That was the dream that kept me sane while I was hunting bad men in the dark. But when my taxi pulled up to our driveway at 2:00 a.m., the lights were off. That was the first thing that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Tessa never turned the porch light off when she knew I was coming. She used to say it was her lighthouse guiding me back from the storm.
Tonight, the house was a black void. I paid the driver and walked up the path. The silence was heavy. It pressed against my ears. I reached for my keys, but I didn’t need them. The front door was unlocked. It was cracked open about an inch. My hand instantly went to my waistband, reaching for a sidearm that wasn’t there. I wasn’t in the sandbox anymore.
I was in the suburbs of Virginia. I pushed the door open with my boot. Tessa. My voice sounded too loud in the quiet hallway. There was a smell. It wasn’t dinner. It wasn’t her perfume. It was the smell of bleach. Sharp chemical stinging the nose. And underneath the bleach, there was something else. Copper metallic.
