My friends thinkI’msecretive.
I have nothing on my twin.
Not that they’d know since she wasn’t really a part of the crew growing up.
I step carefully around the couch cushions—lavender with a funky circle pattern on them—and the overturned white distressed wood end tables and coffee table. The large-screen TV hung on the wall over a gas fireplace is shattered.
I pass through a small dining room with wall hangings littering the table and three of the six chairs overturned, then into the kitchen.
All of the drawers are pulled out, their contents spilled everywhere. Cabinets ransacked. Two oak cabinet doors hanging off their hinges. The oven’s open. So is the microwave.
“Davis?” Sloane calls from the front of the house.
“Stay outside.”
“I didn’t mean to call you an asshole. You’re annoying, but you’re not an asshole, and I’d really like you to not get murdered.”
“All good.”
“Seriously? Is that how you react every time someone calls you names?”
“Not my problem what people think of me.”
“That’s very enlightened, but enlightenment won’t keep you from being murdered.”
Dammit. She almost made me smile. And this is not a smiling situation. “Stay outside.”
I take a side door from the kitchen into the laundry room, which leads into a closet scattered with more scrubs, sweaters, jeans still on hangers, and boxes of pictures overturned all over the floor. I pick my way around the mess and into a modern primary bathroom with a claw-foot tub, large tile floor, and marble double sinks.
Whoever did this left no cabinet unsearched. They pulled the shower door off its hinges too.
And the bedroom attached to the bathroom is as messy as the rest of the house.
“Who—why?” Sloane says from the main bedroom doorway.
She’s hugging her cat tight enough that it yowls while her gaze sweeps around the room.
The queen-size mattress crookedly hangs off the rustic wood frame. A floral quilt and ivory sheets and blankets are tossed about. Her underwear is everywhere.
So is an impressive collection of dildos and vibrators.
Some of them…quite large. All of them in different colors.
Ignore them ignore them ignore them.
I picture Sloane spread out on the bed, toy between her legs, eyes glossy, thinking about me?—
Stop it.
Breathe.
Focus.
There’s a framed painting haphazardly tossed across a tipped-over rocking chair, with one armrest poking through the canvas.
I bite my tongue to keep from asking if she believes me now.
It’s more productive to make two phone calls to get security on her house and someone in for cleanup.
