She moved through the living room, her heels clicking on the tile floor. Everything looked normal—the furniture perfectly arranged, expensive art on the walls, that ridiculous sculpture Victor had bought last year that looked like a twisted piece of metal but had apparently cost fifteen thousand dollars.
The kitchen was at the back of the house, opening onto the patio and pool area. Tessa could see the lights were on there too, the blue glow of the pool reflecting off the floor-to-ceiling windows.
She rounded the corner into the kitchen and stopped.
Victor Sheridan lay on the floor between the island and the refrigerator, his body crumpled in an unnatural position. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. A dark stain spread across his white dress shirt, centered on his chest. Near his outstretched hand, a wine glass lay shattered, red wine mixing with the blood pooling on the expensive tile.
Tessa's breath caught in her throat. Her mind tried to process what she was seeing, to make sense of it, but coherent thought scattered like startled birds.
He was dead. Victor was dead. Shot, from the look of the wound, though she'd never actually seen a gunshot victim before. Her brain was simultaneously screaming at her to look closer and to run, to get out, to not be found here.
Her hands were shaking. When had they started shaking?
She needed to call 911. That was what you did when you found someone dead. You called for help, even when help was obviously too late. Even when the person was beyond any help anyone could provide.
But calling 911 meant questions. It meant police. It meant explaining who she was and why she was here and what her relationship was with Victor Sheridan, successful construction executive and Paradise Valley resident. It meant her name in a police report, possibly in the news, definitely in a database somewhere that could be accessed by anyone who wanted to know why Tessa Crane had been visiting a wealthy married man's home at eight o'clock on a Tuesday evening.
Except Victor wasn't married. His wife had died two years ago—cancer, he'd said, though he never talked about it much. And he had no family in Phoenix except his daughter, who was away at college in California.
So who would miss him? Who would wonder where he was?
Tessa's thoughts were spiraling. She forced herself to take a breath, to think clearly despite the panic clawing at her chest.
Victor had been good to her. In five years, he'd never treated her as less than human, never made her feel cheap or used. He'd listened when she talked about her real estate classes, had even given her advice about the market and which areas of Phoenix were going to boom in the next five years. Once, when she'd mentioned she was short on rent after an unexpected car repair, he'd simply doubled his payment without her having to ask, without making it feel like charity or like she owed him.
She couldn't just leave him here. Couldn't walk away and pretend she'd never come, never seen this. That would be abandoning him, treating him like he was less than human, less than someone who deserved to be found and mourned and properly dealt with.
Even if calling the police meant complications. Even if it meant exposure and questions and potentially the end of the careful life she'd built.
Tessa pulled out her phone with trembling fingers. She had a minor record—solicitation, from six years ago when she'd been younger and less careful—but nothing that would make her a suspect in a murder. The police would question her, certainly. They might judge her, probably would. But she hadn't done anything wrong. She'd simply arrived for an appointment and found her client dead.
She dialed 911, her eyes fixed on Victor's face, on the way his expression was frozen in something like surprise.
The dispatcher answered on the second ring. "911, what's your emergency?"
Tessa's voice came out steadier than she'd expected. "I need to report a death. I just found someone—I think he's been shot. He's not breathing. I'm at 4782 Desert Vista Drive in Paradise Valley."
"Is the shooter still present? Are you in danger?"
The thought hadn't even occurred to Tessa. She glanced around the pristine kitchen, at the empty hallway beyond, at the dark windows reflecting her own frightened face back at her. "I don't think so. I don't see anyone. I just—I just got here and found him like this."
"Okay, I'm dispatching officers and paramedics to your location now. Can you tell me your name and your relationship to the deceased?"
Here it was. The moment where her carefully constructed privacy would crack open like an egg. Where she'd become a name in a report, a person of interest, someone whose background would be examined and whose life choices would be judged by detectives and prosecutors and possibly the media.
Tessa thought about her solicitation charge from six years ago. About how the police would look at her differently once they knew what she did. About how she'd be questioned, suspected, her life torn apart while they investigated whether the escort had killed her wealthy client.
She thought about Victor's daughter, who would find out her father had been seeing an escort twice a month for five years. About the neighbors who'd see police cars and news vans and would remember the professional-looking woman who'd sometimes visited in the evenings. About her own dreams of opening a real estate brokerage, dreams that would evaporate the moment her name was attached to this.
"Ma'am? Can you tell me your name?"
"I—" Tessa's voice caught. Her heart was pounding now, suddenly overwhelmed by that fight-or-flight response she'd learned to suppress in uncomfortable situations. But this went way beyond uncomfortable.
She'd reported Victor's death. She'd done the right thing. The police were coming. He would be found and treated with dignity, his death investigated. She'd done what needed to be done.
Staying here, giving her name, becoming part of this—that was unnecessary. There was no need to destroy her own life to participate in something that would happen whether she stayed or not.
With a deep breath, Tessa ended the call.
