Chapter 12: Angel
By the time I got home, I was exhausted. The four tires were not only expensive, but they needed to be aligned, and it just took entirely too long.
It was almost midnight, and although I was hungry, I wasn’t in the mood to cook. I didn’t have bread to make a sandwich, and with a disgruntled sigh, I made my way to my bedroom, disrobing as I did so.
Passing through the bedroom, I entered my bathroom and turned the shower on as I took off the rest of my clothes, dropping them in the hamper. Wrapping the towel around me, I went back into my bedroom to grab a hair tie.
The lingerie on the bed caught my eye, and I stopped, stilling as my arms froze above me in the process of gathering my hair up.
Hesitantly, I took a step forward to study the bra and panties lying on my bed that weren’t mine. Nor had I put them there.
White lacy lingerie, so delicate and innocent looking. My mouth was dry as I looked around my bedroom.
Someone had been in my house.
Were they still here?
I couldn’t move. The fact that I may not be alone had glued me to the spot, and I couldn’t move. Fear clutched at my throat, making it impossible to swallow, and I felt the goose bumps break out all over my body.
Shit.What do I do?
Hearing a dog bark broke my paralysis, and turning on my heel, I ran out of my bedroom, my feet pounding on the floor as I ran to the kitchen, grabbed my purse, and then I was outside, on my lawn, in a towel as I scrambled for my cell.
My hands grabbed my car key, and that’s how the police found me thirty minutes later, locked in my SUV, in a towel and trembling.
“You okay to come out?” the officer asked me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
He assessed me, and with a nod, he told me he was going to check the house and then come back and get me.
A female officer followed him, and then she came and got me roughly ten minutes later and accompanied me to my bedroom, waiting until I’d thrown on PJs, and then followed me to my living room.
“You okay?” the male officer asked me as I sat on my sofa.
“No,” I told him truthfully.
“Talk me through your evening,” he encouraged as he sat and took out his notebook.
Running through my night after I left work, I told them about the four slashed tires and then going to the garage to get the car fixed. I gave him the name and the number of the garage I had called. I told them the time I got home and that I had been heading for the shower when I saw the lingerie on my bed.
“I didn’t turn the shower off,” I said as I looked over my shoulder.
“I did,” the female officer reassured me.
“Thank you.”
“Has anything else happened recently?” the male officer asked me, and I told them about the dead flowers and the card. Crossing over the floor, I went to get the card from the drawer where I left it.
It was gone.
Icy fingers of fear traced down my back, and I grabbed my purse and searched my wallet. “It was here, I know it was,” I said as I searched again.
“Anyone else have a key?” the male officer asked me.
“No, just me.”
“Boyfriend maybe? Girlfriend?”
