Chapter 27 Faith
FAITH
The knock came at the worst possible time. Long after my tense thing with Ryker (nope, hadn’t heard from him since, and nope, I was not going to be the first to contact him), but before I’d had a chance to cool down.
I could practically hear Ryker screaming in my ear, Do not answer the door for anyone, Faith. Anyone.
The knocking persisted. Sharp. Insistent.
Maybe Ryker had been right about reporters coming out of the woodwork.
I pulled back the curtain on the side window and peered out.
It wasn’t a reporter with a microphone or a grown man with an axe to chop me up. So, that was something.
Instead, a petite woman stood on my porch. The one I’d seen hauling boxes into the bungalow next door. Alone, with a beat-up U-Haul and exhaustion written all over her face. Her breath clouded in small puffs, and she’d wrapped her arms tight around herself. No coat, despite the bite in the air.
She glanced nervously toward her house, then back at my door.
I opened it a few inches. The porch light caught the frost already forming on the dead grass, even though it was barely ten o’clock. Cold rushed in immediately, and behind me, I could feel my heat bleeding out into the night. Dollar bills floating away on the wind. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, I’m, uh …” Her gaze flicked nervously to the little house next door, then back to me. “My name is Harper. I just moved in, and I thought I’d introduce myself.”
“At ten o’clock at night?”
“Right …” She shifted her weight, hands wringing together. “I know it’s late. I just thought I heard something outside and—”
“You a reporter?” I asked curtly.
With that little furrow between her brows, she looked like I’d just asked her if she tended zoo animals in her spare time. “What? No.”
“If you are, you need to tell me. Journalistic integrity and all that,” I claimed, but in fairness, that probably wasn’t legally binding.
“I’m not a reporter.” She looked genuinely confused. For some reason, I believed her. “Why would you—”
“Long story.” I studied the way she kept glancing over her shoulder. The streetlight flickered, throwing shadows across the empty sidewalk, and a gust of wind rattled the stubborn leaves still clinging to the maple next door. “You worried someone’s lurking outside your place?”
She swallowed, and I got the sense she didn’t know how to answer that.
“Would you like to come inside for a drink?” I offered.
I expected her to say no. After all, I’d merely said it to be polite. Ryker would strangle me if I invited a stranger inside.
“I don’t want to bother you,” she answered. But her body was already leaning toward the warm sanctuary of my house, seeking shelter with someone she apparently trusted more than whatever waited for her in the darkness.
Well, crap. Given she was already afraid of something, I didn’t want to invite her inside and then have her realize she might have seen me on the news after all. And then freak the hell out on me.
“Look,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “I should probably warn you: I was arrested and charged with first-degree homicide.”
She laughed a nervous, disbelieving sound. But a second later, she registered the dead-serious look on my face, and her smile died. “Oh shit, you’re serious.”
“I am.” I lifted my ankle to show off the digital tracking device. The little green light blinked steadily, like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine. “So, I won’t be offended if you run the other way and never come back.”
After staring at my ankle monitor for a moment, she returned her attention to my face. “You’re a killer?”
“Afraid I can’t answer that question on the advice of counsel.”
“And you … open conversations with that?”
“Not generally. But you’re my next-door neighbor. You’re bound to watch the news, and my face might soon be plastered all over it.”
She laughed again, seemingly to herself, as she looked up at the star-scattered sky and started to speak in a voice barely above a whisper. “You have to be shitting me. I moved to this godforsaken town for safety, and I moved next door to a killer?”
“Alleged killer,” I corrected.
She shook her head, running trembling fingers through her hair. “It’s like that movie, Final Destination, where danger just keeps finding me everywhere I go.”
“Well, if you’re expecting sympathy, you won’t get it from me. My plate is kind of full with, you know, trying to stay out of prison and all that.”
She studied me with those tired eyes, weighing something I couldn’t read. “Are you dangerous?”
“Under the right conditions, aren’t we all?”
She chewed her bottom lip, her nervous attention sweeping past the bungalow again before returning to me. “Should I be afraid of you?”
“No. But please tell me you don’t go around asking people if they intend to do you harm—because I have news for you: the people that intend to do you harm don’t tell you before they do it.”
When she turned her face toward the porch light, it was the first time I saw the shiner she was sporting. Dark purple bruising bloomed around her eye like a violent flower.
“Yeah, no shit,” she said quietly.
“Looks like you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m betting whoever gave you that didn’t warn you it was coming.”
Her eyes cut to me, sharp and defensive. “Most people would pretend not to notice.”
“I’m not most people. And by the way, if you thought you heard a noise, why didn’t you call the police?”
Her lips thinned into a hard line. “I don’t trust the police.”
“But you trust a potential killer?”
“Potential. Does that mean you didn’t do it?”
“Nice change of subject,” I quipped.
“I’m skilled in the art of subject changes.”
“Noted. So, are you going to tell me what or who you’re running from?”
I recognized the signs. The way she angled herself, ready to bolt.
The dark circles under her eyes that told me she hadn’t gotten decent sleep in who knows how long.
There was a loneliness about her that made a sharp pang of hurt flash through my chest. I knew that bone-deep loneliness too well, and I wanted to shield her from it.
