Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Master Bedroom"Abby, I swear to God, if you don't shut up right now—" Claire started, her voice shaking with genuine terror, but Abby cut her off with a wave of her hand.
"Save it, Claire. Mason needs to know. Because while you think you've been guarding this house like a loyal sentinel, someone else has been inside it." Abby turned her piercing gaze back to me. "Mason. When was the last time you checked your security system logs?"
"My phone syncs with the cameras," I said defensively. "I checked them before my flight. Everything was green."
"That's because whoever was visiting didn't trip the motion sensors," Abby replied, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "They didn't break in. They had a key."
The kitchen grew deathly quiet, save for the rhythmic humming of the refrigerator.
I looked at Claire. "Did you give someone else a key?"
"No!" Claire cried out, her eyes wide, panic bleeding into every syllable. "Mason, I swear to you, I never gave the spare key to a single soul. Not even Abby! I guarded this place with my life!"
"Then explain why," Abby interrupted, pulling her phone from her pocket and tapping furiously on the screen, "my phone received a motion alert from your master bedroom closet at 3:00 AM three nights ago."
My jaw tightened. "Abby, you don't have access to my master bedroom cameras."
"I do now," she shot back, spinning the phone around to face us.
On the screen was a still image captured by the wide-angle security lens mounted in the corner of my walk-in closet. The timestamp read 03:14 AM, Tuesday.
The closet light was on.
Standing in front of my row of button-down shirts was a figure with long blonde hair, wearing a silk robe that definitely didn't belong to Claire. She had one of my dress shirts pressed against her face, her eyes closed in a look of absolute, chilling ecstasy.
I stared at the screen, the blood draining from my face.
"Who the hell is that?" I demanded.
"That," Abby said with a grim smile, "is Sarah. Your ex-fiancée."
The room seemed to tilt on its axis.
Sarah.
The woman who had broken off our engagement two weeks before my deployment, claiming she couldn't handle the uncertainty of my job, clearing out her half of the apartment while I was at work, and vanishing without a trace.
"That's impossible," I stammered, shaking my head. "Sarah moved to Chicago. She sold her car. She changed her number."
"People change their numbers, Mason," Abby said smoothly, pocketing her phone. "They don't, however, change their obsession. She didn't move to Chicago. She rented an apartment three blocks away. And according to the building logs I pulled from the smart-lock app... Sarah has used a master code to enter this house at least twenty times over the last six months."
Claire finally looked up, her face drained of all color, her lips parted in shock.
"That's why," Claire whispered, realization dawning with horrific clarity. "That's why the tea leaves in the pantry were shifted. That's why I kept finding the throw pillows rearranged when I knew I left them straight. I thought I was losing my mind. I thought ghosts were haunting the hallway."
"You weren't haunted by a ghost," Abby said darkly. "You were being watched by a stalker."
Before any of us could process the gravity of the revelation, a sharp, metallic sound echoed from the front hallway.
Click.
May you like
It was the distinct sound of the front door latching shut.
Followed immediately by the soft, unmistakable scrape of bare feet on the hardwood floor of the foyer.
