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The minute she’s gone, a hush falls through the house. Jango whines quietly while a clock ticks in one of the spare rooms, yet the near-silence is somehow louder than any party or A-list event I’ve ever attended.
A crushing, suffocating sensation claws at my chest.
Before the walls cave in, a slow, high-pitched squeak sounds from Jango’s back end. I yank my foot out from under him, stomping toward the back door to holler at Penelope, “And take this damn dog with you!”
CHAPTERTHREE
Heather
The early morning air prickles my skin with goosebumps as I send the final touches of a story to Alice.
My laptop shuts with asnap.“And, done.”
Almost instantly, my phone vibrates with a text.
Alice ‘The World’s Best Editor’
Maria Zanza, huh? Nice work.
I welcome a tendril of pride before tapping a heart icon on the message, then send her a picture of my surroundings, followed by:
Could be worse.
She responds to my message with a matching heart, and I relax back in the rickety chair, listening to cows mooing and chickens clucking in the distance.
Several multi-hued horses plod through an adjacent pasture, and I decide ‘beautiful’ doesn’t quite describe this view. No, this place is the epitome of picture-perfect.
Raising my camera, I snap a few photos of the dark and light green mountains, which make a stunning backdrop for the surrounding pasture. The shutter clicks on a mother and baby horse wandering between my house and the one on the hill, but I halt on the dilapidated barn that fills my viewfinder.
Compared to the shiny new stables on the far end of the owner’s property, the barn is weather-worn and could use some tender love and care, but it gives the place character. Like a generational treasure that the owner couldn’t bear to part with.
Beside it stands an equally stunning ranch house, with a small fenced area where more horses graze, tails whipping at flies and hooves stomping lazily.
The sun rises, coating the field in hazy sprays of pinks and yellows. It’s more than I could ask for in terms of comfort and relaxation. The only downside is that I’m far away from the city, adding to the difficulty of figuring out where Marcus ran off to.
I open my laptop again and click the folder on my desktop labeled ‘M. Matthews.’ It takes several scrolls to find the funeral article I wrote about his sister Leah, and once I open it, I split the screen with the image Alice sent me yesterday.
My eyes dry out after studying them both for so long, and I rub them with a frustrated sigh.
There’s no mistake. That’s Leah’s bracelet in this new picture, but the detective in me can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t adding up. Her autopsy report was never open to the public, leaving the rest of us to guess what had been the cause of her ultimate demise.
The media pushed the narrative that she was a wild child, printing masses of photos showing her partying in clubs and drinking with friends. It was easy to assume she may have overdosed, but every friend and acquaintance I managed to question after her death all had the same things to say.
Leah was level-headed, smart, and took her job too seriously to fuck it up with drugs.
I scrub a hand down my face, wincing at the black mark on my conscience. That was the first time in my career I ever wrote for the hype and not for the facts, and I swore I would never do it again.
Reflecting on Marcus and the woman I saw him with yesterday, two things stand out to me the most.
Leah Matthews was an international model. She was tall and thin, not on the shorter side and shapely, like Marcus’s unidentified woman. And though she could have dyed it since, her hair was a soft shade of ash-brown, not the jet-black I’d gotten a split-second peek at.
Commotion across the pasture tears my attention away from my research before I can investigate further. A yellow dog, the size of a miniature horse, charges down the hill, heading straight for me. It barks, deep and loud, and in a panic, I slam my computer shut and scramble to stand.
“Easy, mutt!” I holler at the beast, thrusting my palms out to stop it, but it’s got that look in its eye. One that tells me the minute it reaches me, I’m going to be tackled.
“Jango,” a woman hollers from the bottom of the hill. She’s already halfway across the field, shaking her fist above her head. “Get your mangy ass back here before you break a hip!”
The mastiff pays her no mind. Instead, he climbs the steps of the wraparound porch, panting furiously before collapsing in a heap at my feet.
