Page 18 of Wasted

The thought twisted her stomach. But if he supposedly hadn’t forgotten about her and still had romantic interest, then what had he been doing for the sixteen years of silence?

On the other hand, she had made it very clear that she would no longer date him or see him. Ever. She’d been surprised how easily and quickly he had respected her wishes at the time. Nothing like the bad-boy rebel he was then.

He hadn’t tried to call, hadn’t appeared outside her bedroom door, throwing pebbles against it as he had many nights when he’d wanted her to go on some adventure with him.

She never had gone with him in the middle of the night, despite his persistence. Not until…that night.

A night she definitely did not need to remember at this moment. She needed to be calm and ready to hear Thomas’s concerns, or whatever was weighing on him, without being distracted by her own problems.

The large ash tree that stood outside his fence, barren of leaves, caught her gaze, guiding her to his home and her thoughts to a less unnerving subject than Cillian.

No one would have retrieved the mail from the box yet since it was only a few minutes before nine. Though she could have beaten the mail carrier, as well. She would check anyway.

She looked ahead at the closed, wrought-iron gate as she pulled into the driveway, then shifted the car into park and opened her door.

She planted her heeled boots on the ground, her gaze going to?—

A man lay flat on his back by the mailbox. Silver hair and beard.

“Thomas?” The name nearly choked in her throat as she launched from the car toward him, her feet slipping on the icy patch where he lay.

She knelt on her long wool skirt and felt his neck for a pulse. Something oddly textured met her fingers. She bent to see behind his ear.

Blood, frozen and dried, tracked down his neck from somewhere behind his head.

His face was white as snow, his lips tinged blue.

She moved her fingers on his cold skin. She could have misjudged where the pulse should be.

Horror and disbelief surged up her throat.

No. There had to be a pulse. There had to be.

She pushed to her feet and hurried to the car, fumbling for the phone in her purse on the passenger seat.

Pressing the emergency button for 911, she rushed back to Thomas.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

Victoria put her phone on speaker and laid it on the ground as she answered the operator and began CPR. But as she performed chest compressions, her eyes and even her heart knew she was too late.

He was dead.

Chapter

Seven

Victoria pulled the blanket the EMT had given her tighter around her shoulders, but it was no use. She couldn’t get warm.

The heat in Thomas’s mansion was probably working normally, set to the temperature she usually found much too hot. She couldn’t tell. Cold seeped relentlessly through her limbs as she sat on the settee near the stairs in the entryway.

Thomas was gone.

She couldn’t believe it. And yet, she could. Hence, the grief—the early, denial stage of grief, Robert would tell her if he was there.

But no one comforting or helpful was there, only police officers who didn’t know Thomas, traipsing through his house. At least that meant they were looking for evidence of the person who had...done this. The word was hard for her to think, even in her own head. Killed him. Killed Thomas.

Her throat shrunk as tears filled her eyes again. Oh, Lord. I pray he came to repentance and faith in You before it was too late.