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But before I could let my phone fall back to the small table, I caught sight of the lock screen, and it felt like my next breath wrenched from my chest.
The notification had been a text from my mom—something I couldn’t care about right then because there was a literal war happening outside the house I was standing in. But the missed call and voicemail from hours before had me pausing...had my world narrowing to nightmarish nights and my shattering past.
Seeing that name on my screen always elicited that reaction.
My fingers shook as I tapped into my voicemail, and I clenched my jaw tight as the detective’s deep, familiar voice filled my ear.
“Good evening, Ms. Bennett. It’s been a while, but—well, you know.”
A sliver of unease wove through my stomach at the implication of those three words because I did know why it’d been a while.
I listened as he cleared his throat in that way he had a habit of doing, just subtle and rough enough to make you wonder if the young, irritable detective was aggravated with you and always preceding a slow inhale.
“We caught an unexpected break in Michael’s case,” the detective had gone on. “I know you moved to North Carolina, but we need you here to look over some things—identify them. Let me know when you can make it back to Richmond. The sooner, the better.”
I was no longer in a mansion, on an estate, in the middle of a mafia war.
I was back in Richmond, watching men in neon masks laugh as they savagely killed my boyfriend. I was falling out of a car and fighting for my life, knowing I was about to die as the one stepped closer like he was ready to end the game. I was on my knees, hands slick with blood, screaming for someone to help like they might be able to put Mike’s mutilated body back together.
I was in an interview room, screaming at Detective Higgins because I’d given the police everything, and nearly a year after the fact, they still had nothing to show for it.
“Ghosts,” Higgins had told me. That was all he’d had to offer other than the delusional idea that I might be ready to move on...with him.
And yet, they’d caught an unexpected break. Now.
I blinked away the past, slow to come back to reality and the sound of gunshots that were so much closer than before, and realized I’d sunk to the floor at some point.
Probably good that I had. Smarter. Safer, considering all the bullets. But I was in such a daze that what had seemed so huge and jarring to me just minutes before was now background. Muffled. Because the detective leading Mike’s murder was calling me after months of silence.
As if I hadn’t already been smacked in the face with the fact that my nightmares were real now that a neon mask was demanding me in trade, I had this. An unfailingly blatant confirmation of that terrible night in the form of a man with a badge and macabre information in a case file.
There had been so many times over the past year when my mind would slip into a dangerous place—one where that night had never happened. Where it’d truly only been a nightmare.
In those hazy moments just before I fully woke, knowing Mike’s arms would curl around me and pull me close. In those weird silences as I moved from one room to another in our crappy little apartment, knowing I’d hear him unlocking the front door any minute. In the crescendo of a song, knowing he was about to join in.
Whenever those predictable comforts were disrupted, that dangerous place took over. Because there was no way that night had been my life. There was no way I’d lost him—especially that way. There had to be some other explanation for him not being there.
And just as I’d start spiraling down a path of those desperate, dangerous thoughts, I’d get a call or visit from Detective Higgins. Without fail. As if he knew when I needed to be brought back to the reality of neon masks and maimed boyfriends.
Uncanny, really. Eerie.
Except, I hadn’t heard from him since the day he’d tried kissing me, and I’d slapped him in the middle of a police station before unleashing a year’s worth of pain and anger on him.
But he’d called today. He wanted me to come to Richmond today of all days. And I was sure—so sure—I’d never once mentioned to him where I was moving.
Eerie.
I glanced down at where my phone was cradled tightly in one hand in my lap, the voicemail screen still pulled up, and tapped on the message to replay it. Listening to the hushed dips and rises of his voice without ever lifting the phone to my ear.
And then again.
Trying to find some hidden message within his words. Vainly trying to pry whatever break they’d caught from the recording, as if it might be there the next time I listened or the next. Because I needed there to be an actual break. I couldn’t let myself believe Higgins was—
“Willow.”
My head snapped up. My breath came out on a stuttered exhale as the real world broke through the painful, apprehensive bubble I’d found myself in.
“I’m—hi—yes,” I stammered as I looked at where Dare stood in the doorway. Barely passing the threshold, eyes on the hall, black bandana covering the lower half of his face, gun in hand.
