up another from a nearby shelf and threw it. It hit his shoulder.
He held his hands over his head. “Really?”
“I already called the cops,” I said.
He cussed.
I threw another book. “So just leave me alone. They’ll be here any second.”
We were closer now, one of the lamps I’d turned on earlier glowing to our right. That’s when I realized I recognized him.
I gasped. “Dax?”
“Do I know you?”
I must’ve still been in the shadows.
In relief, I lowered the book I held. Dax Miller wouldn’t have been my first choice of guys I’d want to be locked in a library with. In fact, if I could choose any guy from my high school, he probably would’ve been the last. His reputation wasn’t exactly stellar. There were stories about him. Lots of stories. But he wasn’t a stranger. And I wasn’t scared of him, so I immediately relaxed. “You go to my school.”
I wasn’t sure he knew me like most people at school did. I was on yearbook and was constantly snapping pictures so I was everywhere all the time. It was hard not to be well known when I had to be involved in so many events. But I’d never taken his picture. He wasn’t involved in anything. Well, at least not anything school-sponsored.