Page 7

Silence.
Goosebumps sprouted on her arms. Maybe she’d forgotten to set the alarm.
The only reason she’d been setting it lately was because there’d been reports of some break-ins in the neighborhood. Daylight burglaries when most people were at work. Thefts of small items, easy to pawn. Jewelry, cash, a gun.
Today was Saturday, though. Plenty of people around. Who’d break into a townhome in the middle of the day on the weekend?
“No one.” She answered her own question. Her voice sounded overly loud to her ears in the empty stillness.
And yet, the residual energy of another presence permeated the air like stale cologne.
Her kitchen was on the other side of the narrow hallway from the stairs, the glossy white cabinets and quartz countertops marbled with copper, gold, and bronze inviting and warm. Setting her purse and phone down on the center island, she grabbed her chef’s knife from the wooden block on the counter.
Just in case.
Her open floor plan gave her a visual from the kitchen to her living room and back deck on one side of the main floor and the formal dining room and home office on the other, flanking her front door.
Everything looked exactly as she’d left it this morning.
She crept across the red oak floor to her living room, past the cozy seating area in front of the gas fireplace surrounded by bare almond walls, to the French doors that opened to her deck. Outside, a group of preteen boys passed a soccer ball around in the grassy boundary that separated the backyards of the townhomes on her street from those facing the street behind her.
She cocked her ear, listening for any shuffles or creaks from the ceiling over her head before sneaking up the carpeted stairs to the third level that housed her master bedroom and two spares. If someone had broken in to steal valuables, this would be where they’d go.
The hilt of the knife was slippery in her hand. She wiped her palm on her jean-clad thigh before repositioning her grip and tip-toed down the carpeted hall to her bedroom.
The cream sheets and sage bedspread on her king-size bed were unrumpled. Her nightstand and dresser drawers were closed. It only felt like someone else had been in there because a quick check confirmed the presence of her jewelry.
She inspected the other two bedrooms. They also appeared undisturbed. The house was empty other than her, standing in her upstairs hallway like a crazy woman wielding a knife she used for meal prep. “Girl, you are losing it.”
There was one last place to check.
Returning downstairs, she padded down the hall to her office. The space had been an open parlor when she bought the townhome, and she’d had it walled in with a door for privacy.
Her fingers wrapped around the doorknob. She raised the knife in her other hand as she pushed open the door.
To an empty room.
Inside, she set down the knife and ran her fingers lovingly across the deep red wood of her acacia executive desk. It took up a lot of space, but it had belonged to her father and was a piece of him she cherished. Her gray filing cabinet was far less attractive—a government-approved model for storing classified information, complete with an electromagnetic combination lock similar to the one controlling access to her computer lab at work.
She dialed the combination and opened the locked cabinet. The folder and portable hard drive she’d brought home from the office yesterday to work on were right where she’d put them before leaving for the cemetery. Straightening, she booted up her computer. Her security measures were still in place. She ran the malware program just to be safe.
So she’d forgotten to set the security alarm when she left this morning. No big deal.
“Tell my heart that.” Because right now, it felt like it was trying to break out of her chest and run away.
A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. Gray clouds darkened what had been a bright blue sky. Outside her office window, the wind picked up, turning the leaves on the trees inside out and scattering ones that had already begun to turn color and loosen their grip on life.
Inhaling on a count of five, her gaze drifted across the neatly aligned rows of books on her white built-in shelves before dropping to the bright blue five-by-seven frame tucked into the lower corner, half-hidden by her textbooks from Oxford and Stanford.
Her exhale rushed out. Old memories seemed determined to haunt her today.
She stepped around her desk and picked up the photograph, her fingertip caressing the face of the boy beneath the glass.
They’d taken the train to Edinburgh that weekend. Ryder’s chin rested amidst her riot of natural curls, now permed into straightness, a grin breaking his usual reserved expression, creating small lines that fanned out around his electric blue eyes.
A pang of jealousy toward her younger self tightened her chest at the happiness in her wide smile and sparkling eyes. Eight years ago, she’d studied computer science for her father, indulged in her love of painting—inherited from her mother—in her free time, and basked in Ryder’s adoration.
Back then, they thought they had the world at their feet and the future in their hands. She’d thought she could have it all.