Don’t cry. Your insurance should cover everything. It was just stuff.
You’re happy. Healthy. You’re safe. You’re alive. You still have a job.
It’s just stuff.It’s just stuff.It doesn’t matter.
But one glance at the kicked-in door made all the hairs on my back stand up.
A door can be fixed. An alarm can be set. A deadbolt put on.
“Thank you for calling the Houston—”
It took about twenty minutes to talk to the police department and let them know what had happened.
Stay there, they had said.
But all I had to do was look up at that door….
I shivered. Then I shivered some more as I stood there, staring into the darkened house….
Another wracking shiver down my spine had me reaching for my phone. Had me dialing the number in my phone. There was one ring before the voice mail picked up. “This is Allen Cooper of Cooper’s—”
I had forgotten he turned off his phone while he slept.
Okay. All right.
Focus, Luna.
I took a breath and dialed another number. It rang. It kept ringing and ringing and ringing, until, “The voice mail box you have reached is full—”
Lenny was asleep too. Okay. That was fine. I could do this. I could—
Someone had broken into my house. Someone might have taken my things. Gone through my laundry. Been in the room I slept in. Someone had kicked in my door. Someone could do it again…this mean, evil voice in my head whispered, making me swallow as I stared at the front door.
I’d locked it without a shadow of a doubt. The same lock I had always put on every night. The lock that was supposed to keep people out, supposed to keep me safe.
Tears swelled up in my eyes all of a sudden, stinging, uncomfortable, shitty tears that made me glad I was all alone. I was a sucker. I was a sucker with terrible luck. I should have been used to it. You’d figure I would be.
But I’d be fine. I would. I’d be all right. Things could be worse.
Taking a breath through my nose, I glanced back toward the wide-open door leading into the place I had felt so safe at for so long. I didn’t let myself cry.
But if a couple of tears slipped out of my eyes, I sucked in a breath and pretended they hadn’t.
I stood there and just stared at the door, telling myself to go in. What were the chances there was someone inside?
Someone inside. How could there have been someone in my house? What if I’d been in there too?
Crouching down, I just stayed there, staring at the dark hole. The police would get here when they got here. I wasn’t going to go inside. Not alone.
My hands went up to my cheeks without thinking, wiping at my face slowly. I set my hand on my chest and for some reason thought about the necklace I had put on Rip. He still hadn’t given it back. Just as quickly as that thought came into my head, it slipped right back out as I focused on the front of my house again.
Everything would be fine.
It would.
Chapter 21
I wasn’t at allsurprised when I got zero sleep that night.
