Tess looked around wildly for Storm. He was nowhere to be seen. The screaming that came from upstairs rang in her ears, as though someone were being mauled alive. Or burned.
A cacophony of barking and snarling and rage then. Tess and Wyatt locked eyes, and despite what Nick had said, they ran up the stairs and down the hallway toward the studio.
The noise was unbearable.
They burst into the room to see Nick standing there, gun in hand, but his arm hung limply by his side. His mouth was agape, and he was shaking his head.
All three of the dogs seemed to have an invisible enemy cornered on the back wall. Storm, Maya, and Luna were standing in a row, snarling and barking, biting the air, shaking their heads back and forth like they had caught something in their jaws. The screams rang out, like the wail of a demon on a dark night.
And then it was done. Silence fell across the room, an eerie, empty silence. The three dogs sniffed the air. Storm patrolled the perimeter of the room, sniffing and emitting a low growl. Maya and Luna gazed around, their ears up.
Tess’s heart was pounding in her throat.
Nick shook his head. “I know some pretty odd things tend to happen here in Wharton,” he said. “But I’ve never experienced anything like that.” He turned to Tess and Wyatt. “Nobody was here.”
“We all saw—” Tess began.
Nick cut off her words with a raised hand. “I know. I saw a person at the window, too. Plain as day.”
“What was making that god-awful noise?” Tess squeaked out, her voice wavering. Tears were welling up in her eyes. Wyatt wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.
Nick ran a hand over his closely cropped black hair and sighed. “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard. Like someone was being tortured.”
“Or attacked,” Wyatt said, raising his eyebrows. “By a pack of dogs.”
The three of them stood silently for a moment, looking from one to the other. Tess was shaking. She felt cold on the inside.
Just then, a police car pulled into the driveway—Nick’s backup squad. He slipped his gun back into its holster. The simple reality of it, a car pulling into the driveway, broke the otherworldly spell that had descended around them.
“So, let’s go down this path,” Nick said, clearing his throat. “We all saw a person in the window. But nobody was here by the time I entered the room just a moment later.”
“Right,” Wyatt said.
“Okay,” Nick said. “How could that possibly be? The dogs got up here before I did—this white dude was already in the room, I’m thinking.” He nodded his head toward Storm. “In theory, someone could have run out of here and down the hallway toward the front stairs as I was running up the back stairs. But, if that happened, how did they get past the dogs?”
Wyatt shook his head. “They couldn’t. There is no possible way an intruder got past a German shepherd guarding his home. And if, in the highly unlikely event that he did, the dogs would have chased him, not stayed in the room barking at nothing.”
Nick nodded, considering this. “Absolutely right.” He squinted his eyes and walked to one of the walls, running his hand along it.
“Many of these grand old Wharton homes have things like secret passageways and false wall panels. Does yours?” he asked.
Tess shook her head. “No,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said. “I remember my dad telling the story about how, when he and his brother were little, they wished there were secret passageways. But there weren’t. So instead, they used to climb into armoires, pretending they were the gateways to Narnia. They drove my grandma crazy with it all. Every time she’d open an armoire to get a sweater or something, she’d find my dad and his brother huddled in the back of it. Nearly scared her to death.”
“Okay then,” Nick said, with a slight smile. “I don’t see how someone could’ve gotten out of this room without me seeing them or the dogs chasing them. But I’m going to have my officers search the house anyway.”
“Great,” Tess said. “Thank you, Nick.”
“I’ll go fill them in,” he said over his shoulder on his way out of the studio. “And then, let’s meet downstairs to talk a little bit more.”
With Nick occupied, Wyatt enveloped Tess in a hug. She rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re shaking,” he said, his voice low in her ear.
“What just happened, Wyatt?” Tess whispered.