Chapter 21
It wasearly morning by the time Ellie got back to her forest road, the sky transforming from pink and gold to a clear, light blue glinting between the trees.
The emergency responder who answered her call had promised that a team would visit first thing in the morning and told her not to go back to her house in the meantime. There had been no point in them sending a quick response team when the intruder had almost certainly already left and Ellie was safely miles away.
But Josh and Nissy were there—Josh who she couldn’t begin to explain, and Nissy who the responder was sympathetic about, but she wouldn’t send an entire team for a cat—and Ellie couldn’t reach them. She didn’t have a landline to call Josh, he didn’t have a phone, and she couldn’t see Nissy through her webcam. She didn’t know what had happened to them.
What if they needed her?
She forced herself to stand still and think. To not give into the panic as it twisted and churned. She would go to them as soon as she could—she was too far away to be of any immediate help, and she had to secure her business first.
She grabbed her phone and lifted her finger to hit the button to call Vic, the person she would always have turned to in the past… and then stopped. Vic wasn’t the same, she’d been?—
God. Vic couldn’t have done this? Could she? No, Ellie couldn’t bear to believe it. But she hesitated, nonetheless. And then she scrolled away and called her security company instead. She arranged extra protection for the office and then manually changed all the administrator passwords—including Vic’s. Until this was resolved, nobody would be able to access anything sensitive without a double login and Ellie’s personal approval.
Once that was done, she called Duane and left him a message explaining what had happened and asking him to call as soon as he woke up.
Finally, she rushed through the office, dropping Post-its on desks with last thoughts and notes of encouragement. And then she locked up and left in the darkness before dawn. She couldn’t sit still miles away if Josh and Nissy were in danger.
The roads were empty, and she made the journey quickly, despite the worry slithering through her mind, presenting her with every dark possibility over and over. Finally, she pulled into her drive just as the world brightened from the misty darkness into daylight.
Her cottage seemed peaceful. Slumbering. And the first thing she saw, thank God, was Nissy. There was no sunbeam, but she sat in the window licking her paw, completely unconcerned about the riot of emotions pouring through Ellie.
She slumped in her seat, wiping tears of relief away with her fingers. Tears that she’d held in all through the long night.
The only thing that would have made it better was for Josh to be there with Nissy, striding out the front door to sweep Ellie into his arms. But there was no tang of ozone, no electricity in the air. No movement from the house. She could feel Josh’s absence like an ache.
She stayed in her car, dabbed her face, and leaned back against her headrest to watch Nissy as the shadows retreated. If she’d believed Josh was there, or if she hadn’t seen Nissy in the window, she would have gone inside despite her fear. But he wasn’t there. And she didn’t need to be reminded not to go creeping in alone after an intruder.
So instead, she waited. It was ironic that she could sit in her car now—the place that had seemed so threatening—and feel sheltered.
The trespasser had broken into her home. He’d made her vulnerable in the one place where she felt safe. But somehow, by bringing his threat right to her door, he’d made everything clear. She’d spent so long worrying about how to make everyone else happy. But in the end, there were only three things in that house that she was desperate to keep safe: Nissy, Josh, and her game. And she was ready to fight for them.
By the time the police arrived—Constable Harrison, a friendly Black woman, and Special Constable Thomas, her slightly younger blond-haired male partner—Ellie had already started a list of what she needed to do.
The constables were empathetic as they walked through the house with her, especially when she ran into the dining room to Nissy, lifting her into her arms to press kisses on her precious, bemused face.
They grew more serious when they found her kitchen door hanging open to the vegetable garden—the lock apparently picked—and her neatly planted rows of beans and tomatoes smashed into the thick soil, as if the intruder had plowed over them in the darkness.
Ellie ran her gaze over their broken stems and leaves, silently apologizing to the muddy, mangled plants. Almost glad that Josh wasn’t there to see what had happened to all their hard work.