“Are you gonna tell me who you ‘allegedly’ killed?” She made air quotes with her fingers, a bitter smile playing at her lips.
“Nice use of the air quotes. And touché. Small talk it is then. Assuming you still want to come inside.”
I watched her mental calculation play out across her features as she probably made a pros and cons list: have drinks with a possible first-degree murderer, or go back to her own place and do whatever the hell she’d been doing before she knocked on my door. Alone.
After a long minute of evaluating her options, she stepped inside.
“Whatever you’re afraid of must be pretty bad,” I said, closing the door behind her. The sound of it clicking into place seemed to make her shoulders drop a fraction, like that small barrier between her and the world meant something.
“What makes you say that?”
I gestured between us as I led her toward the kitchen. “You’d rather come into the home of a woman charged with murder than face whatever you’re scared of out there.”
“Lesser of two evils,” she said softly.
I grabbed a recently opened bottle of wine, poured two glasses, and handed her one. She brought it to her lips and hesitated.
“It’s not poisoned.”
Her lips twitched. “I can’t tell when you’re being serious.”
“My delightful personality. You’ll get used to it.” I clinked my glass against hers and took a long swig. “So, you just moved here. What brought you to the neighborhood of an alleged killer?”
She went completely still, the wineglass frozen halfway to her lips.
“I came here for a new job,” she said finally.
“Yeah? What do you do?”
“I got a job at the penitentiary. As a nurse.”
I nearly choked. “You’re kidding. You know it’s an all-male penitentiary, right?”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“All due respect, but aren’t you a little afraid of being caged in a building with violent criminals?”
She straightened, something fierce flickering in her tired eyes. “At least there, the dangerous men can’t follow me home.”
The weight of her words echoed in my head. What kind of evil was worse than spending your days surrounded by convicted criminals?
“So, what’s wrong?” Harper asked suddenly, studying my face, clearly wanting to change the subject. “No offense, but you look like you’re in a bad mood.”
“In addition to the whole charged-with-murder thing?” I teased.
She didn’t smile. Just waited.
I took a shaky breath. Normally, I wouldn’t make conversation about feelings with someone I just met, but these days, my life felt upside down. So, what the hell? “I think my almost-maybe boyfriend preemptively dumped me.”
“Almost-maybe boyfriend?”
“You know how it is. You’re not technically dating yet. But you’re spending a ton of time together, feelings are growing, everything feels amazing, and then …” I gestured helplessly. “Then you say something that scares him off so badly, he can’t get out of there fast enough.”
Her expression darkened. “Your almost-maybe boyfriend sounds like a dick.”
I smiled. “I wish he were. It would make everything so much easier. Then I could just hate him and move on.”
She was quiet for a moment, swirling the wine in her glass. “Well, at least you’re an interesting person.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’re the first person I’ve ever met who’s been accused of murder.” She said it like she was complimenting my shoes, and I had to bite back a laugh.
“Plus,” she added, “you’ve got reporters potentially lurking around your house. That definitely makes you interesting.”
“Glad my life’s a dumpster fire that can provide you some entertainment.”
“That’s what neighbors are for.” She raised her drink in a mock toast, and for the first time since she’d arrived, she almost smiled. “Besides, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one having a spectacularly shit week.”
“Month,” I corrected. “Spectacularly shit month.”
“Well then.” She took a long sip of her wine. “Here’s to spectacularly shit times and the neighbors who witness them.”
I clinked my glass against hers again, and something loosened in my chest. Something that had been wound tight since Ryker walked out my door with that careful, distant expression on his face.
Maybe this was what I needed. Not someone who looked at me like I was a case to be solved or a problem to be managed. Just someone who saw my mess and said, Yeah, me too.
“You know,” Harper said, glancing toward the window, “I was terrified to knock on your door tonight. Thought you’d either slam it in my face or think I was crazy.”
“I do think you’re crazy,” I said. “You moved in next to an alleged murderer and accepted a drink from her.”
“Fair point.” She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. The exhaustion there went deeper than just lack of sleep. It was the bone-deep kind that came from running too long, looking over your shoulder too many times, never feeling safe enough to rest.
I knew that exhaustion intimately.
“For what it’s worth,” I said quietly, “you’re welcome here. Anytime. Day or night. Even if it’s just because you heard a noise or don’t want to be alone.”
Her eyes went glassy for a second before she blinked it away. “Thanks. That … that means more than you know.”
We stood there in my kitchen, two women with our own disasters, drinking cheap wine and pretending we weren’t both terrified of what tomorrow might bring.
Maybe Harper and I were going to get along just fine.
But as she glanced toward that window one more time, the question burned in my mind: What the hell was she running from?
And more importantly: When would whatever she was running from catch up to her?
“Wanna drink until we don’t give a shit about our problems anymore?” I asked.
“Definitely.”
We settled into my living room, the wine bottle between us on the coffee table like a peace offering to our separate demons. Harper curled into the corner of my couch, and for the first time since Ryker left, I didn’t feel completely alone.
As we started to drink even more, I completely forgot that Ryker had promised he’d be stopping by again …