My dad’s phone. So he was here.
I ended the call, stuffing my phone into my jeans’ back pocket as I did a one-eighty in the hall and changed destinations. My dad’s office was out of the way, in the back of the house. I expected him to be hunched over his laptop or tablet, so busy doing whatever it was he did that he might not have realized I was home.
I rounded the corner of his office’s open door and spotted him immediately. He was indeed in his high-backed leather chair, only… only something was wrong. He was staring at the ceiling, his arms hanging off the armrests of the chair.
“Dad?” I asked, taking another step into the room, and when I did, everything hit me all at once.
The air, how weird it smelled. Stale, heavy, with traces of metal only a nose who’d smelled an incredulous amount of blood would pick up on. The paleness of his skin, the way his eyes didn’t blink, didn’t focus, just two glassy orbs staring at nothing in particular.
But the biggest thing? The biggest thing was the bright red stain on his shirt, right over his chest.
My skin crawled. “Dad?” This time, when I said that word, I didn’t sound like me. I sounded like the girl I used to be: frightened, scared, the kind of girl who didn’t know what to do in a situation like this.
Everything I’d done, everything I’d seen with Lola, none of it mattered right then. I was just a girl who’d come home to find… this.
How long did I stand there, frozen? Time itself seemed to slow to a halt. I didn’t even know if I was still breathing—but I had to be, otherwise I’d be dead.
Dead. Was that what this was? Was I staring down the corpse of my dad? The wound in his chest looked like it came from a bullet. Just one, expertly placed… or done at such point-blank range there was no way for the shooter to miss, and if that was the case, then it had to have been someone he trusted well enough to let into the house, to bring into this room with him.
Strangely, a part of me remained that didn’t want to believe what I was seeing, so I mechanically walked around the desk and made it to my dad’s side. Blood had escaped from the wound on his chest, staining his shirt all the way down. It pooled on his pants, on the chair, and on the floor.
I didn’t know what made me do it, but I set a hand on his, and when I touched him, his skin was ice. Or, rather, room temperature, but it might as well have been ice. He’d been gone a long time. This wasn’t too recent.
Last night, or this morning? Either way, I was gone, blissfully ignorant to the fact that my dad had unknowingly taken his last breath.
Tearing my hand off his, I took a step away from him, although that step ended up being more of a tumble. I couldn’t take my eyes off his body, even as I went for my phone to checkthe cameras on the house. I had to look, eventually, if only for a second.
And what would you know? The cameras were offline. They’d been offline since this morning at seven.
So somewhere between then and now, someone came here, shot him, and left. I didn’t need multiple guesses as to who it could be, or who could be the root of it. But just because you knew the truth didn’t make it any less hurtful.
My gaze sluggishly lifted to my dad’s face, memorizing the slacked jaw, the glassy stare, and the off-white, ghostly skin. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. Was I dreaming? Was I caught in some nightmare back at that hotel?
No. Even a nightmare wouldn’t be this cruel.
I dialed nine-one-one. My arm might’ve shaken as I lifted the phone to my ear as I continued to stare at my dad’s face. An emergency responder answered, and I relayed what I found, our address, and the fact that I was alone in the house as far as I knew. The killer was long gone.
“Is he still breathing?” the woman on the other line asked.
All I could say to that was “He’s cold.” The words might’ve been choked out, I didn’t know. I could hardly hear myself. I felt numb. This didn’t feel real.
Was this really happening?
The woman on the line got quiet after that, because she knew what it meant. I knew what it meant, too. EMS wouldn’t come save the day. They’d come, check out the body, and then call the morgue, who’d then come to take care of him.
“Whatever you do, don’t move him or touch him more than you already have. If it’s a crime scene, the police will need to see him exactly how you found him.”
I nodded dumbly. Made sense, I guessed. Besides, where would I move him to? What could I do with him? At least helooked comfortable in that chair. If I touched him, tried to move him, I’d only end up dropping him.
And I didn’t know if I could take that.
“EMS is five minutes away. The nearest squad car is three. The police will want to speak with you after clearing the house—” The more the woman said, the more I tuned her out, though I didn’t do it on purpose.
I felt dizzy. My stomach was lurching, like I wanted to bend over and be sick.
I finally turned away from my dad and left the room, barely making it to the hall before my top half bent over and I wretched. I had nothing in my stomach, so it was just bile. Bile on the carpet runner in the hall, yellow and ugly, but nowhere near as ugly as the sight I’d just left.
After a while, I made it downstairs, to the front door. I threw it open and sat on the steps just beyond. The stone was cold beneath my ass, but nowhere near as cold as the feeling that had overtaken my bones the moment I realized what I was staring at up there.
