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Someone was trying to get into my home.
I popped back into the present like a shot going off, running to the panel of the security system to make sure it was still armed. I shouldn’t have even bothered, though, because before I could even reach it, I heard glass shatter somewhere on the first floor.
Without even a second’s hesitation, the alarm began to blare. I pulled up the cameras again in time to see the intruder fleeing before they were too far off to be seen.
The sound of the security system threatened to make my eardrums explode, but I let it scream, watching the green and gray feeds from the night vision cameras coming in, afraid that if I moved too much, the threat would reappear.
Once I was sure that they were gone, at least for the moment, I disarmed the system and called 911, hands shaking.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the dispatcher drawled, her voice full of comforting Texas twang.
“Someone smashed a window trying to break into my house. Can you please send someone as soon as you can?” I whispered into the phone, feeling like I still needed to be as quiet as possible.
“Just give me your address, darlin', and I’ll have someone out as fast as I can.”
I did as she said, and the dispatcher, who I discovered was named Debbie, stayed on the line with me the entire time. I hid in my bedroom, door locked, and the security cameras pulled up on my laptop. Finally, after what seemed like hours, but my phone told me was only twenty minutes, a police car crawled up the driveway.
The wave of relief lasted until I opened the front door, and Sheriff Buck stared back at me, that slimy smile on his face.
“What seems to be the trouble, ma’am?”
I looked over his shoulder, hoping to see a partner with him so there would at least be some buffer between us, but he was disappointingly alone.
“Someone tried to break in,” I said simply. “They broke a window in the back.”
He stepped closer, the powerful scent of cheap cologne and cigarette smoke covering the area around us like a cloud. “Why don’t you step aside and I’ll have a look?”
The idea of being alone with him in the house was frightening enough that I stepped around him, shutting the door behind me. “Let’s go look from the outside first.”
Buck walked too close, his hand brushing my hips or hand with every couple of steps forward, knuckles rough and dry. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to keep ahead of him enough that he couldn’t reach me, but still uneasy enough from the intruder that I needed to keep Buck semi-close. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
At first, I was sure it had been the kitchen window, but when we reached it, it was completely intact. I ran my hands over the glass, looking for any kind of crack, but the glass was solid. Buck shone the flashlight ahead of us, and on the ground about eight feet away, shards of glass glittered in the grass. My stomach lurched as I realized which room had nearly been broken into: Trevor’s office, which I had been avoiding for so many months now.
“Let’s go see if they left behind anything that might help identify them,” Buck said, voice hushed. “Stick close now.”
I very much didn’twant to stick close, but the situation was tense enough that I did. I was reasonably certain that Buck would shoot someone if need be, and while he didn’t look like he could physically tussle with anything, being armed would hopefully be enough.
Whoever tried to break in had managed to shatter the window entirely, with only a few jagged edges of glass remaining. In the brightness of the flashlight, I could see the mess of everything, but my fear was quickly overrun by the knowledge I would be able to get into the office once and for all.
If I had lost interest in the mystery that was my late fiancé over the past few months, it didn’t matter now. I couldn’t ignore a broken window, and to do anything about it, I’d need to be in the room.
My skin crawled with the thought of what I had to do, but I gritted my teeth and did it, anyway. “Can you give me a boost?”
I couldn’t see much of his face in the darkness, but I was sure he was smiling lecherously. “Absolutely, but I should probably go in first, so why don’t you wait here?”
“Standing outside has me more freaked out than going in,” I said quickly. The thought of being out here without even the creepy sheriff sounded awful. “Like I told the dispatcher, I saw the intruder leave on the camera, so I don’t think they’re inside.”
He looked uncertain, but I’m pretty sure it was the idea of giving me a boost that convinced him to do things my way. My entire body seemed to cringe as he wrapped his hands around my waist and lifted. I was able to get my hands on the portion of the windowsill that was empty of glass, pulling myself up and over as fast as I could to avoid Buck touching me for any longer than necessary.
After getting tangled up in the curtains, I was inside. The office was nearly pitch black, so I had to fumble around to determine where the light switch was. My heart pounded from the events of the night and the thrill of finally being inside this secret room.
I could hear the sheriff trying to tell me something from outside, but I ignored him. The office had me totally engrossed, looking both exactly how I imagined it and, at the same time, so much more chaotic than I could have imagined.
I had spotted the antique desk during the move, but everything else I saw was new. There were tables and bookshelves filled with papers, notepads, and things that indicated how much time Trevor had spent here the few months before his death. There were empty mugs, granola bar wrappers, and a hoodie thrown over the back of his computer chair.
Almost all the available surfaces were covered in stacks of papers, but the strangest thing was all the open books. When I passed by them, flipping through the pages, they weren’t art related, which struck me as odd for someone whose entire career was art. Instead, they were tomes on Ancient Egypt and Greece and a few accounts of archaeologists discovering long-lost tombs beneath the Egyptian sands.
It made very little sense to me. Trevor had never once mentioned anything about Ancient Egypt, but now it seemed it was all he had been studying when he would lock himself in the office. It looked like a storm had ripped through it angrily; no rhyme or reason to anything I could see. There was just so much. Among it all, somewhere, were the answers I was seeking.
