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My stomach drops, and I tighten my grip on the gnome I grabbed on the way in. “Get dressed. Fast,” I say, before glancing out into her bedroom.
The space is still quiet, and the house is as silent as it was before Tessa screamed, but that doesn’t mean we’re alone. Daria was clearly inside at some point, which means she could still be here.
“How did she get in?” Tessa asks, her voice shaking as she starts pulling on clothes from the puddle on the counter. “I always lock the front door. Always. There’s no way I left it open.”
“I don’t know,” I say, moving toward the thing in the shower. When I turn off the water and spin it around, my already churning stomach clenches. “But it was definitely Daria.” I step back, motioning to the word scrawled in red across the mannequin’s breasts.
“Slut?” Tessa reads with a soft humph. “Well, that’s not very creative, is it?”
“No.” I release the stump where the arm should be, sending it spinning back to face the other side of the shower. “But it’s on brand. The same thing is on the porch steps. Written in feces.”
Tessa tugs on her shirt, and I turn back to face her.
“Well,” she says, pulling the scrunchie from her hair, sending it spilling back down around her shoulders. “At least she’s consistent. And at least she didn’t use poo in here. Though I’m pretty sure that’s my favorite red lipstick.” She shivers. “That bothers me more than the mannequin, honestly. That she was in here, going through my things, violating my privacy.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Stop it,” she says, pumping something from a small bottle by the sink into her hands and running her fingers through her hair. “If you apologize again, I’m going to scream again, and we’ll both keep wasting precious time. This isn’t your fault. Men cheat all the time, and no one ends up with a mannequin in their shower and poop on their porch. This is a Daria problem.” She sighs. “I guess we should call the police? I mean, she broke in. That’s clearly against the law.”
I nod. “Yes, but unless we have some way of proving it was her…” I motion toward the front of the house. “Do you have a front porch camera? Or any cameras in the house?”
Tessa nibbles her bottom lip as she pulls on her socks. “No, I don’t trust cameras. I have an irrational fear that they’ll record me when I don’t want to be recorded and the footage will somehow end up on the internet. What about fingerprints?”
“That only works if her prints are on file, and to my knowledge, they aren’t. And I’m not sure the police would dust for prints in a situation like this anyway, you know? When there’s no sign of a break-in and nothing’s been stolen. Nothing has been stolen, has it?”
She shakes her head. “Not to my knowledge. At least, I didn’t notice that anything was disturbed until I pushed back the curtain.” She turns, opening drawers beside the sink. “Doesn’t look like anything’s been moved here, either. Except for my lipstick. It’s missing. She must have taken it with her.” She glances at me over her shoulder. “Would that be enough do you think? If the police found my lipstick in her purse or something?”
“And how would they prove it’s yours?” I ask. “She could just say it was hers. Assuming it’s a brand that’s readily available to the public…”
Tessa curses.
I almost apologize again but stop myself. “I think the best thing to do is to document everything with photos and video and leave the mannequin hanging where it is. That way, if things escalate, the evidence will still be here when we get back in town. In the meantime, I’ll get someone over to change the locks later today.”
“Okay,” she says, her shoulders hunching closer to her ears as she crosses her arms. “I definitely don’t want to stay here alone until the locks are changed.”
“And a security system?” I ask. “Can I have one installed? As long as the cameras are aimed at the outside, not the inside?”
She looks up, her gaze softening. “You don’t have to take care of everything, Wes. I can have a security system installed myself. Like I said, this isn’t your fault.”
“But it kind of is,” I say, deciding now is as good a time as any to attempt to explain myself. “I don’t know why I didn’t say something about Darcy that night in the woods. I should have. I usually would have, I just…” I sigh. “Like I told you that morning, we were already having problems. That’s why I was out hiking alone, to get some space to think about what I wanted moving forward. I knew that wasn’t Darcy. Truly. I was going to end things with her that morning anyway. I’d already made the decision, even before we were together.” I drag a hand through my hair. “But when I got to her place, and she told me her period was late. Suddenly, there was a chance we might be having a baby together, and I just couldn’t—”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter,” Tessa says, cutting me off with a sharp shake of her head. “It really doesn’t. The past is the past and we have enough drama on our plates in the here and now.” She pulls in a deep breath, letting it out with a flap of her arms. “If you want to grab the bags I put by the garage door, I’ll finish packing and be out in a few minutes. The sooner we put space between us and your ex’s sister, the sooner we can find somewhere to take a nap. I’m suddenly very, very tired.”
“Got it, I’ll meet you out front,” I say, backing toward the door, feeling like shit.
Speaking of shit…
Might as well find someone to clean up the porch while I’m waiting.
Once I’ve deposited the cooler and grocery bags beside the camper, I pull my phone from my pocket. It’s only five-thirty, probably too early for Christian to answer, but I can leave a message.
I put my cell to my ear, mentally composing what I want to say, but to my surprise, my brother answers on the first ring, bellowing, “Wesley! What’s up, brother? Are you catching this sunrise? What the fuck, man? How is the sun so beautiful? How did we get so lucky? To be born on a planet with a sun like this one?”
“I love the sun so much,” a feminine voice in the background—Starling, his fiancée, I’m betting— agrees.
“And I love you, woman,” Chris says, his voice vibrating with emotion. “You’re my fucking sun goddess, and I’m going to worship you until we’re old and gray and your nipples drag the fuckin’ ground.”
Starling giggles. “Never going to happen, buddy. Sun goddesses keep it swag, we don’t drag. Now stop talking about my nipples, you’re going to make Wesley uncomfortable. I love you, Wesley. I can’t wait for you to be my brother for real! We’re finally setting a wedding date and you’re going to be the best man because you’ll dress up in a costume without complaining about it.”
