Chapter 6
Chapter six
Lucy
Warrick Kassar had been gone for four minutes, and I was still standing in the break room staring at the wall.
Day or night, he’d said.
I thought about the card in my back pocket and went to find Dani.
She was at the front desk, pretending to sort intake forms. Badly. She had them fanned out like a hand of poker, and she wasn’t reading a single one.
“You were listening.”
“I was nearby. It’s an architectural coincidence that the hallway carries sound. Nothing I could do.” She pulled her chair out and sat, tucking one leg under her. “So, the dickhead is back.”
Not a question. I sat on the edge of the desk and picked up the stress ball someone had donated last month. It was shaped like a cat. Steff had bitten a chunk out of its ear, which I respected as both vandalism and self-expression.
“Yeah.”
Dani’s jaw worked. She was never good at hiding what she thought, and I could see her face cycle through anger, then fear, then back to anger.
Dani had been there for it. Not the worst of it, not the counter, not the things I still hadn’t told anyone, but after.
She’d opened her door at midnight when I showed up with a trash bag full of clothes and no plan.
Had come with me when I said I was heading out of town, and when we got here and rented a tiny two-bed, she’d held my hair back when the shaking got so bad I threw up.
She knew how much work I’d done to get over the damage Andrew had done.
Moving into my own place four months ago was a huge step for me.
I was recovering. I was getting stronger and sleeping better.
But now Andrew was here, and suddenly I was right back there, cowering from his moods, using make-up to cover the worst of the bruises.
“Dani.”
“I’m processing.” She pressed her palms flat on the desk. “Okay. So Andrew is back and knows where you live. Did your PI have a plan or just the warning?”
“He’s not my PI.”
“He was at your building at three a.m., checking on you, Luce. That’s not a professional courtesy. That’s a whole thing.” She held up a hand before I could argue. “But fine. We’ll table the hot-PI discussion. What did he say to do?”
I recited Warrick’s checklist.
Dani listened. Then she nodded once, briskly. “Good. Solid. Annoying, but solid. And you can move back in with me tonight.”
“No.”
“Luce—”
“No. That apartment is mine. I picked it. I furnished it. I am not giving it up just because he drove past it.”
“Luce, just for a few days. Just until—”
“Until what? Until he stops? When will that be? If I leave my apartment now, I’ll never go back. I’ll always be running. I won’t let him drive me out.”
Dani studied me for a long time.
“Fine,” she said slowly. “But I’m coming over this weekend. With wine and my baseball bat. We’ll have a sleepover, and if you argue with me about that, I will tell Margaret you’re the one who’s been stealing the good coffee filters.”
“That wasn’t me, that was Brian.”
“Everything that goes missing is Brian. But Margaret doesn’t know that. Do we have a deal?”
Something in my chest loosened. Just a fraction.
“Deal.”
I medicated Cleopatra. I cleaned kennel run three.
I processed the intake paperwork on the shoebox kittens, who were all healthy and outraged about their circumstances.
I named the last one Cookie, because she’d bitten Brian twice, and I felt that kind of commitment deserved recognition.
I did all of this on autopilot while my brain ran Andrew Coleman on a loop in the background like a screensaver I couldn’t turn off.
The afternoon passed in the particular time-warp that shelter work created, where three hours could feel like thirty minutes or three years, depending on whether anyone vomited.
Brian dropped a bag of kibble and had to sweep the lobby while fending off Sugar-Free Steff.
Pirate Jenny, who only had one eye, escaped from the back room and was discovered asleep behind the filing cabinet.
Mrs. Patterson called again, wanting to know when she could drop Biscuit off.
Dani handled it with a sweetness so lethal I could hear Mrs. Patterson apologizing through the phone, which was a genuine achievement.
Normal. Everything was normal.
At five, I locked up. Dani walked me to my car, which she’d never done before and which neither of us mentioned.
“Text me when you get home,” she said.
“I will.”
“Don’t just think about texting me and then get distracted by the cat.”
“That happened one time.”
“It happened four times.” She squeezed my arm. “Lock your doors, Luce.”
I drove home the long way. Winchester to Oak to the backroads past the old dairy farm, adding twelve minutes to the drive, because Warrick had told me to vary my routes.
My keys were between my fingers before I got out of the car.
The long one between index and middle, ring in the palm, fist closed.
I hadn’t carried them like that since July. I’d thought I was past it.
The apartment was quiet. Felony met me at the door with a headbutt to my ankle. I locked the deadbolt.
One check is reasonable. Two is reasonable-adjacent. Three is Andrew winning.
I stopped at two.
Then I picked up Felony, sent a text to Dani, then sat down on the floor, and for some bizarre reason, couldn’t stop shaking. It took a long time for the shaking to stop, but when it did, I made pasta and even ate some of it.
I checked the window before bed. Just once.
Then closed the curtain, brushed my teeth, and got into bed with Felony curled against my hip.
Andrew was somewhere in Millbrook, and he knew my address.
I turned onto my side as Felony reshuffled herself against my back.
In the dark, with my eyes closed, the memories came whether I wanted them or not.
There were things about Andrew I’d never told anyone. Not Dani. Not the PI with the amber eyes. Things I didn’t have words for because I wasn’t sure what they meant.
The phone calls he took in the other room with the door shut, his voice dropping into something flat and clipped that didn’t match the man who kissed my forehead every morning.
The office I wasn’t allowed to go into, and the one time I did venture in there, the bruises I had for weeks after to remind me what I’d done wrong.
Then there was the one night I came home early, and there were two men in the kitchen.
Not clients. Andrew’s clients typically wore khakis and talked about their retirement portfolios.
These two wore dark, expensive suits, and one of them had a subtle bulge under his jacket that I told myself couldn’t possibly be a gun.
He looked at me when I came through the door.
Not a hostile look, exactly. It was more of a quick sweep: face, hands, the doorway behind me, and then back to Andrew like I’d been assessed and dismissed in the same second.
Andrew had jumped up, and his hand had closed around my arm. His fingers dug into the skin above my elbow hard enough that I’d find the marks in the morning.
“Go upstairs, sweetheart. Run a bath. I’ll be up in a bit.” He smiled when he said it, the warm smile, the one for company. His grip said something different.
I went upstairs and ran the bath. They were gone an hour later. The next morning, he bought me flowers, and we never spoke about it.
I thought about those men sometimes. About the one with the bulge under his jacket.
About the way Andrew had laughed at something as I’d left the room.
I didn’t know then what Andrew was. I still didn’t.
I just knew that the man Warrick was building a fraud case against was only one version of Andrew Coleman.