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A lone siren pealed from the firehouse on the far end of Main as if echoing my thoughts. It wasn’t the marsh burning. It was someone’s home.
Finally, I circled her place. All was quiet. Her car was in the lot, but that didn’t mean much since I knew from Tobias that her sisters were still driving her around most of the time.
I took the stairs two at a time until I reached the landing at her front door.
Darkness greeted me. Glass crunched under my feet. My heart rate tripled as I realized someone had smashed out her porch light.
The townhouse on St. Peter’s was clean, too. I was just there.
That son of a bitch...
I touched her front door and it swung open with a soft squeak.
It was a small space, and a lone light above the stove illuminated the mess before me.
Papers strewn everywhere. Coffee table overturned. Family photos tossed to the ground, the glass cracked and splintered. Every drawer and cabinet door was open in the kitchen and someone had obviously ransacked everything.
My gut clenched painfully tight.
I was too late.
“Faith?” I called out, just in case.
I stepped over the threshold, simultaneously afraid of what I’d find and enraged that someone had violated her a second time and I’d been unable to stop it.
Silently, I made my way down the hallway, flipping on the light as the scent of her filled the air. The bedroom was just as wrecked, a bottle of her perfume tipped over and spilling all over the floor, making it overly pungent. Her bed was unmade, her clothes and underwear strewn everywhere. Drawers overturned, her closet a mess.
Rage mixed with fear boiled through my veins.
Where was she? Had they taken her?
No. I scrubbed at my eyes and shook my head free of the adrenaline rush. I didn’t need to jump ahead. Think. What did they say?
I don’t care if you think she’ll be back—
I closed my eyes as logic trickled back in. That’s right. They couldn’t find her. I offered my services. They think she has their money?
“What the fuck?” I muttered.
I spun for the bathroom to find more of the same. Her shower curtain ripped from the rod and hanging listlessly to the ground. Powders and creams overturned, making goopy messes. In the sink...
My heart seized in my chest.
“No...” The word was ripped from my throat in a violent whisper as I rushed over and picked up one long, golden curl then another, letting them fall through my fingers. “Son of a bitch.” Then I spotted the scissors. “What happened?”
Had someone else gotten to her first? Wrath began to burn and boil in my gut as I imagined all the possibilities. I knew full well what Guidry and Pittman were capable of. I’d lived in that world. Thrived in it. In many ways that experience had served me well in prison. He could have lied to my face, knowing full well where she was.
Blindly, I stormed out, landing back in her bedroom. I could still sense her there in the bright airy curtains and the pink throw pillows. The picture of her and her sisters making funny faces taped to the mirror. The simple wooden cross adorning the wall above her bed.
I leaned down to pick up one of her infamous graphic tees from the floor, only to spot an upturned box of papers. I righted it and found piles of ribbon-wrapped envelopes. My eyes began to burn when I realized what I was holding.
Each and every letter she’d ever written to me that I’d sent back unopened.
Every. Single. One.
Wrapped in red ribbon and kept in a pretty box. As if I was deserving of that.
I slid to the ground and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Jesus, Faith. Why can’t you just let it go?”
