SHATTERING DAWN  – Excerpt

Maybe the stalker would not return tonight.

Maybe she had imagined the ghostly figure in the hoodie and running sweats. Maybe no one was watching her. Maybe she was falling into a vortex of delusions and hallucinations.

No. She might be losing it but she was not that far gone-not yet, at any rate. She was not hallucinating. She was a rational, logical woman descended from a family tree that had produced a lot of highly successful individuals in fields ranging from psychiatry to engineering.

Okay, so she wasn’t one of the overachievers, and yes, there was the occasional self-declared psychic like Aunt Cybil dangling from a branch or two. The point was, none of them had wound up in an asylum. As her mother said, every family had a few eccentrics.

Amelia Rivers hovered in the shadows of her second-floor apartment balcony and struggled to suppress the stirring tentacles of panic. The balmy San Diego night seemed to close in around her.

Dr. Pike was right. She was developing a full-blown phobia, complete with anxiety attacks and excuses. At the rate she was losing ground she would soon become a total recluse after sundown. Pike had warned that the fear would eventually creep into the daylight hours. She probably should not have canceled the last two appointments with him. He meant well. She did not doubt his concern for her mental health. But she no longer had any real hope that he could help her deal with the visions.

She checked her watch. It was almost one o’clock. She clutched the old-school film camera in one hand and waited. The stalker would either show up or not. She no longer knew which outcome she wanted. Both were equally scary. If the watcher was real, she was in danger. If she had hallucinated him, she should probably check herself into a psychiatric hospital.

From where she stood, she had a view of the lushly planted courtyard and the glowing blue pool in the center. The four wings of the two-story apartment complex surrounded the gardens on all sides. There were four entrances. Each was guarded by a high wrought iron security gate and there were cameras, but it was easy enough to slip onto the grounds if you waited for an opportunity to follow a resident inside.

There was no roving guard or drive-by security service. Amenities on that level were only available at the more expensive properties. She was on a budget. It was tough to make a living as a photographer.

Last night the stalker had arrived from the service lane gate, which was veiled by a couple of palm trees and a bunch of strategically planted bushes. No one wanted to look at the massive garbage and recycle bins.

The walls of night seemed to move in on her. She would not be able to stay outside much longer.

Stupid phobia.

She was coming to the grim conclusion that she had imagined the stalker when she glimpsed a slight movement in the shadows near the service lane gate. She almost stopped breathing.

The figure in the hoodie emerged from behind the mass of greenery that shielded the entrance on the far side of the courtyard. The vintage Nikon camera that she had purchased from an online collector shook a little in her fingers. She was already tense but the fresh dose of fear-driven adrenaline sent shivers through her.

The stalker went swiftly along the path that led to the pool and disappeared behind the equipment shed. Something about the smooth, efficient-one could even say predatory-way he moved was as disturbing as the silent shriek of her intuition warning her that she was the stranger’s target. Dr. Pike could blame her nerves as much as he liked. She no longer gave a damn. She knew this creepy sensation all too well. This was not the first time she had been hunted.

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Excerpted from Shattering Dawn by Jayne Ann Krentz Copyright © 2025 by Jayne Ann Krentz. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.