She was still singing as she entered the silence of her home. Rogue failed to greet her at the door as she usually did. Sassy set her purse down on the kitchen bar, peeking into the laundry room to make sure she hadn’t accidentally shut her inside before she’d left this morning. The door was open and the cat food bowl was empty. “Rogue?” Sassy called, shedding her blazer.
Her phone rang. She lifted it from her pocket.
Nick again.
She thought about what Soledad had said. She thought about Jif and eighties’ ballads and the fact that she missed him.
She didn’t have to forget what happened. But she could open the lines of communication. Had she really planned on never talking to him again?
In what world could she and Nick not coexist together in some manner?
Determined to remain guarded, she thumbed the green toggle on the screen and raised the device to her ear. “Hello?”
There was a pause. Then, “You actually answered.”
The ache behind her breastbone flared again. She crouched to check for Rogue underneath the dining room table. “It would seem so.”
“Listen, Sassy, I need to talk to you. Not like this. Not over the phone. Are you free tonight?”
“I don’t know,” she hedged, going down on her hands and knees to look under the couch. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”
She could hear him expel a breath. “You answered the phone. That’s a good sign.”
She sat back on her haunches, seeing no sign of her cat. Frowning, she planted one hand on the coffee table to help herself up.
A breeze whispered across the side of her face, turning her attention to the back door.
Her body locked in place. The door was slightly ajar. The muddy tracks across the deck had crossed onto her hardwood floors, their tread unfamiliar as they trekked to the hall leading to her bedroom.
The skin at the back of her neck prickled with alarm. A chill skated through her, thorough enough to strike the marrow of her bones.
She didn’t dare breathe. There were no outgoing prints.
“Sassy?” Nick said in her ear. “Are you there?”
She cupped her hand around the phone’s receiver. “I think… I think someone might be in the house,” she whispered. Her pulse beat her eardrums like a wrecking ball.
“What?” he hissed back. “What do you mean?”
“The back door’s open,” she reported. “And there are tracks, like before. Only these come all the way in…”
“Okay,” he said, seeming to get a grip on himself. “Okay, I need you to get the hell out of there. Now. I’m dialing the police right now…”
She felt the urge to run. Hide. Cower.
But this was her house. Her own.
When Nick pressed her to answer him, she muted him, slowly placing the phone back in her pocket with the call still in progress. She found her cordless nail gun under the sawhorses near the archway leading to the bedrooms and picked it up, hoping a charge remained on the battery.
The light in the bedroom was off. She could see the tender blue strokes of dusk painting the walls of her room. She shed the heels she’d worn to work, allowing her toes to sink into the thick, sullied carpet of the hall, steps silent. Tiptoeing to the door, she pressed her back to the wall, out of sight.
A voice crept out of the darkness. “Hello, Haseya.”
Her blood went cold. It was him. She took a bracing breath before stepping into plain view, framed by the threshold.
Fletcher sat on the edge of her bed. The sight of him perched there on the sheets she’d forgotten to smooth this morning turned her stomach. Signs of strain were apparent on his face, especially under his eyes, where fatigue had painted pink crescents. His eyes themselves seemed sunken. The weight of his wide shoulders had folded forward. He didn’t look up from the floor between his booted feet.
It was strange seeing him in a wrinkled black T-shirt and jeans. He’d been stripped of his polish, his importance.
