“Um, okay, but what if he doesn’t want to go?” I found it hard to picture Lukas dressed up as anything but Lukas.
Lisa grinned at me. “Ask him nicely. For you? He’ll go.”
With that, my friend left me reeling in the truth of her words. If only she knew the full extent of what we’d done behind her back—and what I was still fantasizing about every night before I went to sleep.
Chapter 25
Lukas
The tires bit into the gravel as I came to a slow stop in a parking spot in the middle of a field. I frowned and glanced at the GPS in my center console. This was it. This was the address Kayla had given me for the haunted house.
Up ahead was a transport trailer. There was a line of people outside it waiting for their turn to go up to the window. It was hard to see from where I was, but it looked like that was where the haunted house ticket sales were. I put the car in park, turned it off, and stepped out.
For once I’d used my foresight and opted for jeans, boots, and a leather jacket in favor of a suit. As I walked across the gravelly yard, I was thankful for that decision.
The air had a chill to it. It smelled like hay and dirt and hot chocolate, which I realized was coming from the window of said trailer. Not only were they selling tickets, but they were selling hot chocolate, brewed coffee, and cider as well. Parents with children made up the bulk of the line but there were a fair amount of teenagers too.
Almost everyone was in costume.
As I walked past the trailer and the line, I spotted vampires, clowns, werewolves, fortune tellers, fairies, kittens, dinosaurs, and ballerinas. I passed ninjas and mutant turtles and waved at a little girl dressed up like a ladybug. She promptly turned toward her father and hid behind his legs. If she was afraid to wave at me in jeans and a leather jacket, I hated to think how she’d handle the haunted house.
I proceeded down a dirt path flanked by wheat fields on either side. I hadn’t been out to this particular country area before and it had taken me quite some time to find it on the GPS. Now that I was here, I could see why. It was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. The fields rolled on until they met darkness and the human eye could see no farther. Somewhere in the distance I thought I’d be able to see Seattle’s city lights, but that wasn’t the case. Fog hung low over the fields and made the air feel chilly and damp.
I tucked my hands in my pockets and bunched my shoulders up to ward off the chill as a structure took shape up ahead of me.
There it was. The haunted house.
It materialized out of the night and fog like a specter, and as I drew closer, I could hear haunting music pouring out of it accompanied by the sounds of teenagers shrieking with horror and glee. Children screamed in earnest, fathers laughed, and mothers? Well, based on the crowd of women I saw near the exit I assumed a great deal of them had no interest in going in the haunted house and had left their families to their own devices.
Kayla had told me to meet her in front of the house at seven in the evening. I was ten minutes early and I turned in a slow circle to peer around and see what else was around. There was nothing. I frowned.
Someone called my name.
I turned to the source. From around the side of the haunted house, a woman dressed as a creepy doll approached. Her hair was done up in high, messy pigtails, her face was painted white with high rosy cheeks, and there were stitches etched into her eyebrows and the corners of her lips. She walked with a lumbering, lopsided, messy gait, and I didn’t realize until she was right in front of me that the doll was actually Kayla.
Laughter consumed me. “I did not expect this.”
Kayla looked down at her costume. “What?”
“You look…” I trailed off. “Good.”
You always look good, creepy stitches or not.
Kayla grinned like a damn fool and pinched the hem of her tutu skirt in her fingers so she could do a little curtsy. “Thank you. It took two hours to get this costume up to snuff. Freaky, right?”
“Very freaky.”
She tilted her head toward the house. “Come with me. There’s a costume trailer around back. One might call it a very low budget green room.”
“Green room?”
“We have to get you dressed up too. Did you think you were going to get away with working a haunted house without having to dress up? Have you ever done Halloween properly?”
I followed her around the side of the haunted house. More screams tore out of the building and I chuckled. “What would you say if I told you I hadn’t dressed up for Halloween since I was eight years old?”
Kayla stopped in her tracks and spun to look at me. Her pigtails whipped against her cheeks and her lips parted in an incredulous gasp. “Since you were eight?”
“Yeah, Halloween just isn’t really my thing.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I find it hard to believe any holiday is your thing, Lukas.”
“Why’s that?” I followed her as she started walking again.
“Because, holidays mean you’re not spending time at work. And if you could have it your way, you’d spend every minute of every day in your office. Right?”
We rounded the back corner of the haunted house and just as Kayla had said, there was a trailer set up. The door was ajar and warm light spilled out onto the dew-covered grass. We moved into the pocket of light and Kayla entered the trailer. I followed and was met with the smell of glue and an old attic. When
