Page 4

A break-in, they said. Bullshit. I know better. I’ve run too many financial audits on fake burglary claims to miss the patterns—the lies people tell when they’re trying to sell a mess as something simple.

More than that, I know Sookie. She had motion sensors, surveillance cams, reinforced locks, and a recording of a vicious-sounding pitbull that had a bark that could peel paint. The woman triple-checked her doors and slept with pepper spray and a loaded gun—after all, this is Texas—in her nightstand. Noone just walks into that house without planning to, and Sookie sure as hell didn't let someone she didn't know inside.

I leave the uniform standing there, shaking my head. No. No way. Sookie guarded her safety like a religious zealot. She had one of those fancy alarm systems that pinged her phone if a squirrel farted near her window. No one just breaks into Sookie’s place.

Something’s not right. In fact, something is wrong. Very, very wrong.

Two years ago, this neighborhood felt like a fresh start.

Sookie and I bought our townhouses within a week of each other—two newly single women with good taste, matching trauma, and excellent credit. We bonded over bad exes and boxed wine. We furnished our homes like a bohemian fever dream: mismatched antiques, upscaled junk store finds, soft pillows, moody lighting, and framed local art. It was chaotic, colorful, and unapologetically us—two women who had been knocked flat and decided we’d rather build something weird and wonderful than try to look picture-perfect again.

We had a kind of bond in our professional lives as well. I was a forensic accountant and often worked with the police. Sookie was a blogger and podcaster trying to break into freelance true-crime journalism.

I remember one afternoon at the consignment warehouse off Broadway—hot as hell, smelled like dust and ambition. We both spotted it at the same time: a massive, hand-painted cabinet with ornate iron doors and carved legs that looked like it belonged in a gothic novel—dramatic, weathered, and brooding, like a vampire’s armoire if he moonlighted as an artist.

“That thing looks like it’ll collapse under its own drama,” Sookie says, half-laughing.

I grin. "That's precisely why I need it.”

“It won’t fit in your Range Rover.”

“We'll make it fit.”

She gives me that look—eyebrow arched, already mentally rearranging my open-concept living room to make space and find it the perfect spot.

“Help me haggle it down to under three hundred, and I’ll buy lunch.”

“Deal,” she says. “But if it forces the air out of your tires, it's not my fault.”

We got it for two fifty. Nearly broke both our backs loading it. I kept my promise and we had lunch, including margaritas, at our favorite Mexican restaurant.

She helped me paint my kitchen a deep teal, and I helped her turn her sad little patio into an overgrown sanctuary of potted herbs and tangled fairy lights. We had plans. We were going to have a themed brunch every month. Last month was Drag & Donuts. Next month was supposed to be Murder Mystery Mimosas.

And now she’s gone.

I pull myself out of a potentially devastating spiral and grab my notebook.

Not the one for work. That one's full of spreadsheets, annotations, and cash-flow reconstructions. This is the other one—one filled with blank paper—the one I use when my brain’s running too fast and I need to make sense of something. My dad used to say, "The truth is in the details," and he taught me how to see them—how to sketch out a suspect from nothing but a fuzzy memory and a gut feeling. Sookie used to joke that I could draw someone's soul before I finished their nose. I always laughed, but sometimes I think she meant it. I pick up the pencil like I’m reaching for something solid in the middle of all this chaos. I flip to a clean page and close my eyes.

The man I saw yesterday—he’s there behind my eyelids, as vivid as if he’d walked into my kitchen and sat down across from me. The memory clicks into place like a crime scene photograph. Not a blur, not a general impression—he’s sharp-edged and wrong in all the right ways. I can see the exact way his lips didn’t quite smile. The twitch in his jaw when I asked for ID. The way his eyes flicked toward Sookie’s townhouse, in retrospect, was almost like he already knew what was inside.

He came by around 4 PM, said he was with the Galveston PD. Something about following up on recent disturbances. He flashed a badge, but it looked off—too shiny, too generic. His shirt was too tight, and his boots were scuffed like they hadn’t had a good polish in years. And he was sweating. Not heat-sweating. Nervous sweating.

“Miss Blake?” he asks, holding up a badge I don’t recognize.

My name on his lips sounds too smooth, like he’s practiced it, and the badge is all wrong. I glance at it long enough to register the typeface is off and the laminate is bubbling in the corner. Cheap. Like it had been printed on someone's home office setup at three in the morning. A knockoff pretending to have authority. Something about it tugs at an old instinct—one I’d honed sitting across the dinner table from a real detective for most of my life. The fake badge stands every hair on the back of my neck at attention.

Before I can respond, he says, “Detective Matthews. Just a few questions if you’ve got a minute.”

Curious, I play along. I open the door a skoosh wider, leaning one shoulder casually against the frame of my townhouse, the clean lines and polished brick a sharp contrast to the grit suddenly crawling over my skin. My instincts are screaming that something is off, but I want to see how much rope he’d give me before he realizes I wasn’t the easy mark he’d expected.

“Sure,” I say. “You caught me between spreadsheets.”

He gives a tight chuckle, like he appreciates the humor. He doesn’t. His eyes stay cold, scanning past me into the townhouse like he had every right to look. That’s a mistake. I never leave anything of value—or interest—out in plain sight.

“Your neighbor,” he says, nodding toward the shared wall. “Sookie Kline. You know her?”

I cross my arms and nod. “We're friends with a love of sappy movies and bad Chinese takeout.”