“No, I didn’t do that.”
“Martinez?” he yells.
Officer Martinez exits my bathroom clutching a large plastic bag containing my towel. “Yeah.”
“Magnets are different,” he mutters.
“Follow her around and make notes.”
Wait, why does he have my towel in a plastic bag? “Officer?”
Martinez turns to me. “Yes, Miss Parker?”
“Why are you taking my towel?”
He first looks at Sawyer and then at me. “We’re going to check it for DNA.”
“My DNA?”
He looks at Sawyer again. “No, ma’am. He left some, um, residue on this towel. We need to send it to the lab.”
“Residue?”
Sighing, Sawyer finally jumps in. “We think he jacked off into your towel.”
“Sawyer,” Martinez shouts.
“What? Like she’s never seen jizz before?”
“Oh, gross,” I shout. “He didthatin my towel?” I’m seriously gonna be sick. “I touched that thing? So frigging disgusting. It was like he was some sort of anal-retentive pervert—the stuff he did in here,” I say, pointing to the magnets.
I look over at Sawyer and see his face turn pink and his body shake.
“What?” I ask.
Shaking his head, attempting to get himself under control, he says, “Nothing. Sorry. You’re pretty funny considering….”
“Considering? Oh, considering I was the victim of some sexual deviant?”
“Something like that,” adds Martinez. He gives Sawyer a dirty look as he carries the bag outside.
“Okay. Let’s keep going,” Sawyer mutters. He pulls out a small notebook from his pocket along with a pen and begins to write.
As we move around the space, I’m shocked at how many little things he messed with. My doodads and knickknacks are all different. Some things he just turned around to face another direction, like my Russian matryoshka dolls; other things, like Pops’s collection of Pez dispensers, are swapped with others. I look at my bookshelves and gasp, “Oh, no!”
“What? What’s wrong?” he asks, sounding sincerely worried.
“My Pops’s, er, my grandfather’s medals are gone.”
“Medals?”
“Purple Heart and Bronze Star. I had them in a little box here,” I say, pointing to the rectangular dust mark on the shelf. I start to tear up. “Who would steal those and not take the other stuff? Those were sentimental. Not valuable.” I weep openly.
“Those can be pawned,” he says, patting my back. “We’ll look into it, okay?”
His hand is gently rubbing my back, and I’m looking up into his beautiful eyes when I hear, “What the hell, MacKenzie?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
