My eyes drift once more to the partially open closet doors. Someone stood here and touched my things. They looked through pieces of my life as if they belonged to them. The thought crawls beneath my skin.
“I don’t understand how this happened,” I admit quietly.
Mercer’s expression remains professional, but I catch the hesitation before he answers.
“High-profile individuals attract attention, Ms. Stone.”
High-profile individuals. Such a clean corporate phrase for something that suddenly feels terrifyingly personal.
“I’m a chef,” I say, almost defensively.
“You’re also recognizable,” he replies gently. “You have a large online presence, public appearances, filming schedules, interviews. People become familiar with routines.”
The way he says it sends another chill through me.
Familiar with routines. Like someone has been watching mine.
Mercer glances toward the bedroom windows before returning his attention to me. “Until we know more, I strongly recommend that you avoid staying here alone.”
Something inside me instantly resists the suggestion. This is my house. My space. My career built this place. I shouldn’t have to leave because somebody scared me.
“I’ll be fine,” I say automatically.
Mercer doesn’t argue. Honestly, that almost makes it worse.
Instead, he asks calmly, “Do you feel comfortable sleeping here tonight?”
The question lands like a physical blow. Because my immediate answer is no. I imagine lying awake listening to every creak of the house. Every shifting shadow beyond the windows. Wondering whether someone memorized the floor plan while I was gone. I’m sure I will wonder whether they’ll come back.
My throat tightens painfully. And suddenly I realize I haven’t once looked directly at the darkened corners of the bedroom since we walked inside. Mercer notices the change in my expression immediately.
“We can have someone remain outside the property overnight,” he offers carefully. “But sometimes after an incident like this, temporary relocation gives clients peace of mind while security improvements are completed.”
Clients. Another detached word. But beneath it, I hear the truth anyway. You don’t feel safe here anymore. The awful part is… he’s right.
I look around my beautiful bedroom again. The soft lighting. The expensive furniture. The neatly made bed I suddenly want absolutely nothing to do with.
This house has always been the reward for years of overwork and impossible schedules. Tonight it feels like a stage somebody else has already walked across.
Chapter 2
Kara
Idon’t sleep so much as wait for morning. The hotel suite is beautiful in that polished, impersonal way expensive hotels always are, with its cream walls, dark wood furniture, and thick curtains that block out the Orlando skyline. Sentinel Protective places a guard in the hallway outside my door after Daniel Mercer insists I not return home overnight, and I tell myself that should be enough to make my nervous system settle down. Tragically, it isn’t.
Like any new place, there are lots of unfamiliar noises. Every little creak makes my eyes open. Every soft click from the air-conditioning makes my body stiffen beneath the sheets. I lie there in a king-size bed that smells faintly of lavender, staring at the ceiling while my mind walks through my house again and again.
The missing knife and the open closet doors. My undergarments exposed to a stranger’s hands. The drawer of photographs disturbed by someone who had no reason to touch them.
By four-thirty in the morning, I stop pretending rest is going to happen. I get up, pull on a hotel robe, and make coffee from the little machine near the wet bar, even though hotel-room coffee tastes horrible. Then I stand at the window with the mug warming my hands and watch a city I’ve lived in for years blink awake beneath me.
Orlando looks normal from up here. Cars move along the streets. Delivery trucks back into alleys. Early commuters stop at traffic lights with their windows glowing blue from dashboard screens. Life goes on as if nothing happened. That bothers me because my life is not going on.
Instead, it’s paused somewhere between the moment my security company called and the moment I stood in my closet staring at proof that a stranger wanted pieces of me no burglar should care about.
My phone lights up on the table beside me just after six. It’s Vanessa. I answer before the second ring.
“Tell me you’re not at the house,” she says, no greeting, no easing in.
