Paradise Falls (Paradise Falls #1-5)(35)

“Not you. Your house. I followed him after he left. Caught up with him, anyway. I followed him out of town to a biker bar and on the way back I talked to him.”

“Talked to him?”

“Slapped him around a little.”

“Like you did Grayson?”

“No, I just gave him a bloody nose. Then a few hours later Grayson went after you. That was around midnight. Sometime last night those kids were killed.”

“So?”

“There’s a pattern.”

Jennifer shook her head. “There’s no pattern.”

“I just can’t see the whole thing. These facts are related somehow.”

“I need to call her parents,” Jennifer said. “I want some things from my house. Can you take me back?”

“Yes, of course. Let me help you.” He stood and offered his arm.

“I can walk.”

She grit her teeth against the pain, but she did it. Still in her pajamas, she needed a change of clothes. Focusing on keeping her balance while moving kept her from thinking about Krystal. When she got to the steps leading down to the first floor, she stopped and sighed.

“Let me,” he said.

Jennifer nodded. She presumed he’d hold her arm and steady her, but he picked her right up off the floor. Her arm slid around his neck and she said nothing while he carried her down. Gently, he lowered her to the floor and she hobbled to the front door. When they made it to the front porch, he picked her up again, and didn’t put her down until he lowered her into the seat of the Aston Martin.

He drove slowly, easing the car around the sharp curves down the hill to town. When they pulled up to the duplex, it was even more ramshackle than before. The busted out air conditioner was like a black eye. The porch roof sagged, one corner ripped away from the house complete. A pile of rotten shingles had sloughed off the old gray wood, teeming with ants.

Jacob looked up at the damage. “I’ll have this taken care of.”

He came around to scoop her out of the seat, and then lowered her in front of the door. She reached for her keys, but the door was broken open anyway. She limped through the door and gasped at what was left of her home.

The house was utterly destroyed. Every piece of furniture was flipped over. White tufts of padding spilled out from deep gouges in the couch fabric. Fallen books from the toppled wire shelves were lying on the floor, trampled and destroyed. Her crafting bench was upended and someone even tore apart some of the paper cranes. Franklin’s picture was crumpled on the floor. Someone stomped on the frame and picture both.

“Why?” she said.

Jacob took her by the shoulders and attempted to steer her away. She shook out of his grasp and then she saw what he was trying to hide from her. After they flipped over her kitchen table and busted off the legs and tipped the fridge, someone spray-painted “WHORE” on the wall in reflective yellow road paint.

A timid voice called her name.

Mrs. Carmody stood on the front porch in her dressing gown and peered into Jennifer’s part of the house. Jennifer limped to her. Jacob drifted off and pulled out a phone.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I called the police, but they told me they was busy and they couldn’t come out until the morning.”

Shock froze her thoughts from forming. “It’s… I don’t know.”

“I saw him,” Mrs. Carmody said. “I saw that Grayson boy. I’ll—“

“No,” Jennifer cut her off. “Don’t say anything to anybody. It won’t help.”

“There were two of them. One of them was Elliot, don’t I know it. The other was tall and skinny. Both of ‘em had masks on, I couldn’t see their faces. They came in around four thirty and started ripping the place up.”

Jennifer sighed and rubbed her arms. She felt a twang in her leg and shifted her weight off of it.

Wait.

“What time did you say?”

“Four thirty. It was right after the news channel put on that show about gold they run every morning.”

Jacob handed Mrs. Carmody a card. She took it in her wizened hand and held it at arms length.

“Wilmore Group? What’s that?”

“I’ve made arrangements for some repairs and cleanup to the house. My men will come this afternoon to gather Jennifer’s things. They’ll speak to you first, before they go inside. Don’t bother with the police.”

“Are you in the CIA or something?”

Jacob shook his head. “No. They’d make me cut my hair.”

He picked Jennifer up off the porch and she put her arm around his neck. Mrs. Carmody watched, open-mouthed, as he brought her to the car and lowered her into the seat. Jennifer stared at Mrs. Carmody through the windshield even though the afternoon sun hurt her eyes. Jacob dropped in next to her.

“Okay,” she sighed. “I see a pattern.”

“What pattern?”

“Elliot was here in the afternoon. He left here, went to this biker bar you talked about, and then you lost track of him. Grayson broke into my house at one or two in the morning, right?”

“I arrived at about one fifteen.”

“Sometime after that, the kids get sh-sh-sh… the kids…” she choked up. “Howard gets the call half an hour before my house is trashed. Mrs. Carmody calls them and the say they’re ‘busy.’ There’s something going on here.”