A police officer was waiting for her when Freya started down the hall to her apartment. Her superintendent, Mrs. Abernathy, was there, too, with a sympathetic expression on her kind face and Cat in her frail arms.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” she said. “I don’t know how they got in the building. I didn’t hear a thing, though I suppose that isn’t surprising, is it? I don’t hear too well these days. But Mrs. Holden—in the apartment below you—she called to tell me there was an awful ruckus going on above her.”
The kind, old woman continued to enlighten her of all that transpired over the past half hour. If it were any other tenant that had called her, she would have looked into it herself, but Mrs. Holden wasn’t prone to complaining. Not once, in fact, in the whole twelve years she’d been there, so Mrs. Abernathy called the police right away.
Eventually, the officer cleared his throat and interrupted, and she couldn’t blame the man—Mrs. Abernathy had been known to talk incessantly on more than one occasion. She hurried through his questions, anxious to assess the damage inside. The officer filled her in on what information they had—that it appeared the assailant had come in through an unlocked balcony window, and hers was the only apartment in the building that had been damaged.
She thought nothing of it at first, just a random act of thievery, until he recommended that she stay elsewhere for the night—just to feel more at ease. The thing was, she had nowhere else to go. Freya couldn’t remember having anyone, no friend or family member had shown up at her door in the past three months and the people at work were casual acquaintances at best.
So, she would stay there. She could waste her money on a hotel room, but she refused to be driven from her home. It was the only thing that she knew with any certainty had been there before her memory had vanished. At least, she presumed it had been since she had seven months remaining on a twelve-month lease.
She thanked the officer for the suggestion and told him she’d be just fine. He seemed hesitant, but left a moment later with a parting reminder to lock her doors and windows.
And then she stepped into her apartment.
There were broken dishes strewn all over the floors; every drawer and cupboard had been emptied, the contents tossed randomly throughout every room. Lamps had been knocked over, curtains had been ripped off the walls and her television was lying face down on the carpet. The only place of refuge she’d known was in shambles. Someone had broken into the only home she could remember and destroyed it.
She waited for the well of emotion to spring forth—anger, sadness, a sense of violation that came with her privacy being invaded. She could feel them in the pit of her stomach, but there they stayed, and instead what she felt more than anything was a calmness, a clear understanding of what needed to be done.
She stepped carefully through the chaos of broken china and glass, and surveyed her surroundings, looking for what was missing.
Nothing.
She’d made it through the kitchen and the living room, but she couldn’t think of a single thing that was missing. It was all there, if in a few more pieces than before. Into the bedroom, she checked the jewelry box that had been sitting on the chest of drawers. It was on the floor, the contents strewn on the carpet, but the few pieces of jewelry that had been there before were still there now.
Only one other possibility sprung to mind, and she opened the closet, tossing out the few items that remained in the small space. She crouched down and crawled to the back where she’d discovered a hidden box behind a false wall when she’d rummaged through the apartment three months ago. The false wall was still neatly closed, so she pushed on it gently, disengaging the simple magnetic strip that held it in place, and found the box there. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched, and when she opened it, they were still there—the medallion she’d hidden and the necklace that had been nestled there already.
She was quickly coming to suspect that since nothing else had been taken, the intruders hadn’t found what they’d been looking for. The expensive-looking necklace had been tucked away in its hiding place for the past three months without incident, so it seemed an unlikely target.
That left only one logical conclusion: the intruders had been after the medallion. It was what worried her when she’d realized she’d taken it with her from the hotel, and it seemed her worry had been well-founded.
Returning the box to its hiding spot, she closed the false wall and got to work, cleaning up all the broken, ripped and torn contents of her apartment, all the while contemplating what to do next. She could chuck the medallion off the Grand Canyon and be done with it, but if they suspected she still had it, they’d be back. She could somehow arrange a meeting to hand it over, but something in the back of her mind told her she couldn’t allow it to fall into the wrong hands.
By two-thirty in the morning, she was no closer to an answer than when she’d started, but she had cleaned up all the mess, a stack of garbage bags at the front door filled with all the items that couldn’t be salvaged. At least cleaning days would be easier, she thought wryly, glancing around at the near-bare cupboards and empty shelves.
She padded down the hallway to her bedroom, exhausted and desperate for a few hours’ sleep before the workday began. The intruders had been kind enough to leave her mattress, though it had been ripped and torn in so many places that the metal springs protruded from both sides of it here and there. She was so tired, though, she figured she could fall asleep just about anywhere at the moment.
She laid down on the lumpy mattress, careful not to flop back too hard against the rogue springs, but it wasn’t the mess in her apartment or the medallion at the forefront of her mind when she closed her eyes.
It was Grant.
An image of him had sprung to mind, dressed impeccably in a three-piece suit—a suit that she’d imagined tearing off him at least a dozen times during their brief dinner. She’d been loath to leave him, so much that she’d almost accepted his offer to drive her to her apartment. Part of her hadn’t cared about the break-in, or the medallion, or the fact that she’d had no intention of welcoming him into the privacy of her home. She’d resisted the temptation, though, and wasn’t sure now if she was grateful or if she regretted it. She wouldn’t be lying in bed alone then, her body throbbing with unsated desire if she’d sacrificed her silly privacy.
Tossing and turning, she drifted off slowly, taking Grant with her and pulling him into her dreams. And there he stayed all night, his hands and his mouth driving her wild while she sampled every inch of his body with her lips.