Chapter 2
I didn’t leave her side that night.
I sat in a vinyl chair that was too small for me and listened to the ventilator breathe for my wife. Every few minutes a monitor chimed, and every time it did, my whole body went tight, the way it used to on a night patrol when something moved where nothing should.
Around two in the morning, the night charge nurse came in to check Evelyn’s lines. She was a broad-shouldered woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a beaded chain and a name badge that said ROSALIND BELL, RN.
“You should sleep, Major,” she said.
“I’ve slept in worse chairs.”
She studied me for a moment. Then she lowered her voice.
“Somebody from administration called up here twice tonight. Mr. Pratt. He wanted to know how soon your wife could be ‘stabilized for transfer.’”
“Transfer where?”
“A private facility in Asheville. The Shaw Foundation built its new wing.” She adjusted Evelyn’s blanket with real tenderness. “I’ve been a nurse for thirty-one years. Nobody asks to move a patient this sick unless they want her somewhere they control.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“I didn’t tell you anything,” Rosalind said. “I just checked her IV.”
At dawn, Dr. Keene promised me he wouldn’t sign a transfer order. “Not while she’s on a ventilator,” he said. “Not for anybody’s foundation.”
So I went home.
The drive to 4410 Larkspur Lane took twenty minutes, and I barely remember any of it. Our house sat at the end of a gravel road lined with pines, a white farmhouse Evelyn had fallen in love with because of the wraparound porch. She had painted the front door a deep blue the summer before I deployed. She’d sent me a picture of it with paint on her nose.
There was no crime scene tape.
That was the first thing I noticed. Less than thirty-six hours after a woman had been nearly beaten to death inside, the scene had already been released.
I walked around to the back.
The kitchen door was intact. No splintered frame. No pry marks. No broken glass. The deadbolt worked perfectly.
I knelt by the porch steps and lifted the little ceramic frog Evelyn kept beside the flowerpots. We’d hidden a spare key beneath it for six years.
The key was gone.
Only four people outside our marriage had ever known about that frog. Evelyn had told me once, laughing, that her mother insisted on knowing “in case of emergencies.”
Inside, the house was too quiet.
Someone had made a poor effort at the burglary story. A drawer had been yanked out. Couch cushions were tossed. But the television was still on the wall. My grandfather’s watch still sat in the dish on the dresser. Evelyn’s grandmother’s ring was still in her jewelry box.
Only two things were missing.
Evelyn’s laptop.
And the iron poker from the fireplace stand in the living room.
I stood in front of that stand for a long time, looking at the empty hook where the poker had hung. The shovel was there. The brush was there. The tongs were there.
Someone had taken the one thing they’d used.
I found the stain on the hardwood near the hearth, faint now, scrubbed but not erased. I didn’t let myself look at it longer than I had to.
When I stepped back outside, an old man was standing at the end of my driveway with a coffee mug in one hand and a cane in the other.
Abner Pruitt lived across the road. He was eighty-one, a retired Marine gunnery sergeant who still flew his flag every morning at precisely 0800.
“Major,” he said. “I’m sorry, son. I truly am.”
“Did you see anything, Gunny?”
“I told that detective. I don’t think anybody wrote it down.” He looked toward the house. “Black Escalade pulled in around nine-forty. No headlights on the last stretch, which struck me as peculiar. Two people went around back. Maybe three. Couldn’t tell in the dark.”
“And then?”
“Escalade left about ten-oh-five. Fast.” He took a slow sip of his coffee. “Then a little white hatchback came tearing up the road maybe five minutes later. Young woman jumped out and ran inside. I heard her screaming from my porch.”
My heart was pounding.
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“Did you see her face?”
“Dark hair. Thin little thing.” He paused. “She was the one who stayed with Evelyn until the ambulance came. She was holding her hand when they wheeled her out. Then a whole fleet of fancy cars showed up and that girl got pulled away like she’d done something wrong.”
