Page 114 of After All The Wreckage
But then I thought of Rory. Every single person she met underestimated her. I wouldn’t do the same with this man.
“My family is staying here. They need protection. I’m going over to Rory Bishop’s. Do you know if someone is protecting her as well?”
He frowned and shook his head. “No, our orders are for you and your family.”
“Well, my family is here. This is where you’re needed. I think the FBI has Rory covered,” I told him. I wasn’t sure it was true, but I didn’t want this guy following me instead of staying here.
I turned and jogged over to my SUV with the rain beating down on me.
Driving to Rory’s place from River’s required me to go past the Victorian I’d grown up in. Regret always ripped through me when I did.
I missed our home. Wished that Ivy had been able to experience growing up there, playing on the swing set tucked between the hedges and roses. Wished that, somehow, we’d been able to keep it.
The retired couple who’d bought it had moved out of D.C., saying they were ready for a slower pace of life. It had felt wrong for it to be just the two of them in the house. I’d wanted it to be full of family—kids laughing and pounding their feet down the wide, Scarlett O’Hara-worthy staircase. Playing hide-and-go-seek in the multitude of rooms. Hosting holiday dinners in the large dining room. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and at the height of the pandemic, I’d needed the most money I could get and they’d made the best offer.
As I passed the house, my heart flipped as it always did, but this time it was because of the For Sale sign sticking out of the sculpted grass of the front lawn.
Maybe this time it would be a family who bought her after all.
I kept driving, but my eyes found the sign in the rearview mirror. If the recovery from the pandemic hadn’t taken so long and Demi hadn’t taken the meager savings we’d had, maybe I’d have been able to swing buying it back.
But then I rolled my eyes at myself. There was no way I could afford it now. Not likely ever again with the way the real estate market was off the charts these days.
I tried to leave all thoughts of our family home behind us as I turned down Rory’s street and parked in the driveway behind her Nan’s Beetle. The lights were off in the cottage. It was three in the morning, and I wasn’t sure what I expected. I texted Rory again.
ME: I’m outside. Can you let me in? We need to talk.
I waited five minutes for a response that never came. I knew there was a possibility that she was sleeping, but every instinct told me she wasn’t. After everything that had happened, Rory would be champing at the bit to avenge Hallie’s death.
I made my way to the front door, rang the bell, and then followed it with an immediate loud knock. After several minutes, when nothing happened, I repeated it.
Eventually, the porch light came on, and I felt eyes on me through the peephole. The door opened a crack, the chain lock stopping it. Kora Marlowe peeked out at me through the few inches. Her face was puffy and tear-stained. She wore a terry cloth robe and her short hair was pushed up at weird angles as if she’d been tossing and turning in bed.
“Gage?” she said, bemused.
“I need to talk to Rory.”
She hesitated, removed the chain from the door, and opened it all the way.
As I stepped inside, rain rolled off me onto her wood floors. “Sorry,” I said, grimacing.
“It’s fine. Just a little water.” She headed toward the back and the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “Her light’s out in her bedroom, but the office light was on. She must have fallen asleep in there.”
She knocked on the door and then opened it. The space was small, but a large desk, file cabinets, and bookshelves had been shoved inside it. Rory wasn’t there.
Kora pushed past me, going down the hall and knocking on another closed door. She opened this one and flipped on the light, revealing a room done in vibrant teals and aquas. But the bed was perfectly made, and there wasn’t anything out of place to indicate Rory had been there recently.
Kora turned to me with a worried expression. She rushed down the hall and opened a bathroom door. “Rory?” she called.
My heart lunged at the panic in her voice. It echoed my fear.
But I wasn’t afraid of what had come for Rory. I was afraid of what she was going to do.
In the kitchen, Kora went straight to a set of hooks by the back door.
“She took the Jeep,” she said, waving a hand at an empty hook. Her eyes were huge as she said, “She went after them, didn’t she?”
We stared at each other because there was nothing to say. She had. We both knew it. A wave of panic flooded my veins. Where had she gone? My brain flashed with the list of warehouses she’d printed out. I wished I had my own copy.
