Page 89 of The Complete Truth Duet
And I was sitting there, alone, homeless, and broke in the back of a police car, wrapped in a blanket.
Numb.
Broken.
Ruined.
And free.
I couldn’t wrap my mind around why Penn, Marcos, or Dante had been at the apartment that night. I’d played out at least a hundred different scenarios in my head, but I couldn’t come up with an answer.
At least not one that brought him back to me.
He shouldn’t have been there. He’d been in bed. Safe. Breathing. Holding me. And now…
I was sitting in the back of a police car, wrapped in a blanket and fileted open, my heart having been torn from my chest one last time by the Guerreros.
Numb.
Broken.
Ruined.
Finally free, but more trapped than ever.
“Cora,” Drew said, squatting in the open doorway, a cigarette dangling between his fingers. “River’s ready to go.”
I glanced up to find her leaning against the hood of the police car. She’d walked away from me the minute the cops had started asking me questions. They’d cornered her next, but she’d kept her distance ever since.
“They found a few things,” Drew said. “Everything’s wet and covered in soot, but I think some of it’s salvageable. You want to come take a look?”
“No,” I whispered.
He stood up and glanced around the parking lot.
The girls had trickled by all morning, fielding questions from the cops with practiced answers that didn’t include prostitution. Then they’d offered me tight smiles before trickling out. There was only one fire truck left. One cop car. Marcos’s Mercedes. Dante’s BMW.
And Penn’s truck.
I was sitting in the back of a police car, wrapped in a blanket.
Numb.
Broken.
Ruined.
And—
“Cora, come on,” Drew whispered. “I gotta get out of here before I lose my shit. I’m begging you. Take a look at your stuff and then let’s call a cab and go back to the hotel.”
He’d just lost his brother. If I’d had the ability to feel anything, I’d have felt bad for him.
I attempted to swallow, but my mouth was dry. “Yeah. Sure. Let’s go.” Robotically, I climbed out, releasing the blanket before taking his proffered hand.
He led me to a pile of random odds and ends the firemen had recovered from inside the building. The majority of it wasn’t mine. I picked up a charred photo album, flipping through two pages before dropping it back down. It was Ava’s. I’d let her know it was there.
A spark of emotion ignited behind my eyes when I saw my small fireproof safe beside the remnants of all of our lives. At least I wasn’t destitute. There should have been a couple thousand dollars in there. Enough for River and me to use on a hotel and to eat for a few weeks while I tried to get back on my feet—if that was even possible anymore.
After dropping into a squat, I twisted and turned the combination of River’s birthday and my wedding anniversary until the door popped open.
And then everything stopped.
The Earth.
My heart.
Time.
There was no money in that safe. No pictures of River when she was a baby. Nor the few I had of Nic and me. The extra keys to the building were missing. So was River’s and my birth certificates and social security cards. The safe was empty except for Penn’s truck keys and a hand-written note that read, One in. One out.
I swung my head to Drew, but his expression told me he was just as puzzled as I was.
“What the…” he breathed, reaching around me to pick the keys up.
My hands trembled as I lifted the scrap of paper in his direction. “What does this mean? Did he put this here?”
He shook his head, staring at the keys in his hand. “I have no fucking clue.” He took off, jogging to Penn’s truck, and I followed him every step of the way, blood roaring in my ears.
He snatched the driver’s door open, and I shoved around him. Fantasizing about finding Penn just casually sitting behind the wheel instead of in the body bag he’d been carried off in.
He wasn’t there and it hit me like a thousand rusty arrows falling from the sky.
The cab of his truck was clean. Just the way Penn liked it. Not so much as an empty coffee cup in the holder. Just his magical toolbox abandoned on the floorboard.
And then I saw it.
A single green glow-in-the-dark star on top.
I dove in after it, tears springing to my eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was one of Nic’s from my ceiling. There were no defining marks. But it had definitely been placed there for me. I turned it in my fingers, examining every angle, searching for a clue or a key that would make this entire nightmare stop. When I came up with nothing, I tucked it in my palm and fumbled with the latch on the toolbox, my fingers so intoxicated with hope that it took several attempts.
