Page 23 of Broken Halo

I turn through a few more and there is the woman who haunts me in the worst ways a person can. Only now, she doesn’t look miserable, posing for a selfie with my sick mother.

Ellie is makeup-free, wearing a sweatshirt with her soft blond hair pulled into a mess on top of her head. She’s smiling and happy—with my mother.

My insides twist.

She looks like she used to. When I first laid eyes on her—she’d just turned seventeen and was riding bareback on her daddy’s land. Her blue eyes were as wild as her hair and she tried to goad me. I’ll never forget the moment…

“You wanna race, cowboy?”

I tip my hat back so I can see her in the sun. “To where?”

She bites her top lip. “Anywhere.”

I shake my head. “I don’t race and I really don’t chase little girls.”

That should piss her off, send her galloping away on the beast of an animal worth more than I’ll ever see in a lifetime. But it doesn’t.

Instead, she laughs at me.

“We’ll see about that.”

And off she goes…

She was right. In the end, I chased her and she didn’t make it hard to catch her. She crawled under my skin in a way that might as well be terminal because, whatever I do, I can’t seem to work her out of my system.

She plagues me—in the best and worst ways a person can.

And here she is, happy, in pictures with my mom.

Faye Barrett is the only person on the planet who’s never betrayed me.

Or so I thought.

I stuff the small photo book into my back pocket. I don’t even flip the lights off on my way out. Ellie showing up to her funeral yesterday was a shock I wasn’t prepared for. But my mom’s gone and the only way to find out why she let Ellie into her life again is from my newest client.

* * *

As I type in the four numbers that haunt my mind and soul, I keep telling myself I shouldn’t be surprised. Yet when she uttered the code earlier today, it cut me in a way that brought back shit I’ve buried deep.

Then I found proof the person who gave me life was betraying me. I intend to find out why my mom kept secrets about the one person she knew I couldn’t even talk about.

I hit the gas and drive through the gates of Ellie’s haughty neighborhood.

When I pull around to her front door that’s now littered with a mountain of trash bags stacked on the wide porch, I don’t give a second thought to the hour or the fact she has a small child or that she’s now a single woman, widowed, and living alone in her absurd, small mansion.

I bang on her door.

I hit the bell three times.

Visions of my mom, happy and smiling with Ellie and her baby, race through my mind, making me hit the thick mahogany harder and I boom, “Open the fucking door.”

I don’t stop.

If I have to wake up every arrogant-aire in the neighborhood to get her tight little ass out here to talk to me, I will.

Finally, an interior light clicks on, followed by the one over my head.

She peeks out the sidelight.

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