The police team dusted for fingerprints and took hers for exclusion—even though she was absolutely certain they wouldn’t find anything. They took photographs of her office and gladly accepted a thumb drive with her video of the man at her desk. But, before they left, they also explained that nearly three quarters of thefts were closed without identifying a suspect… and her intruder hadn’t damaged anything other than her plants. He hadn’t even stolen anything; he’d never made it past her firewall.
Ellie thanked the officers and said goodbye distractedly, promising to call if she needed help. Then, as soon as they were gone, Ellie went through the house again—carrying Nissy with her. Checking if anything was missing. Checking her locks. But mostly checking for Josh. Even though she knew he wasn’t there.
Her bed was possibly a little more rumpled than she’d left it, but otherwise, there was no hint that he even existed.
It hurt. The world kept kicking her. And Josh was gone.
She pushed away the ache in her heart—refreshed Nissy’s half full food and water—and got on the phone. She bought a new back door, with a diamond-rated lock, to be fitted that day. Then she arranged for a security company to install motion detection, external lights, internal alarm, and panic buttons that afternoon. Most importantly, she included cameras covering both the garden and the main rooms of the house.
She would have plenty of warning if the thief came back. And hopefully enough evidence to identify him. The truth was, she didn’t really foresee the police catching the intruder any more than they’d found the driver of the car who’d hit her.
A man in an SUV. Dark hair. Dark glasses. Collar high. Cap low.
The man at her desk. A black ski mask completely covering his head and mouth.
God. What if they weren’t two isolated cases of terrible luck? She’d been so busy trying to deal with the break-in, it hadn’t occurred to her before. But now she had the horrible feeling they were connected.
Duane called, distracting her from her thoughts, and she spent half an hour updating him and making sure he was ready to step into Vic’s role as much as needed. At least that was one thing that didn’t feel like a disaster. And by the time she said goodbye, she was feeling more settled. She now had the best security available. She’d locked down her home and her business. She could figure out the rest.
Ellie made herself a cup of coffee and then cleaned her office with bleach, carefully scrubbing anything the intruder might have touched until the air was acrid and her throat burned. She threw open the windows and aired out Nissy’s cave, then vacuumed the already clean floor before she finally felt it was hers again. Then she got comfortable at her desk. It was time to thoroughly review her firewall, analyze the hack attempt, and close any gaps she’d missed in the middle of the night.
By the end of the day, her house and her computer system were back under her control. She would need to call Max at Silver Wolff and decline his offer as soon as possible, but she wanted to do that in person, and it was already well past the end of the business day. Instead she turned to the task she’d wished she could have prioritized: finding Josh.
He had no personal items with him when he came to her. He didn’t have a phone, or anyone she could call. She tried search engines and read multitudes of heartbreaking missing persons reports. When that didn’t help, she tried social media and simply scrolling through everyone called Josh with any kind of profile. There were thousands. None of them were her Josh.
She thought about his tattoo—the obvious creative talent in the design, the way the trees wrapped round his bicep and over his shoulder, forming an evocative landscape that was so true to Josh—and spent an hour looking for the artist with no luck.
Eventually, she had to concede defeat and moved on to investigating her accident. She posted notes on every community board and Facebook group she could find, asking for witnesses. Then she read accident reports—another round of heartbreaking insights into loss and other people’s grief—and searched for the details of the SUV that hit her.
She briefly considered ways to use her photo of her intruder’s eyes to find him… and discarded all of them. The passport office seemed unlikely to be delighted about her hacking their database.
By midnight, Ellie hadn’t learned anything new, and she was utterly spent. She showered and crawled into her bed, still jittery from caffeine and wired from days of no sleep, compounded by the anger, vulnerability, and loneliness that had come and gone all day.
There, lying alone in the darkness, dreaming she could still smell his skin, she finally allowed herself to cry. Her world had fallen apart. Everything she loved, everything she trusted, was crumbling around her.
She missed Josh. Missed his presence in her house. Missed his quiet support. Even his grumpy brooding.
And she had no way of knowing if he was ever coming back.