Without Regret (Devil's Playground #1) by Nicole Edwards

the suspense novel she’d been engrossed in before she finally dozed off was making her paranoid. Stephen King had a way of doing that to a person.
    Sliding the e-reader to the pillow beside her, Marissa scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and glanced over at the bedroom door. Shut and locked. Exactly the way she’d left it. No boogeyman looming over her, ready to do whatever it was that boogeymen did.
    She lay there, momentarily listening for the sound that had awoken her. Nothing.
    Yep, just as she’d thought. Paranoid. Thanks a lot, Mr. King. Maybe it really was time to switch to some lighter reading at night. Perhaps her best friend, Courtney, was right, Marissa should try romance on for size.
    Just when she reached for the lamp to shroud the room in darkness so she could attempt to get back to the blessed dreamless state she’d been in, Marissa stopped, her hand hovering inches from the lamp base.
    Thump-scrape
    Okay, maybe paranoid wasn’t the right word because she clearly hadn’t imagined the sound that time.
    Glancing toward her bedroom door once more, Marissa tried to make sense of the noise, but she couldn’t. It sounded almost as though someone was dragging something across the floor and then carelessly dropping it. Over and over again.
    There was no way that could possibly be it, though.
    Right?
    Maybe it was the screen door. Yes, that made perfect sense. A much more likely culprit. The damn thing was always coming unlatched, a reoccurring problem with the blistering cold winds slamming brutally against her small rental—aka safe house—especially in the dead of winter.
    Not for the first time, Marissa wished she was back in Texas. Back where the temperatures weren’t freeze-your-nipples-off cold.
    Figuring the screen door wouldn’t fix itself, Marissa forced her legs over the edge of the bed and slid her feet into her cable-knit boot slippers.
    Thump-scrape-thump
    A frisson of fear sliced through her at the sound, making her toes curl against the faux fur encasing her feet and causing her heart to slam into her ribs. The screen door was never that consistent.
    Swallowing past the lump of ice-cold terror lodged in her suddenly dry throat, Marissa managed to get to her feet. After grabbing her heavy robe from the chair beside the bed, she slowly slipped out of her bedroom, moving down the short, narrow hallway toward the front door as she pulled her robe over trembling arms. Forgoing the lights on her way, she kept her ears tuned to the sound.
    Thump-scrape-thump
    This time Marissa stopped midstride, standing a mere foot from the doorway that led to the living room as she tried to pinpoint the direction of the noise. It didn’t sound like it was coming from the front of the house, which meant … the screen door wasn’t the guilty party.
    Thump-tha-thump
    Thump-tha-thump
    Swallowing hard, Marissa realized that new thumping sound was her heart—threatening to beat right out of her chest.
    That realization didn’t do a damn thing to help the oncoming panic attack.
    Thump-scrape-thump
    Shit.
    Not her heart .
    Oh, God!
    Marissa listened for a moment, noticing the house was now void of all noise except for the soft rumble of heat through the air vents and the drumbeat coming from her chest. Was the sound coming from behind her? She tried to force her feet to move, but the overwhelming fear kept her rooted in place.
    Before the direction to run could make it from her brain to her feet, a hard, firm hand came over her mouth, yanking her back against an equally hard, firm body.
    The cobwebs of sleep still saturated her gray matter, making it difficult to register the need to scream, but instinct had her instantly trying to wiggle away.
    No! Not again!
    A muffled sound escaped her—anything more was hindered by the large palm crushed over her mouth—but it wasn’t nearly loud enough to attract help. Or maybe that was the terror lodged in her throat keeping the sound at bay. Either way, she found