He reached the bottom of the stairs, crossed the hallway in a daze, and stepped out onto the porch.
The sunlight hit him like a slap.
The normal world — the one with cheerful mail trucks and joggers and neighbours watering potted plants — was still there, indifferent to whatever had just shattered upstairs.
He leaned one hand on the porch railing, the wood solid under his palm, and bent forward, pulling in a breath that felt like the first real one since he’d opened her door.
“Mr.Torres?”the dispatcher asked.“You’re outside now?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.I’m going to stay with you until responders arrive.If you see anyone approaching the house who doesn’t look like law enforcement, please step back inside and lock the door.Can you do that?”
He looked up and down the street.
A woman in yoga pants trotted past with a stroller, earbuds in, humming along to something only she could hear.A man in a suit hustled toward the T station, glancing at his watch.Across the way, the lady from number eight fought a losing battle with a recycling bin and the breeze.
Everything looked aggressively normal.
“Yeah,” he said.“I can do that.”
“Is there anyone we should call for you?”the dispatcher asked.“Family member, friend?”
His first instinct was to saySarah.
The word jammed in his throat.
He thought of his sister in Houston, eight months pregnant and already convinced the world was out to get her baby.He couldn’t dump this on her right now.He thought of their lead engineer, Rashid, who would spiral into depressive statistics about founder mortality rates.
Then he thought of the investors, the board, the endless LinkedIn messages congratulating them on their last funding round.The press who’d had Sarah on theirTopThirty Tech Visionarieslist only two months ago.
How the hell was he supposed to tell any of them?
“Not yet,” he said softly.“Let me… I need to talk to the officers first.”
“Of course.”
The wail of sirens drifted up faintly from somewhere beyond the next block, rising and falling as the vehicles navigated traffic.
Torres stared at the street without really seeing it, the sound of the sirens threading into the rushing in his ears.
Behind him, through the open doorway, the house exhaled its smell of coffee and citrus and something darker.
He realized his hands were still shaking around the phone.
He forced his fingers to loosen, just a little, and reached with his free hand for the small brass key in his pocket, clenching it tight like a talisman.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They put Torres in the dining room because it was the only space Sullivan could guarantee was free of blood and cameras.
The dining room sat at the back of the house, separated from the home office by a short corridor and a corner of kitchen; close enough that the thrum of activity from the crime scene bled through in muffled bursts.Voices, the scrape of equipment cases, Sullivan’s graveled orders, the occasional clack of a camera shutter.Every now and then a faint drift of chemical smell reached them as someone sprayed more luminol.
It made the room feel like a waiting room on the edge of something surgical.
Marcus took the chair opposite Torres.Kate stood for a moment by the sideboard, as if she hadn’t quite decided whether she was joining this conversation or just haunting it.The overhead light cast her reflection in the glass of the framed art above the table — a faint, dark double superimposed over an abstract seascape.
Torres had a wool blanket around his shoulders, courtesy of EMTs who’d hovered over him until Sullivan shooed them away.His dark hair stuck up in the back where he’d shoved his hands through it.A half-drunk glass of water sweated on the table in front of him; his fingers were locked around it as if it were the only solid object in the room.
