Walk Through Fire (Chaos, #4)(43)

Then she’d be in his rearview.

“Absolutely,” he answered Shirleen.

She didn’t nod again. She pierced him with a look he knew she was using to try to read him.

He didn’t give her much of a shot.

He lifted his chin and took off.

He left the store, went to his bike, got on, and rode right to Millie’s.

He’d cased the place the day before. But he’d chosen his time to approach last night with premeditation, when she’d be close to bedding down and had nothing else on her mind, so no distractions. Then he’d gone back.

Now it was early afternoon the next day. She’d be working in her studio at the back of her house.

So he’d be free to do what he needed to do in her house.

If she was there or came in while he was doing what needed to get done, he was good with that. He had two objectives that day and if she walked in on him, he’d instigate the second one.

He did a slow drive-by at the front of her house, seeing the rear of her SUV in the courtyard at the back, again taking in the tidy attractiveness of her pad.

Not a blade of grass out of place.

It set his teeth on edge because, again, it did not jibe.

He turned left at the end of the block, then left again into her alley. He rode down to the back of her house, stopped, and idled.

There was a garage back there built a long time ago. Unlike the house, it was not in good shape. Dilapidated, some of the glass in the windows of the swing-out doors broken. He cut the ignition of his bike, swung his leg over, and walked to the garage, looking into the windows.

Smartly, she hadn’t put anything in there worth anything. There were some paint cans on shelves. A broken broom in the corner. Other than that, nothing.

He stepped away, eyes still to the window, and rolled his neck against the tension building there.

He went back to his bike, got on, started up, and began to roll but halted when he caught sight of it.

He’d stopped by the Dumpster.

“Fuck,” he muttered, staring at the crate he’d brought back to her last night, which was sitting at the side of the Dumpster. “Fuck,” he whispered, not able to tear his eyes off it.

She’d tossed it. Maybe it was too heavy to get up and in the Dumpster or the thing was full, but there was no mistaking the fact that it was set out to be hauled away.

She’d dumped it.

She’d dumped them.

“Fuck,” he snarled, rolled off, turned out of the alley, and circled back to her house.

He parked two doors down and walked to her place, up her drive, under the overhang, eyes to the studio.

The door didn’t open and he couldn’t see inside any of her windows.

He moved to the back door of her house, noting there were no other cars but her own.

He squatted at her door, pulled out his tools, picked the lock, and let himself in.

He closed the door behind him and took in a kitchen that looked like it was from a magazine. Even the plates, pitchers, glasses, bowls, and other shit that he could see through the glass-fronted cupboards were what she said they were last night.

Utter perfection.

And not Millie.

Or not the Millie he thought he knew.

Time had gone by, she made money now, wasn’t a student, but this was a turnabout that shook him.

She had been into comfort and that was pretty much it. She had too much life to live to worry about decorating.

She hadn’t shopped with the girls. She’d cackled in the Chaos common room with them, drinking beer and shooting the shit.

She also hadn’t hounded him to paint walls or look at toss pillows like Deb had done when they started setting up house. If they were together, he and Millie were eating, cuddling in front of the TV, f*cking, or tangled up in bed, whispering to each other.

Toss pillows never entered her mind. At their place they had cheap shit, secondhand shit.

And she didn’t care.

High took in more of the kitchen.

There was a bowl in the sink soaking, a spoon in the bowl.

Other than that, nothing out of place. No mail stacked on counters. No breadcrumbs not wiped up. No wine bottle recorked to reopen that night. No dishes in a drainer drying. Fuck, there wasn’t even a drainer out to mar the flawlessness.

Nothing.

He moved into the living room and found the same thing. Her wineglass from last night was gone. There wasn’t even an afghan pushed aside, but instead a fluffy one was draped artfully over the corner of a big chair.

He started to look at pictures and felt his jaw set.

At least that hadn’t changed. Millie liked happy memories around her. Back when they were young, it wasn’t about fancy frames all over the place. Instead, she’d tacked shit she wanted to remember on cheap corkboards she’d bought or stuck them on the fridge with magnets. Hell, the fridge had had at least two layers of the stuff (something he’d teased her about). And he should have bought stock in Blu Tack, the woman went through so much of it, building collages of memories on the walls.

Now she had money to buy frames.

So she did.

As he studied the pictures, he saw she was still tight with Justine. If the pictures were anything to go by, it looked like Justine was gay, which would explain a lot. It also looked like she was happy and, since he’d always liked her, he was glad she’d come to terms with what was f*cking with her head, gone for it, and found what she needed.