Page 47 of Rescuing Ally: Part 2

“I know.”

“Her coffee mug is in the sink. That book she was reading on the nightstand. Her fucking perfume still on the pillows.”

“I know.”

He turns to look at me, and for the first time since the fight, his expression carries something other than rage. Pain. Raw and unfiltered.

“How do you do it? How do you—compartmentalize?”

The question hits like a heat-seeking missile because the truth is, I can’t. Not completely. Every room in this house reminds me of her. Every trace of her is a knife between the ribs.

“I don’t,” I say finally. “I just don’t let it show.”

If only it were that simple.

Her scent hits me immediately—vanilla and something uniquely Ally—lingers in the air despite three days of absence. The morning light streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows illuminates everything she touched, everywhere she’s been.

Her coffee mug sits with lipstick still on the rim. A hair tie lies forgotten on the granite surface of the counter, along with one of her pens—the expensive kind her father buys by the dozen.

Gabe stops in the doorway, hands clenching at his sides.

“This is fucked,” he mutters.

I move past him like he didn’t speak. Like he’s not even there. My shoulder bumps his as I push past into the kitchen, close enough to be deliberate, distant enough to make my point. He wants to voice his pain? He can do it to someone who gives a shit.

Muscle memory carries me through familiar routines. Check the security logs. Scan for any signs of intrusion. Catalog potential threats.

Nothing.

The house is exactly as we left it before we discovered the girls had been taken. We haven’t been home since—seventy-six hours of sleeping in Guardian HRS break rooms and surviving on vending machine coffee while we planned and replanned, yet got nowhere.

The tactical part of my brain files away the details. The emotional part—the part I usually keep locked down—notices everything else.

Ally’s sweater draped over the back of her favorite chair—the one by the window where she likes to curl up with her research. The indent in the couch cushions where she spent hours working on quantum equations, I’ll never understand.

“I need…” Gabe starts, then stops. Shakes his head. “I can’t be in here right now.”

He disappears down the hallway toward his suite, leaving me alone with the ghosts.

I find myself standing in the doorway of my bedroom.

Aimless.

Our bedroom.

The place where all three of us sleep when we’re together. California king bed, dark sheets, reinforced frame to handle our combined weight and activities. It sits unmade from when we left in a hurry, Ally’s pillow still holding the impression of her head.

A book lies open face down where she was reading before sleep: some quantum physics text that makes my head hurt just looking at the equations. Her clothes are scattered around—not messy, Ally’s actually quite tidy. A silk camisole drapes over the chair. Her jeans are folded on the dresser.

I pick up the camisole, fabric soft between my fingers. It smells like her. Like vanilla and that soap she uses.

A memory slams into me without warning.

Ally standing at the dresser in nothing but this camisole, brushing her hair while Gabe made coffee in the kitchen. She caught me watching and smiled—that slow, knowing smile that meant she was planning something.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“You’re worth staring at.”