Chapter 7 #2
“Oh my goodness, that’s awful. I’m so sorry. We would never send flowers in that condition. Someone must have altered them after they left here.”
“Who bought them?” I pace behind my desk while Jenny watches me with wide eyes.
“Let me check… A man paid cash for a dozen black dahlias this morning. I didn’t take that order, but let me talk to my associate.
” She puts me on hold, and Jenny and I exchange glances as I bite my lip.
After a minute, she comes back on the line.
“He was tall. Wore sunglasses and a baseball cap. I’m sorry, she doesn’t remember much else about him.
He paid cash and took them with him, so we don’t have a record of his name. ”
My blood runs cold.
“I’m so sorry this happened.”
“No problem. Thank you.” I hang up and turn to Jenny, who’s still staring at the box like it might explode. “Who delivered these to you?”
“Just some guy. Maybe nineteen or twenty? He drove a white van.” She wraps her arms around herself. “Luna, this is really creepy.”
I’m already pulling up the security camera feed on my computer, grateful now to have them, rewinding the footage to fifteen minutes ago.
I watch a young man pull up in a white van with no logo or writing and approach the main building carrying the box.
When the camera catches his face, I don’t recognize him.
“Have you ever seen him before?”
She leans in to look at the screen. “No. He had really bad acne, but I didn’t pay much attention to him. He just said he had a delivery for Luna Foster and left. Didn’t even make me sign for it.”
I rewind the footage, trying to catch a glimpse of the van’s license plate, but the space where it should be is empty.
“No plates,” I say more to myself than to Jenny.
She moves closer to me. “Luna, who would do something like this?”
I grab my phone again and dial Karen’s number.
“Hi Luna, what’s up?”
“Hi Karen. I need to report something.” I try to keep my voice steady.
“What’s going on?”
“I received a package today. Flowers that have been destroyed and covered in what appears to be blood. Someone who isn’t affiliated with the florist made the delivery, and there’s no way to trace who sent them.”
There’s a pause, and I can hear her shifting in the background. “Hold on a sec. Tim, I’m heading to Luna’s sanctuary. She’s gotten an odd delivery. No, not another dead body. Okay, Luna, were there any threats accompanying the package? A card or a note?”
“No, nothing like that. This doesn’t feel like the person who left the bodies.”
“I’m on my way. Don’t touch anything else in that box, and if you have security footage, pull it up for me to review.”
“Already done. Thank you, Karen.”
Jenny and I stand in awkward silence, both of us avoiding looking at the box. Honey has moved in front of Flower, her small body rigid.
“I’m gonna go back to work.” Jenny gestures toward the door.
I nod. “Don’t worry about this, Jenny. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
She doesn’t look convinced, poor thing, but I can hardly blame her. She walks out of my office, leaving the door open, and I sink back into my chair. I close my eyes and rub my temples again when I hear Maren’s angry voice from down the hall.
“What the actual fuck?”
Maren appears in my doorway like a storm cloud, her eyes blazing as she takes in the box on my desk.
“This is some fucked-up bullshit, Lu.” She takes a peek inside the box. “Shit, is that blood?”
“I'm pretty sure it is.”
“I need to sit down.”
She lifts Honey and Flower from their wicker bed and goes to the sofa, where she collapses, cradling the rabbits against her chest like furry shields.
Neither of us knows what to say, but she stays with me until Karen arrives half an hour later.
“Luna.” She steps into my office, her eyes zeroing in on the box. She pulls latex gloves from her jacket pocket and lifts the lid again. “This is definitely an escalation.”
She examines the contents, making notes on a small notepad while Maren mutters something sarcastic under her breath. I catch her eye and give her a sharp look.
“Any idea who might have sent this to you?”
“No.”
“Do the dahlias mean anything to you?”
“Not black ones. Red dahlias are my favorite flower, but no one knows that except Maren and… Caleb.” I glance at Maren, who’s watching me while Flower explores the space between her knees and the arm of the sofa.
Karen’s pen stops moving. “Caleb, your ex?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you heard from him recently?”
Oops. I never told her about his visit, did I?
“He showed up a few weeks ago.”
The silence in the room is deafening. Even the rabbits seem to pause their movements. Maren and I exchange a glance.
“Luna.” Karen’s voice carries that warning tone cops use when they know you’re about to admit something significant. “What happened?”
I fidget with a pen on my desk, rolling it between my fingers.
“It wasn’t a big deal. He dropped by and wanted to talk about getting back together.
I said no. He just wanted me to drop the restraining order against him.
Get it off the record. He was fired after I filed it, and, from what I understand, no other law firm will touch him.
Apparently, even Daddy’s money and reputation couldn’t help with that. ”
“Was that all that happened?” Karen continues making notes on her pad.
