Chapter 23
Luke
I’m early again. Fourteen minutes this time, which is less forgivable than two but I’ve got a truck full of acoustic foam and nowhere else to be.
Her car’s in the driveway. Lights on inside. I knock. Wait. Knock again.
Nothing.
The front door is locked. Of course it is. Marin locks everything—I’ve watched her do it. Door, deadbolt, chain. The kind of ritual that says locking up isn’t habit, it’s policy.
I still have my key. Never occurred to me to throw it away. It’s on the same ring as the truck key, wedged between the Henderson’s Hardware loyalty tag and a bottle opener Emily bought me at a gas station in Marfa.
I told Marin to change these locks. She didn’t. People don’t listen, and then they wonder why things go wrong.
I let myself in.
I shouldn’t. I know that. But I’ve got a truck full of acoustic foam and she’s not answering and I’m not billing her for standing on a porch she hasn’t paid me to fix yet.
I built this door frame. I hung this door.
I installed the deadbolt Emily picked out—brushed nickel, because she said brass was “aggressively ugly.” I’ve earned the right to stand in this entryway, even if the entryway doesn’t know it anymore.
The house smells like coffee and soap. Upstairs, the shower’s running. I can hear the pipes—they’ve always been loud, a low groan through the walls that Emily used to say sounded like the house was digesting.
I set my keys on the counter and head for the basement. I leave the foam panels in the truck because I want to re-measure the fourth wall before I start cutting. Yesterday’s numbers felt off. Probably weren’t. But I don’t trust probably.
I open the basement door and take the stairs down. Same smell as yesterday—cleaning product over something sharper. I pull out my tape measure and start on the far wall.
That’s when I hear it.
Not from the basement. From above me.
A sound. Low. Muffled. Human.
I stop. Tape measure still extended. Listening.
It comes again. Not the shower. Not the pipes. Something else. A voice—thick, slurred, like someone trying to talk through a mouthful of cotton. Then a thump. Dull. Heavy. Like the sound of a body shifting against something it can’t move away from.
I look up at the ceiling.
The shower’s still running. Whatever’s making that sound, I don’t think it’s her.
I retract the tape measure. Slow. Quiet. I take the basement stairs without making a sound—I know which ones creak, third from the top and the second from the bottom. I skipped them when I lived here. I skip them now.
The kitchen is empty. Coffee maker’s on. Her phone is on the counter, face down. The shower hisses through the ceiling.
I go upstairs.
The hallway is short—bathroom on the left, two bedrooms on the right. The bathroom door is closed, steam leaking from underneath. The first bedroom is open. Empty. Boxes stacked against the wall, a suitcase half unpacked.
The second bedroom door is closed.
I stand in front of it. Listen.
Breathing. Ragged. A wet, shallow sound. And under that, a voice. Barely.
“...please...”
I open the door.
The curtains are drawn. The bed is pushed against the far wall—old iron frame, the kind that doesn’t move easy. And on it—wrists bound to the rails with padded leather cuffs, bruised, dehydrated, one arm cradled against his ribs—is a man.
He’s mid-thirties. Dark hair matted to his forehead. His eyes are open but barely—two slits of bloodshot white tracking me like I’m something he’s not sure is real.
His mouth moves.
“Help.”
One word. Barely audible. But enough.
I stand in the doorway. I don’t move. I don’t reach for my phone. I don’t cross the room.
I look at the restraints. The water glass on the floor, empty. The protein bar wrapper. The ibuprofen bottle on its side.
She’s been feeding him. Medicating him. Keeping him.
The shower turns off.
I hear the curtain slide. The squeak of feet on porcelain. The bathroom door opens and steam rolls into the hallway.
I don’t turn around.
I wait.