? ? ?
I meet Cash outside La Fleur d’Elise and survey the damage from the street. The storefront windows are smashed in, the glass splintered inward toward a single point, as though hit with a heavy object. I step over the pieces in the doorway. Inside, the exposed bulbs in the ceiling are broken, shards of glass screwed into fixtures are all that remain. The glass counter has been crushed, the refrigerator door hangs off its hinges, the arrangements inside have been ripped apart and flower heads scattered around the floor, which is wet with large puddles. The water buckets have all been upended.
“Two weddings’ worth of inventory, gone,” Elisa laments as I come through the door. She stands up when she sees me and crosses the room. Her spindly arms fold around me in a limp, defeated hug. Javi works the broom in the corner pushing all the glass and floral carcasses to a sopping pile in the center of the room and then looks at it impotently, like now what?
Lydia hovers in the doorway, a drooping amaryllis dangling between her fingers.
The counter in front, next to the register, is heavy, stainless steel. Meant to be a table for last-minute arrangements and trimming, if necessary. It’s more functional than aesthetic. The top is etched with a thinly carved message. A message that is meant for me, I feel it in my bones, heavy and leaded. I run my fingers over the metal.
JAREd
The ugly word is scrawled with a dull straightedge. Words carved into metal are violent by nature, the message is practically irrelevant. The letters themselves are sinister, the way magazine clippings pasted on paper are indicative of ransom notes.
But this, this note is meant for me. In a way Lydia or Javi or Elisa could never know. The small d hovers slightly lower than the rest of his name. It’s the brand, inside Rosie’s mouth, that deliberate small d clinging to the corner of the E.
The blood rushes to my head. I feel at once hot and sick, a sheen of sweat coats my arms and I feel it down my spine below my bra strap, one single drip of fluid tracing lazily down my backbone. I sway and from what sounds like the inside of a tunnel, Cash yells, “Catch her!” but I don’t remember anything else.
CHAPTER 23
The first person I see when I open my eyes is Officer Yates, her rounded dark eyes, long lashes, bright lipstick. My first thought is, Why am I sleeping at the shop? Elisa peers over Yates’s shoulder, her face a mask of concern mixed with something else. Anger? Latent impatience at the very least.
I forget, then remember, seemingly at the same time. “How long was I out?” I sit up but feel sick and sink into the velvet-covered pink office chair that has been brought over just for me.
“No more than a minute.” Cash is on one knee next to the chair, leaning close. The smell of his aftershave turns my stomach.
“I just got here,” Yates offers. Elisa brings me water and I can’t help but enjoy it, just a little. Elisa, waiting on me. Elisa, who once sent me to Duane Reade to buy a pencil sharpener. Twice. Because it’s apparently possible to buy the wrong kind. Yates stands up and motions everyone back, long nails flickering. “Give her some space, okay? Let me talk to her.”
They disperse. Javi pouts with his broom, pushing it insolently into corners. Elisa pretends to flip through paperwork.
Yates pats my hand while I ask her about the man at the back door. She has a report from the night before she wants me to sign.
“I’m sorry we can’t do more, there’s just nothing to investigate.” She raises her eyebrows, and all I see is doubt.
Cash overhears and chimes in, “I was there. I saw the same thing Zoe did. There was someone at that back door. The door handle jiggled.”
“I believe you.” She pats Cash on the shoulder, placating. It’s just no use. The word resources bounces around in my mind.
“What about Jared Pritchett? Did you look him up?” I press my left palm onto hers, so our hands make a sandwich, and close my eyes. A chill goes up my spine, like the trill of a xylophone. “Mick Flannery exists. This is all connected. Do you believe me now?”
“I do. I did before, but this helps.” She waves her arm around the mess and smiles a little, unexpectedly, flashing a nicotine-stained incisor at me. “I have ideas though. Give me time, okay. I believe you, I do. I looked up your testimony. This was some heavy shit, girl. Those kinds of crime rings are not run by one or two people. It’s usually more like thirty. Fifty. This?” She motions toward the counter, the mess. “This is revenge, pure simple. To terrify you.”
“Then what? Kill me?” My mind flashes back to the stripped-down van. That bloodstain. That child’s lacy sock. My stomach roils.
“Zoe, there are officers stationed at your apartment. We’ll protect you.”
“I need to call Henry.” My tongue feels coated in sawdust.
“Do you have a place to go?”