“No. He got a little heated about it, but Damien showed up and made him leave before anything really happened.”
“A little heated?” Maren scoffs. “That piece of shit threatened you.”
Karen looks over at her and then back at me as she crosses her arms. “Wait a minute. Let’s back up a minute. He threatened you?”
“A little. But Damien handled it. He threw him out.”
“And what was Damien Wolfe doing here?”
“I invited him to dinner. What does that have to do with anything?”
“I just didn’t realize you were that close.”
“It was dinner. Neighbors can have dinner together.”
Suspicion clouds Karen's features. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Honestly? Because it slipped my mind?”
Damien kissed me, and that wiped away any memory of much else, except the visit from my wolf later.
Maren snorts from the couch, and I shoot her another warning glare. As usual, it has no effect on her.
“Don’t you have something to do?”
“I am.” She holds up Flower. “I’m socializing with our resident rabbits.”
Now it’s my turn to snort, but I hold back.
Karen leans forward in her chair, her expression stern. “Luna, this is exactly the kind of escalating behavior that can lead to serious violence. You should have called me immediately.”
“I know, I know.” I rub my forehead, tension coiling at the base of my skull. “I just… Damien seemed to handle it, and I thought that was the end of it.”
“Do you think these could be from him?” Karen taps her pen against the box.
I lean back in my chair, considering, before I shake my head.
“He’s clearly still angry about our breakup and the restraining order.
But this…” I gesture at the destroyed flowers.
“This seems more elaborate than his usual style. Caleb’s more of a show-up-drunk-and-yell-at-you-then-threaten-you kind of guy, not a send-mutilated-flowers-through-a-third-party type. ”
“But you can’t be sure.”
“No. I can’t be sure.”
Karen closes the box and picks it up, slipping it into a large evidence bag before tossing her gloves in the trash.
“I’m taking this to have it processed for fingerprints.
We’ll see what we can find. Email me that security footage, and I’ll have forensics take a look.
Run the kid’s face through facial rec.” She looks at me, her expression stern.
“Luna, if Caleb contacts you again—if anyone contacts you in a way that makes you uncomfortable—you call me. No more letting Damien Wolfe or anyone else handle it for you.”
“I will.” But I wonder how much my promises mean these days. I’ve assured Karen several times that I’d reach out if something unusual happens, but there’s so much unusual in my life, I’d be calling her constantly if I followed through with my promise.
After she leaves, I feel drained. I walk over to the couch and sink beside Maren. She hands me Honey. The rabbit’s warm, solid weight against my chest is just what I need.
“I’m so over all this crazy,” she murmurs as I let my head drop onto her shoulder. “First, your may or may not be stalker, then the dead bodies, then Caleb, all these mysterious donations and payoffs, and now this.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds like a lot.”
Humor seems safer than acknowledging the weight of everything she just catalogued. Less brutal than letting it all crash down on me at once.
“It’s more shit than on the soap operas Estella watches.” She pushes to her feet, shifting Flower over her shoulder before taking Honey from me. I stretch out sideways on the sofa, letting my head rest on the arm. The warmth left over from Maren’s body seeps into my every muscle.
“I’ll take these ladies back to their cage. You stay put. Decompress for a bit.” Maren pauses at the door and turns back. “I want a greasy cheeseburger and fries for dinner. I’ll go to Nancy’s. And I’m staying here tonight. What do you want from the diner?”
Her words hit me like a gift I didn’t know I needed. I hadn’t wanted to ask, but the thought of being alone tonight makes my stomach clench. My wolf will find his way around Maren’s presence, but he never stays until morning.
“Get me a spinach salad with chicken and a side of fries, please.”
The office is too quiet without Maren. I glance over at my desk, where the stack of paperwork mocks me with its importance.
I should get back to work. But my limbs refuse to cooperate.
My body is heavy, drained by the day’s events and all the complications threading through what should be a simple life.
The thought of sitting at my desk feels like too much right now. I’ll deal with it all tomorrow when I’m clearer, when the image of black dahlias splattered with red isn’t burned into my retinas.
I close my eyes and try to push away the creeping anxiety that’s been building all afternoon. Those flowers were meant to frighten me, to send some kind of message I don’t understand. The deliberate destruction, the blood, the untraceable delivery—it feels personal.
I’m so tired of drama. I just want a normal day where the biggest crisis is Ricky and his boob obsession.
Is that too much to ask? One quiet, drama-free day where I can focus on the animals who depend on me without worrying about Karen and her investigation, or threatening ex-boyfriends, or whoever turned beautiful flowers into something horrific?
The sanctuary has always been my refuge, my way of making sense of a world that often seems senseless. But lately, it feels like chaos keeps finding me no matter what I do. And I’m not sure how much more I can take.