Page 51 of Gorgeous Misery

No answer.

“OK. I’m coming in.” I don’t bother with caution. I can feel people at this point in my life and this place is empty.

The moment I step inside I get a chill. It’s a weird kind of empty. Like… that feeling you get when you’re being watched. This thought has me immediately looking for cameras. Surely Nick has cameras.

But he’s Nick. So they aren’t easy to find. I take a step outside, scan the back porch, and come up with two possible places where the camera could be hiding. The doorknocker. Because doorknocker? On this piece-of-shit house? And the peephole.

I step back inside and check the peephole. Not a camera. So it must be the doorknocker.

I don’t bother scanning the inside for cameras. They’re here, but finding them without a camera hunter would be a waste of time. And anyway, if I really wanted details about his cameras, I’d just break in to his control room.

I’m not going to do that. He would be pissed. He’d say things like, “What the fuck, Wendy? If you want in, just tell me and I’ll give you the code. Don’t break my shit down!”

He’s right, you know.

The house has four rooms. The front room, the bathroom, the bedroom, and the kitchen. I enter through the kitchen, so the first thing I notice is that it’s very clean. No dishes in the sink. No random papers on the crappy Formica table. No food in the fridge.

“So,” I mumble to myself. “You’re not even living here.”

I set my gun down, pull a wobbly chair out from the dining table and take a seat. Lean back a little. Think out loud. “If you’re not here, then where?”

Maybe he’s done with me?

Maybe last Christmas was a mistake?

Maybe he’s thinking, What the hell was I thinking?

Alternatively, Wendy, perhaps the asshole really is in danger?

This is a problem.

I haven’t a single clue of where else I might look, so instead my eyes track across the kitchen.

This is when I spy something. Something that may or may not be out of place.

It’s a phone. An actual fucking wall phone. The kind with a cord.

I get up, cross the kitchen in three and a half steps, and pick up the receiver. Dial tone.

I press star sixty-nine. Ringing.

“Hello?”

“… Who’s this?”

“You called me, sweetheart.”

“Because you were the last person to call this number. I star-sixty-nined you.”

“OK. So. What do you want?”

“I’m looking for the person who owns this phone.”

“And?”

“And”—this rando stranger is starting to piss me off—“have you seen him?”

“Depends.”