I know. I saw it too.
“Whatever happened to her at Roots of Salvation, it’s still happening. In her head. Every day.”
“My mother did this to her,” I say flatly.
“We don’t know that?—”
“We do though.”
I see it in his eyes—he knows I’m right.
“Valen, don’t stay out here all night,” he pleads. “Tomorrow we’ll dig deeper, see what we can find out about…that night. She might have information we can’t get anywhere else.” Heglances up at the duplex Clover shares with her friend, Savvy—the woman we were hired to protect.
I nod as he climbs out of the car and walks away, presumably to wherever he parked his own.
And then I sit there and stare at Clover’s house.
Every. Single. Light.
What the hell happened to you, Honeybee?
It’s still wellbefore sunrise when an old man approaches the car on the driver’s side. I’ve seen him before, in the file Rip gave me on Clover, but now he’s being dragged by a beast of a dog in one hand and holding a bag of shit in the other.
Beep. “That’s just Chief. He’s harmless,” Rip says through our comms system. “Real protective of Clover and a pain in the ass in the field, but harmless.”
Great. Just what I need—a professional pain in the ass.
Beep. “Clover loves the old guy.”
My irritation subsides a fraction.
Chief knocks on my window without preamble. “You gonna stare at her house all day, or you gonna come inside and tell me what happened?”
I frown as a growl escapes me and the beast at his side.
“How do you know something happened?” As tired as I am, all my senses are firing on high alert.
“Boy, I was the chief of police around here for thirty years. I know when something’s happened in my town.” He pushes his thumb into the waistband of his trousers and rocks back on his heels. “Come on. I gotta drop this mutt off with her anyway.”
“It’s barely six in the morning,” I say. Plus, I don’t think she’s even gone to bed yet.
“And? You think she’s sleeping over there in a house full of artificial sun?”
I look from him to Clover’s house.
“Fine, Valen,” he huffs. “Come on then. I live in the yellow one down here. I’ll get you some coffee first. I’m Chief, by the way.”
I don’t know why I exit my car, but I do.
Pressing the button on our comms unit, I check in with Rip. “I’ll be back.”
Beep. “Copy.”
I follow the self-proclaimed Chief to a tiny Tudor-style house with a front porch that leans slightly to the left. The giant brown Bernese mountain dog at his side runs in circles but never pulls so much that the old man trips—almost as though he knows how far his chaos can roam.
“This here’s Wrecks. Belonged to Clover’s pal, Elle, but Elle’s husband’s been trying to get rid of him for a while. And since Clover’s needin’ something to take care of so she remembers to take care of herself, figured now was as good a time as any for her to have an attack dog.”
I glance down at the pup. He could be terrifying if not for the copious amounts of drool all over his face or the way he trips over his enormous paws with every third step.
