Three: Nightmare

“Shit,” Sage mouthed silently. How was he going to get out of here? He was caught behind the sofa like a rat in a trap. The next closest hiding spot was the armoire on the far wall, but Sage had no idea if there would be enough room in there for him. Plus, he would just be cornering himself more that way.

That left one route. Wait until the scary dude was looking elsewhere then make a run for it.

Chance of success? …Probably like 10%. But Sage was a gambling man, and he was prepared to go all-in. Worst case scenario, he would take the offense and try to fight him. Was Mr. Psychopath three times as strong as Sage? Yes, probably. Did that matter? …Yes. But Sage could be like a rabid chihuahua when he needed to be. This guy wouldn’t know what hit him.

…Or maybe Sage would end up as a grisly stain on the hardwood floor. Whatever the case, Sage didn’t have time to worry about it. He clapped a hand over his mouth to muffle his breathing and listened closely to figure out how close the man was.

He could have used his power to muffle any sound he made, but in this case, it would be more harmful than helpful. Because Mr. Scary was so nearby, Sage had to pay close attention to the sounds he made to find out where he was and judge when he needed to make a run for it. Unfortunately, Sage’s power wasn’t very precise. When he used it, it muted everything within 100 feet of himself. He could turn down the volume like pressing a button on a remote, but he couldn’t choose if the volume decreased on only himself or only others.

In some respects, Sage certainly understood why the government thought his power was useless. He thought so too most of the time. That didn’t mean it was fair of them to toss him to the curb the way they had, but in a situation like this, Sage was acutely aware of how very powerless he was.

The steady, light footsteps made their way into the parlor. Sage heard him take one, two – three steps into the room and then stop. Silence. Sage held himself so still that he could practically feel the trembling of his heart in his chest. He couldn’t stay where he was. With only about three places an average-sized person could hide, the stranger had a 33% chance of picking Sage’s hiding spot first, discovering him, and brutally murdering him.

…Not very comforting odds, but at least they were better than nothing, so despite every bone in Sage’s body telling him to run now and run fast, Sage stayed put, counting each agonizing, silent second. If fate was on his side, the psycho would choose another place to look first, giving Sage maybe five more seconds of time to get past him than he had now.

Unfortunately, fate had apparently decided Sage was very fuckable, because in the next second, Sage heard decisive steps walking straight toward him.

He bolted. There was no other choice, all he had left at his disposal was brute strength and the element of surprise, and Sage intuitively knew that he had much more chance of surprising the fucker than he did of taking him down.

Sage may not be very strong, but he was fast, and he even made it out of the parlor and to the foyer before the stranger appeared between Sage and the front door, cutting off the easiest escape route. Sage skidded to a stop before running into the man for the second time and did an abrupt about-face, dashing further into the house, toward the set of sliding glass doors that led into the backyard of the property.

Sage bounded down a long hallway, past three unused guestrooms – because of course, the family living here only had three people in a house with eight bedrooms, as if that made any sense – and an absurdly large kitchen before emerging in the den, which was about twice the size of the parlor. On the far wall of the den was the door leading to sweet, sweet freedom.

For the briefest second, Sage thought he was going to make it. And then, like a goddamn idiot, Sage remembered why he hadn’t tried to go through the back door to break in in the first place.

It was glued shut. There was a small child that visited occasionally, related to the family somehow, and they were worried about the kid getting out and getting lost because the lock inside the door was easy to reach and turn. Rather than do something to childproof the lock, they decided to just permanently shut the door. Sage knew this because he had been staking out the house for about a week, and he saw the contractors they’d hired doing it.

Now, Sage wasn’t afraid to do something dangerous like throw his entire body through a glass door – except this door wasn’t made of glass. It was plexiglass, which meant Sage would have to use quite a lot more force to try to break it, and he wasn’t confident that he could do it without severely injuring himself.

So with a curse, Sage made a sharp right turn and went up the stairs, which was a fatal mistake, to be sure, but he had little choice. Sage’s chances of getting out of here were slowly and steadily dwindling down to zero.

The man’s footsteps followed him, their pace unhurried and yet still frighteningly close. It was almost arrogant how casual it was, as if he had to expend zero effort to keep up. And yet, when he’d cut Sage off in the doorway, he moved so fast that Sage didn’t even see or hear him. In the part of Sage’s brain that wasn’t focused on survival, he idly thought that meant that the man was deliberately letting Sage hear him now, to scare him, to mock him.

As if the man was just playing around, not even trying… and Sage still had no hope of escaping.

Sage had to slow him down. Distract him. Something. But how?

That’s when Sage saw it – the perfect distraction. On the second-floor landing, the hallway opened up, and on the immediate right was an open alcove with a laundry room. Clearly, laundry had just been done and folded that day because it was all neatly folded in several baskets. Sage made another abrupt turn, snatched one of the baskets and hurled it behind him all in one motion.

His aim, for once in his life, was perfect. Clothes went flying out of the basket, covering the man’s head and stopping him in his tracks for a second as he lost his sight. Quickly following was the basket, which slammed right into his stupid chest.

Unfortunately, the basket just bounced right off of him about as easily as Sage had when they’d collided earlier. But on the plus side, the basket Sage chose at random apparently had only women’s clothing in it, and sexy women’s clothing too, because a pair of lacy, neon-pink panties was clinging comically to the veil over the man’s face.

Sage would have laughed and made a derisive comment – had he not been in a life-threatening situation. So instead, he took the moment’s pause to pull a few doors shut as he passed them and then dart into another room, leaving the door open in the hopes that the man would search the closed ones first after hearing them slam shut.

The room he happened to end up in was the master bedroom, which took up a lot of space on this floor and had many, many more hiding spots. This time, Sage chose the queen-sized bed to hide under, which was probably a stereotypical hiding place, but the bed cover went to the ground and if the man happened to get down on the ground to look underneath it, Sage could roll out on the other side and run past him. It was the only place where he wasn’t totally cornered.

Once Sage was settled, he stilled and listened. There was nothing – not the whisper of the man’s clothes as he moved or the thump of his footsteps. It was eerily quiet, but Sage knew instinctively that the man was still around somewhere.

Sage held his breath – and waited.