Chapter Twenty-Four
The illuminated sign for Southwest Coast Regional Hospital grew smaller and smaller in her rearview as she pushed harder on the gas.
She hated leaving Ethan behind, and loathed herself even more.
He was injured because of her, almost murdered just like all the rest. At least he was still alive.
She hoped in time that he could forgive her.
Whether she deserved his forgiveness was yet to be seen.
She had to admit that Ethan was worth the risk.
Two decades of casual flings and no-strings-attached relationships had left her jaded.
Dani had almost given up on the idea of connecting with someone again.
She just wanted to be held for one night, to feel normal.
That was never in the cards for her, though.
Until she was safe, until she knew for a fact that Matt Vickers was really and truly dead, she had no business bringing anyone else into her orbit.
Dani considered leaving for the mountains straight away.
The burner phone stashed at Aunt Lisa’s house was more of a want than a necessity anyway.
She could buy a new phone, but that particular device had Detective Owens’ personal cell number stored in it.
Dani didn’t have her information saved anywhere else besides her phonebook, and that had been chucked out the window with her smart watch.
Regardless, she wanted to touch base and tell Detective Owens what happened.
She was one of the only people from back home that still gave a damn about her.
Purple and orange streaks crept across the sky, signaling that dawn was near when Dani arrived at her aunt’s home.
The pastel colored trailers that lined the neatly kept streets of the retirement community were still cloaked in darkness as she punched in the security gate number and rolled through the gate.
She killed her headlights and hoped that none of the residents would be out for an early morning walk.
There was only one place the phone could be, and that was in the safe that her aunt had installed in her closet.
Since her aunt had left for the mountains, the security system she had installed remained secured, and none of Dani’s notifications had gone off.
The muscle memory in her fingers itched to check the surveillance footage on her phone, but that would all be pointless now.
Her home no longer existed, and neither did her everyday phone or her intricate security system.
It wasn’t safe to enter her aunt’s house without knowing if the security system had been breached in between the time her house blew up and now.
Dani was fully aware of the fact that she could be walking into a trap, but at this point, she didn’t care.
Dani rolled through the darkened street and parked three units down from her aunt’s house.
Even if she was walking into a trap, she didn’t want to give whoever could have been waiting the advantage.
She grabbed a hunting knife and a taser from her bag and tucked them into the front pocket of her hoodie and took off down the sidewalk.
A dog barked through the jalousie windows of a yellow and white trailer as she passed by, and her soul briefly left her body.
Dani shook it off, put her head down, and picked up her pace.
She slipped down the side of the trailer toward the back door, knowing the way by heart in the dark.
Dani pulled out her keyring and stuck the house key into the lock as quietly as she could.
The remnants of her wine and steak dinner from the night before gurgled in her throat again as she slowly opened the door that led to the kitchen.
As soon as she stepped inside her aunt’s home, Dani knew that asking her to leave had been a good move.
Every cabinet door in the kitchen was open and showed signs of being disturbed.
Boxes of crackers, bags of rice, and cans of corn cluttered the counter.
The silverware drawer had been left open, and all of her cutlery was spread out on the floor.
Even the refrigerator door was left wide open, spilling yellow light across the ransacked kitchen.
Dani gripped her knife and tiptoed past the mess toward her aunt’s bedroom, stepping over the silverware like a child playing the floor is lava.
Like the kitchen, the living room was also in disarray.
The cottony guts of the couch were strewn across the floor and busted out through slashes in the fabric.
The glass dish of candy on her coffee table was smashed to bits, golden toffee candy disks scattered around the room like gold doubloons.
Someone had been looking for something, or at least wanted to make it look like they were.
Dani hugged the wall with her knife held high as she continued toward the master bedroom.
Her aunt’s bed had also been disemboweled, her pillows and mattress torn apart in mountains of ripped fluff and foam.
The dresser drawers had been removed and overturned, her clothing strewn everywhere.
The more Dani saw of her aunt’s things damaged and destroyed, the angrier she became.
She should have trusted her instincts and followed her to the mountains.
She should have left this place that never really felt like home and never looked back.
The closet was gutted like the rest of the house, her aunt’s sensible clothing and clothes hangers strewn about.
Dani was relieved to see the hidden safe hadn’t been breached.
She flipped open the lid to the safe, punched in the code, and opened it.
There, waiting for her just as she had hoped, was her burner phone.
Dani picked up the phone, slipped it into her pocket, and that’s when she caught a whiff of that all-too-familiar, pungent aroma.
That smell.
Cheap pine and musk.
Sweat and venom.
Was she really smelling Vickers, or was that horrid, phantom scent that haunted her all these years just in her head?
Dani stuck her nose in the air and inhaled to be sure.
The insides of her guts churned and she doubled over, retching in disgust. She wasn’t imagining things; his scent still hung heavy in the air, sweet and sickly and cloying.
There was no denying that he had been there recently, maybe before he came to her house, maybe after. Either way, she needed to move.
With the phone in one hand and her knife in the other, Dani exited her aunt’s destroyed home through the back door.
In a way, seeing the trailer in disarray was even more disturbing than watching her own home consumed by fire.
Aunt Lisa’s house was her last safe space; the only place she ever felt at home after leaving California.
Matt Vickers made sure to tear that all apart too.
He managed to invade her life once more and was on track to take everything away from her again.
She wasn’t going to let him. She needed to call Detective Owens.
She needed to call her aunt. But first, she needed to get the fuck out of town, and she needed to do it fast.