Page 86 of Meet Me in Ivy Falls

‘Sir, are you ready?’ the blonde paramedic called from the bottom of the stairs.

I turned away from Torran and walked straight into my living nightmare.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

TORRAN

Look At The Full Board.

I didn’t care what Beck said, I was going to the hospital. Only two steps from the stairs, Manny blocked my path.

‘Move out of the way,’ I snapped.

‘No. You have to respect Beck’s wishes. His sister is very sick, and from his reaction this isn’t the first time they’ve been here. Give them a chance to get her stabilized at the hospital before you go.’

‘But once I get there, he’ll see he needs me.’

‘When this kind of shock happens, people need time to process. Sort out their feelings. Right now, Beck is nothing but adrenaline. His single line of thought is whether or not his sister is going to make it through the night.’ Manny’s voice rattled like he spoke from experience. ‘He’ll call for you when he’s ready.’

This was what I both loved and hated about Manny. In a crisis he was the voice of reason, even when I didn’t want to think rationally. Most of my life when things didn’t go my way, I lashed out. I wasn’t sure if it was because of years of watching my father do the same thing, or if it was my need to control everything around me.

Working with Manny had taught me to slow down. To assess a situation and make a decision based on a realistic approach and sound numbers. For me, it was like trying to learn a confusing new game. All the directions were foreign at first, but if I let my mind go quiet, look at the full board, I could make a sound decision. It was just one more thing he’d taught me during our partnership.

The cops wrestled the last of the criminals out of the house. The frenzied chaos turned into mind-numbing silence except for a lone set of footsteps. My father appeared at the bottom of the stairs. I expected another look of disappointment but all that was shining back at me was sadness.

Deputy Ben came back into the entry like he wanted to talk to Manny and me, but my father ran interference again, steering him outside like he understood we couldn’t deal with anything else tonight.

‘I know you two have issues…’ Manny tipped his chin toward the door. ‘But your dad has been really helpful tonight.’

‘I know.’ I struggled to talk over the sob jammed against the walls of my throat.

‘Deputy Ben told me that this is a new wave of crime happening. People breaking into new builds and renovations to steal anything they can yank from the walls. It’s especially popular with drug addicts. They take what they can carry and pawn it for whatever money they can get.’ Manny scrubbed a hand over the whiskers on his chin. ‘This may not be the best time to do this, but should we walk around and survey the damage?’

With a slow nod, I followed him down the long hallway of the second floor.

In the first two bedrooms hammer holes punctured most of the newly painted walls. Fast-food wrappers and empty whiskey bottles littered the floors. In the bathroom where they’d worked on Piper it was worse. The vanity mirror was ripped from the wall. Large chunks of porcelain were missing from the antique pedestal sink.

When we got to the master bedroom, I had to brace my arms against the threshold. In a drug-fueled frenzy, the partiers had gone at the walls with several different colors of paint. The spots they hadn’t marked with graffiti they’d destroyed with sledgehammers. Huge pieces of drywall covered the room leaving a fine layer of white dust on the dark hardwood floors.

Manny scratched a hand through his hair. ‘A lot of this is cosmetic. We can fix it quickly.’

‘What about the walls?’ I moved slowly into the room. ‘There’s at least two weeks’ worth of work here.’

He slung a thick, muscled arm around my shoulder. ‘It’s not a problem. I’ll call the guys back in and we’ll take care of it.’

While the bedroom was bad, nothing could prepare me for the horror in the master bathroom.

Used needles and crushed beer cans covered the white tile floor. The only things remaining of the antique cabinets were their dented chrome hinges. They’d even managed to steal the turn-of-the-century silver sconces I’d found at an estate sale outside of Chattanooga.

The sight was too much and I sprinted from the room. When I got to the top of the staircase, I collapsed.

‘Hearth and Home is supposed to be here Monday to shoot. The entire future of our business, the livelihood of Ivy Falls, it all hangs on us getting the show finished.’ I was holding on by a thread. ‘And we still haven’t sold Parkview. Everything is crumbling around us and there’s nothing we can do.’

Manny bent down and curled his massive arms around me. I melted into his side, not wanting to think about how the entire town was supposed to see the beauty of the house. The way we’d worked our fingers to the bone to bring a part of Ivy Falls’ history back to life and how it’d all been destroyed in a single night.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

BECK