Chapter 1
This sucks. Abigail Elizabeth Monroe shifted the ungodly stack of papers from one arm to the other. Filing was just one of the many boring duties in the description of the job that the temp agency had given her. The sounds of voices filled the large open office where men and women worked from cubicles. She’d held this job for two days. Not a record, but it was a start. Some of the employees talked about their weekends while sipping coffee as she walked by and others were talking about the latest football game they’d watched on TV. She might as well have been invisible to these people who didn’t even bother to ask her name.
Abigail settled on top of a little stool and placed the papers at her feet so she could start filing. Several papercuts and hours later, she sucked the blood away as she shoved the last filing cabinet shut. Her entire shift had come and gone. She stood with her hands on her hips and stretched the kinks out of her neck.
Laughter floated to her ears as a group of woman stood around, purses on their shoulders, deciding where they’d meet after work for drinks. When they turned and spotted Abigail, she froze.
“Hey,” Carol called. She’d been the supervisor in charge of giving Abigail her duties for the day.
“Me?” Abigail asked, glancing over her shoulder to find no one else behind her.
“We were just debating where to go for drinks.” The woman grinned.
Hope blossomed in Abigail’s heart. Were they going to ask her to join them? Had someone finally grown a kind bone? “Yeah?”
Carol pointed over to her desk. “That stack isn’t going to file itself.”
And just as quickly as the idea and hope for acceptance had taken form, it vanished, shriveling and wilting away like flower petals on a cold winter’s day. Carol led the giggling women out of the office. Not one bothered to glance back with even a morsel of pity.
It was official. Abigail’s life sucked, and worse than that, she’d hit rock bottom. It had started that morning years ago she’d found both of her parents murdered in a vicious home invasion. Her life had gone downhill ever since.
Abigail took one more look at the stack of papers and rolled her eyes. She didn’t have time for self-pity. Her emotions weren’t going to pay the bills. She grabbed her purse, leaving the stack for Monday.
“It’s not going to file itself,” Abigail said in a mocking tone as she headed to the elevator and jabbed the call button.
“We’re going out for drinks,” she continued, mocking Carol as she stepped into the empty elevator. When the doors opened to the garage, the disappointment welling up inside had slowed to a simmer.
“These people don’t matter,” she repeated to herself, keys in hand as she headed toward her car in the dimly lit garage. The concrete structure was eerie with no sunlight shining in. This morning she hadn’t been able to find a parking spot because the place was so full. Now the cars sat few and far between.
A man whistled in the distance echoing through the concrete tomb, startling her to a stop. A shiver skirted down her spine as her gaze darted around the cars and shadows dancing on the wall. A killer could pop out from anywhere. Chewing her bottom lip, she stood frozen, debating whether to return to the building or move on to her car. Visions of her parents’ bloodless and unmoving bodies on the living room floor flashed in her mind. Her whole body tensed.
When the elevator dinged behind her, and a group of men and women walked out, she finally let out the breath she’d been holding and continued on to her car. If someone were to attack, at least there would be others around to hear her screams, even if they didn’t know who she was.
Her steps quickened into a walking run until she reached her car. She clicked the Fob and slid behind the wheel quickly locking the doors behind her before shoving the key into the ignition.
I’m safe, she repeated over and over in her head as she slowly rolled through the parking garage, her gaze darting into every corner to see if she could find the source of the whistling.
Abigail drove straight home and parked her car as close to the front of the apartment building as possible. Her neighborhood wasn’t in the best part of town, but it wasn’t the worst either. It was just a place she could afford. She slid out of the car and scanned the lot. A couple of teens she’d noticed before were the only ones loitering nearby. She took the stairs two at a time until she reached her third floor. The familiar old, musty scent of the worn-out carpet drifted to her nose, and the muscles in her shoulders started to ease as she stepped inside her apartment, throwing the deadbolt into place behind her.
“Home sweet home.” She dropped her purse on the table and walked directly into the kitchen, making herself an iced tea while she started her frozen dinner in the microwave. This was her life. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was hers.
Abigail settled in front of the television with her nuked, cardboard-tasting dinner and flicked the news on. A story about a woman flashed on the screen. “Another abduction?”
“This makes the third person to disappear in the last three days,” the reporter stated in a serious tone. “This abduction occurred just hours earlier in the Dawson Cliff area. Local police and the Shifter Investigation Division are on the scene, blocking the area. At this time, it’s unclear if the missing person was human or a member of the shifter community. Police are urging everyone to take extra precautions and watch your surroundings when by yourself or to travel in groups to be safe. If you have any information, please contact Crime Stoppers or the police department at (555) 221-4376.”
“I bet the asshole whistles while he’s snatching them,” she mumbled around her next bite of food and flipped the channel to a detective show instead. She loved a good mystery and watching bad guys being thrown in jail. The fact that police still couldn’t explain how her parents had their blood drained, and the fact that they hadn’t charged anyone with the murders, made her stomach churn. Someone, somewhere, knew something.
Abigail took her dishes into the kitchen and cleaned up after herself. She walked over to the sliding glass door and looked out at the little garden on her balcony. Night had settled in, the moon shielded behind a foggy sky. Thunder rolled as lightning flashed in the distance. A storm was brewing and headed their way. She went to pull the curtains closed and glanced down into the parking lot. The boys from earlier were gone. Two men were leaning against a black van with blacked-out windows. Each was smoking, neither speaking as they glanced casually around the lot. The larger of the two looked up and met her gaze as the last blind closed, blocking his view. She shivered before heading to the door and making sure she had locked it tight. She grabbed a bat from the hallway closet and took it into her room before changing and sliding into her nice warm bed. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember her father’s face and her mom’s laugh, clinging to happier times when they’d been alive. Slowly, sleep carried her away into a dream state.
****
Abigail’s eyes flew open, and her heart raced. Fear gripped her body, and her muscles tensed. The man from the parking lot looked down on her. His lips tilted up in a smile as he held a rag over her nose and mouth. His leg pinned one of her arms while the other was being held down by large fingers digging into her skin. Unable to turn her head, she could only make out the faint outline of the other man in the room. She felt the sharp prick of a needle in her arm and tried to scream and pull her arm free from the unyielding restraints.
“Don’t make this hard on yourself. Just breathe,” he whispered.
Panic struck hold, and she sucked in deep breaths, hoping to prolong her life. The medicinal scent hit her in the gut, clogging her nose and dulling her senses.
The men’s voices sounded clogged and distorted to her ears as they spoke back and forth, and her lids turned heavy as she fought to keep her eyes open. Her blinking slowed.
