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He nodded. “Check in with me tomorrow. I’ll be in touch if we have any news.”
“Thanks.”
We said our goodbyes to Nate, and Blair and Tyler gave us a ride back to Grace’s cottage where we picked up Kennedy’s car. Before we left, I performed a check to make sure the brakes and steering were in working order.
“Everything seems fine,” I announced.
“I want a message as soon as you’re safely there,” Blair said.
“No problem,” Kennedy replied.
As we pulled away from the curb, Kennedy pumped the brakes a couple of times to make sure they were functioning correctly before speeding up. She seemed to remember the directions to my place without any assistance, which pleased me more than it should. We didn’t have any incidents on the way over, but when she pulled up the drive, it took me only seconds to notice something was amiss. The front door, which I’d locked when I’d left in the morning, sat ajar.
“Stay here,” I said. “Something is wrong.”
I debated calling Nate, but I wanted to be sure it was worth dragging him away from his office, so I opened the car door as softly as possible and eased out. I grabbed a metal rake from the lawn and wielded it like a bat as I headed toward the entrance. I paused when I heard movement behind me and glanced back to see that Kennedy had followed with a cannister of pepper spray clasped in her hand. I gave her a look, and she raised her chin, indicating she had no intention of backing down.
Fine.
I tiptoed through the small foyer, the rake poised above my shoulder, and into the living room.
My feet stopped so suddenly I nearly tripped.
Holy shit.
The place had been trashed. The glass coffee table had been smashed, and the sofa had been torn open, with stuffing strewn everywhere. Behind that, the dining table was upended.
Kennedy gasped. I spun to her and touched a finger to my lips, mouthing, “Quiet.”
She nodded.
We progressed into the kitchen where drawers had been opened, their contents haphazardly tossed about, and the appliances and coffee-making equipment from the counter had been knocked onto the floor. I nearly whimpered at the sight of my beloved coffee machine damaged beyond repair.
I guided Kennedy into each of the two spare bedrooms to find that they had received similar treatment. In the bathroom, someone had written “BACK OFF” on the mirror in what looked to be black permanent marker.
But my bedroom was the most shocking. Paper of some sort had been torn into confetti-sized pieces and spread over nearly every surface with the majority of it on the bed. In the center of the mattress, with a pair of scissors buried in its cover, was a photo album.
Kennedy cried out, racing past me to reach for the album. Seeing that she meant to touch it, I grabbed her around the waist and stopped her before she could.
“Let me go!” she screamed, kicking at me. “That’s my scrapbook!”
“Stop,” I ordered, as calmly as I could. “You can’t touch it, or you might mess with any evidence the stalker left.”
“But that’s… Oh my God.”
She buried her face in my shoulder. A moment later, a sob wracked her body. My heart wrenched, and I held her close, murmuring comforting words that were meaningless when I didn’t know exactly what had upset her. Clearly the book meant something.
“I’ve got you,” I said, brushing my lips across her cheek. “Why don’t you tell me what it is?”
She pulled away and looked up at me with watery, red-rimmed eyes. “After I left Destiny Falls, I made a scrapbook about our first year together. I was going to give it to you when I came back, but then the accident happened, and I never got the chance to. I kept it and used to look at it when I needed to be reminded of good memories.”
My innards clenched at the thought of her carefully creating a book that chronicled our relationship, her heart full of hope, then having to pack it away when her life turned upside down. I hated that she’d been in that position, but I was glad she’d found strength in memories of us.
I scanned the shredded paper, noticing glimmers of color among the wreckage. Flashes of green and skin tone. “You kept it all this time?”
“And brought it here with me,” she confirmed, her words like a jolt of electricity to my heart. “I was keeping it in the closet in my bedroom, which means the stalker was in the cottage.”
Oh fuck.
