Chapter 26
Erwin Residence
Valeri stared at the total chaos she had caused.
She had looked everywhere. On top of and under furniture, shelves, curtains—every damned place she could see or think of in her determination to ensure nothing had been taken or left behind.
Her belongings were flung all over the place, including the floor. She groaned.
Someone had been in her house.
She leaned against the doorframe and surveyed her living room yet again.
All those classic-looking hardcovers she had collected were stacked in columns next to the sofa.
Her fondest memory was of Thomas dropping by to pick up a file and taking one of her books from its shelf and saying it was his favorite. The memory made her smile.
Didn’t matter now. He was gone. And that slut was still alive . . . and pregnant. Valeri struggled to tamp down her emotions. No getting upset. If she got upset, bad things happened. She could not allow it.
She focused on the mess she had made once more. Magazines were tossed about. Scattered across the floor were her throw pillows and the vintage quilt she’d bought at a junk sale so she could tell anyone who visited that it was her one heirloom from her grandmother.
Valeri almost laughed out loud despite her current dilemma.
Her grandmother never left her anything but all alone.
Her mother hadn’t done any better. As for her father, Valeri had no idea who he was.
She pushed away from the door and wandered through the chaos.
She had basically raised herself. Put herself through college.
Made her own way without any help whatsoever.
No damned body was going to ruin this for her. Unexpected interference had almost destroyed her world as it was.
But she had that under control now.
A new level of fury abruptly twisted inside her. She had worked too hard, sacrificed too much to reach this place of contentment. No one was screwing it up.
Whoever had come into her home, Valeri was not about to let them get away with it.
Whoever? Please. She knew who it had been. A smirk spread across her lips. No way would she be beaten by the likes of that worthless piece of crap. No way. This wasn’t exactly the ending she had hoped for, but it was workable, and no one was screwing it up worse than it already was.
Valeri prided herself on always making backup plans. When one option went awry, she had another at the ready.
The immediate problem was that the intruder had entered with a purpose. Valeri needed to know what that purpose was. Since she hadn’t found anything missing or left behind, she had to assume it was a scare tactic.
Maybe she needed to do a little scaring of her own. The thought incited far too much glee. She glanced around the room again. The disarray was unsettling. She should clean up, and then she would put together a plan to have her revenge.
The books and magazines would take the longest, so she started with the other random items. The quilt she arranged once more on the back of the sofa. The throw pillows she tossed in that same direction. One landed on the coffee table with an unexpected thwack.
She frowned. What the heck? Valeri picked up the pillow and squashed it against her stomach as she kneaded its soft foam insides.
The feel of something hard near the zipper had her opening the removable cover.
The plain square pillow was there. A black object clattered to the floor. She stared at it for a moment.
Cell phone.
“Well, well. This isn’t supposed to be here.” At least now she understood what the intruder had gone to all this trouble for. And she knew exactly who the intruder was.
Valeri smiled. “Did you really think you could one-up me?”
No way.