One Last Scream Read Free Page B

noise outside, and suddenly stopped moving.
    She listened to what sounded like footsteps. A hand over her heart, she crept to one of the dormer windows and looked down. Ina gasped.
    Just below her, a dark figure darted between some bushes.
    Reeling back from the window, she turned and raced down the hall. “Mark!” she called, but the word barely came out. She couldn’t get a breath. Ina burst into their bedroom. “There’s someone outside!” she whispered.
    Mark and Jenna were sitting up in bed. “Are you sure?” he asked, putting his book aside.
    She nodded urgently. “I saw someone—something—in the bushes right below my window.”
    “Some one or some thing ?” he asked.
    Flustered, Ina gave a helpless shrug. “I—I’m not sure—”
    “It was probably just a bear,” Jenna said, a copy of Vanity Fair in her hands. She was wearing her glasses and one of Mark’s T-shirts. “They come around all the time looking for food scraps in the garbage. They’re harmless.”
    Ina hated the way her sister was talking to her as if she were a scared little girl. “Well, whatever it is,” she replied, still shaking, “this thing is right below my window, and it scared the shit out of me. What, do you expect me to go back in there and just fall asleep now? It looked like a person , Jenna.”
    “I better check it out,” Mark grumbled, getting to his feet. “Could be our uninvited houseguest is back.”
    Biting her lip, Ina watched him throw a robe over his T-shirt and boxer shorts. Mark was balding and a bit out of shape, but he still had a certain masculine sexiness. He slipped his bare feet into a pair of slippers. The uninvited houseguest was another reason she didn’t like this damn cabin.
    When they’d arrived there earlier tonight, Mark and Jenna had noticed several things out of place. Someone had tracked mud onto the kitchen and living room floors. A few empty beer bottles, some cigarette butts, and a crumpled-up potato chip bag littered the pathway from the front porch to the lake. The intruder had even built a fire in the fireplace. Jenna wondered out loud if their daughter, Amelia, had stayed there on the sly with her boyfriend. But Mark, trusting soul that he was, insisted Amelia hadn’t touched a drop in weeks, and neither had Shane. Both were nonsmokers, too. So the empty beer bottles and cigarette butts couldn’t have been theirs.
    Rolling her eyes, Jenna said he shouldn’t believe everything Amelia told him. Their daughter had a good heart, but she wasn’t exactly reliable—or honest. That was why Amelia was seeing a therapist once a week, to the tune of eighty bucks a pop.
    Ina had tagged behind Jenna and Mark. They’d continued to bicker while searching the house for further signs of this uninvited guest. “Well, whoever was here, they’re long gone,” Mark had said, at last. He’d assured Ina that the culprit probably wouldn’t be back. “If it’ll make you feel any better, I keep a hunting rifle in the bedroom closet. We’ll be okay.”
    Now, Ina watched him reach into the closet for that rifle. Cocking the handle, he checked the chamber to make sure it was loaded.
    “Better bag this prowler on the first shot, Mark,” Jenna said, still sitting up in bed. She tossed her sister a droll look, then went back to her Vanity Fair . “The great white hunter only keeps one bullet in that stupid gun. The rest are in the kitchen drawer downstairs. He hasn’t fired that thing since—”
    “Oh, would you just give it a rest?” Mark hissed. “Can’t you see she’s scared?”
    “All I see is a lot of drama ,” Jenna remarked, eyes on her magazine.
    Mark ignored her, then brushed past Ina and started down the hall.
    Frowning at her older sister, Ina lingered in the bedroom doorway for a moment. Finally, she retreated down the corridor and caught up with Mark on the stairs.
    Like a soldier going into a sniper zone, Mark held the rifle in front of him, barrel end up. He paused near the