Page 63 of Sweet Home

Or worse.

As he waited for the water to heat, his phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw that it was Landon calling back.

“I’m just going to take this,” he said to no one in particular before practically running down the hall to the darkenedfront parlor.

“What have you got?” he asked when he was out of earshot.

“West… I’m not sure how to tell you this,” Landon said.

“Go on,” West said, his jaw tight with tension.

“Dulcinea Bloom has an arrest on her record,” Landon said. “For kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping,”West echoed softly, his mind racing to understand.

“There was no conviction,” Landon was saying, but his voice sounded far away now. “And nothing before or after, but I’d be real careful with her around your daughter, buddy…”

The front door closed quietly, and West looked up, but must have missed whoever came in. It didn’t matter.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, cutting off the sheriff and putting his phone back in his pocket as he hurried back down the hall to the kitchen.

But when he got there, Dulcie’s chair was empty.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

“She just went to the powder room,” Mom said.

“Who came in?” West asked.

“Nobody,” his dad replied. “Is everything okay?”

West opened his mouth and closed it again. He couldn’t say anything about this in front of Elizabeth.

“Fine,” he said tightly. “I’m just going to wait for Dulcie.”

His parents exchanged a look, but he headed back down the hall anyway. When he reached the door to the powder room, it was wide open and no one was inside.

She left. I heard her leaving, not someone else coming in.

He took a deep breath to calm himself. That was fine. Dulcie didn’t have many places to go. It was snowing hard and she didn’t have a car.

She had probably just gone back to his place.

Does she realize I know?

“I’m going to run home really quick,” he yelled down the hall to his parents as he pulled his boots back on and shoved his arms into his coat. “I’ll be right back.”

The wind was at his back on the way home, but he still felt like he couldn’t move fast enough. And somehow, he was worried about Dulcie, even though he knew that she wasn’t the person he thought she was.

He broke into a jog and made it back to the house, where he burst in the front door and called out her name.

But the sound of his voice only echoed in the empty house.

He strode back to her bedroom, deliberately this time. She couldn’t hide from him in there. He needed to talk to hernow.

But she wasn’t in the room at all—the door was open and it was dark inside. When he flicked on the light, he saw that things in the room had changed.

The bed was neatly made, with all the clothing he had bought for Dulcie folded and stacked up on it. On top of the stack of clothing was the envelope with the pay he had given her this morning. And beside it was a paper bag with the toy store logo and West’s name handwritten on it.

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