Page 2

SUTTON

S ookie is dead.

The text message from Lila hits like a slap just as I pull into my driveway.

I glance down to peruse it and stop cold, sitting in the Range Rover.

Lila isn’t just some casual acquaintance—she’s one of my closest friends, the kind who brings soup when I’m sick and wine when I’m not.

She knew Sookie too. We all spent holidays and long weekends orbiting each other’s living rooms, sharing inside jokes and playlists.

My breath catches somewhere between my lungs and my throat.

I stare at the text for a full minute, blinking like it’ll unscramble into something else. Something fixable. Something that makes sense. But no. It’s there in black and white, plain as day, from Lila:

You okay? I just overheard some cops talking. Sookie’s dead. They say it was a break-in.

I reread it again. And again. And still, the words hit like a punch to the sternum—hard enough to leave a bruise I can’t see but feel with every shaky breath.

My mind blanks, then floods all at once.

I blink at the screen, waiting for it to morph into something else, some other story. But it doesn’t. It won’t.

Sookie can’t be dead.

She was just texting me dumb memes last night. She sent one of a cat stealing a croissant and said it reminded her of me when I spotted a new consignment shop. I laughed so hard I snorted wine. That was less than twelve hours ago.

I head into my house, drop my phone and groceries on the kitchen counter, gripping the edge, knuckles white.

My townhouse, usually a cozy cacophony of playlists, kettle hisses, and the occasional squeaky floorboard, feels suddenly too quiet, too still.

The silence isn’t peaceful—it’s loaded, humming with tension like the air before a thunderstorm.

Every creak of the walls feels amplified, suspicious.

Like the whole house knows something’s wrong and doesn’t want to say it out loud.

I look out the window to see a uniformed cop putting up yellow, crime scene tape. I walk outside and approach him casually as he stands just outside the taped off area. His jaw is tight, and he has the look of someone trying to hold a story together.

"What happened?"

He glances over at me, recognition flickering in his eyes. "Break-in gone bad," he said flatly.

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.

No one 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.”

“Did she ever mention anyone unusual coming around? Anything strange in the last week or so?”

“Unusual? No." But inside I'm thinking you mean like a guy flashing fake credentials at my door? I smile sweetly. “No. Can’t say she did.”

He tilts his head, and for a second, just a flicker, I see it. The break in the mask. Something sharp, something calculating. He doesn’t seem to mind my not being complacent and just giving him whatever information he’s looking for. He doesn’t seem to like me noticing.

“Just doing a routine check,” he says smoothly. “She’s helping us with an ongoing investigation.”

I nod like that makes perfect sense, but I know it's bullshit. Sookie hated cops. She wouldn't have helped one if her life depended on it. Instead I ask, “What agency did you say you were with again?”

“City Homicide Task Force.”

Complete and utter bullshit. I know Galveston PD has been making a big deal of trying to save money and making their carbon footprint smaller, but I was pretty damn sure they didn't give out badges printed on recycled laminate.

I remember the mole on his jaw. The way his eyes didn’t quite meet mine. His accent was off—like he was faking local.

I sketch it out. Fast, loose, then tighter. Sharper. My hand remembers what my brain’s still catching up to. A jawline. Sloped brows. Scar near the temple. I shade in the shape of his mouth last, and when I’m done, my stomach flips.

Was this man in Sookie’s house the night before she died? I know he was in the neighborhood.

The Galveston PD station smells like old coffee and cheaper excuses.

The receptionist barely looks up, already radiating the energy of someone deeply unimpressed with both her job and my presence.

The air’s stale, thick with boredom and burnt caffeine, and I can practically taste the bureaucracy hanging in the walls like mold.

I walk in with purpose, holding my sketch like a talisman.

The woman at the front desk watches me over her readers with the vague annoyance of someone who thought they'd made it to lunch without having to deal with a civilian.

Her gaze drops to the paper in my hands like it might be contagious—or worse, important.

I give her a tight smile. She doesn't return it.

“I need to speak to Detective Wilson. It’s urgent.”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“Great, I’ll wait.”

“Ma’am...” she starts.

“Tell him Sutton Blake is here. Frank Blake’s daughter.”

That gets me a look. My dad is kind of famous, especially among cops. Suddenly the receptionist is giving me less attitude and a whole lot more cooperation.

Five minutes later, I’m sitting across from a man who looks like he hasn’t slept in three days. Bill Wilson used to play poker with my dad. He’s good people. At least he used to be.

“I don’t mean to interfere,” I say, sliding the sketch across his desk, “but this man came to her house the day before she was killed."

"How do you know the time of death?" he asks, suspiciously.

I roll my eyes, ignore the question, and redirect his attention to the sketch. "He was pretending to be a cop.”

Wilson studies it, face unreadable. “You sure?”

“Yes, I'm positive. I had a brief conversation with him and had a chance to study his fake badge.”

Wilson exhales through his nose, looks at the ceiling like it might save him. “We’ve got a lot of moving parts right now, Sutton. Burglary gone bad. It happens.”

“No, it doesn’t.” My voice sharpens, but I pull it back. “Not to Sookie. Not like this.”

He sets the sketch down like it’s suddenly radioactive, his fingers recoiling like it burned him.

He adjusts his posture, barely perceptible—shoulders tense, chin dipping a fraction.

He doesn't want to touch it. Doesn't want to be connected to whatever truth it might expose. And I know, without him saying a word, that he’s already thinking about how to bury it.

“I’ll log this and your observations into evidence, but you need to let us do our jobs.”

“I will." I say, thinking to myself, as long as you do them.

My pulse hammers in my ears as I push away from his desk. I know I’ve just poked something bigger than I can see, but I can’t back down now. I won’t. Even if it means stepping right into the deep end without knowing what’s waiting underneath.

Back home, the unease settles into something heavier. Like fog in my chest. I pour a glass of wine, then don’t drink it. I pace. I sketch again. I check the locks. Then double-check.

Sookie’s murder isn’t random, and I'm not done asking questions.

Earlier today, before the sketch, before the visit to the station, I did what I always do when something feels wrong—I followed the money.

I couldn't help myself. It's muscle memory at this point.

I pulled up Sookie's financials. Just a quick peek, nothing official, nothing that'd set off alarms. We’d helped each other with budgeting more than once, so I still had access.

And there it was. Multiple charges—large ones—made at a place called the Devil’s Den. A name like that doesn’t scream yoga studio. It wasn’t Sookie’s style. Not the amount. Not the frequency. Not the fact that they started a few weeks ago and ramped up fast. Something was going on.

Maybe she was meeting someone. Maybe she got pulled into something without realizing it. Either way, it seems a glass of wine in a place I’ve never been before might be in order.