In Peril's Way

Synopsis

Detective Dylan Greene is coming home to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when his car runs out of gas in the middle of a rainstorm. His cell phone's battery also dies, forcing him to seek help from a nearby house that looks deserted. The occupant lets him stay at her house for the night, but something tells him that she is different than she appears. His suspicions are proven right when she locks him up in a room that also houses her dead husband's body. He has to find a way out of the windowless room in order to get back to his fiancée, Eva Malone, and make sure that he is not next on the madwoman's hit list.

Characters

Detective Dylan Greene
Eileen Whittaker, an elderly woman
Regina Summers, Eileen's daughter
Detective Jordan Hayes
Eva Malone, Dylan's fiancée

Excerpt

        By the time that Detective Dylan Greene had  reached the outskirts of Tupelo, he knew that  there would be no turning back until Sunday.  On his way through Mississippi, his cell phone  had broken, and his car had run out of gas.  The nearest house seemed uninviting and the  incessant rain rendered it impossible to see  even a foot in front of him. Suspecting that he  wouldn’t need his cowboy hat, Dylan set  it next to him in his pickup truck. Just before the  storm had started, he had seen the worn-down  house, and his most recent thought before the  breakdown had been, “I wonder who  could live there.” His heart now raced as  he departed his car and braced himself to find  out. 
         As Dylan stepped up the rugged wooden stairs leading to the eroding porch, he had second thoughts about asking for a place to stay.  The stairs creaked loudly as he ascended their worn planks of wood.  Dogs barked nearby, and their low-pitched growls seemed to come from behind the house.  He heard a metal chain that, if broken, might unleash flesh-hungry dogs that had not eaten for days.  As he stepped onto the porch, he thought to himself, “I’m better off in my car for tonight than in this forsaken house.”  As Dylan reached the doorbell, he rang it, and, not hearing it, he rang again.  Realizing that the doorbell must be broken, he opened the screen door.  As he knocked on the door, he stepped back so that he would not intimidate the occupant.  A few seconds later, a voice, barely audible to hear, muttered, “Hold on.”  He thought he heard something dragging on the floor in the background.  He patiently waited on the porch, and, after what felt like forever, a gray-haired woman, who seemed to be at least in her seventies, appeared in the doorway.