She Wore Mourning by P.D. Workman (best desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

“We are hopeful that there will be no perceptible brain damage. Only time will tell. For now, she’s sleeping, and we want to keep her asleep for the next day or two.”

Molly was nodding along. “Can we see her?”

“Yes.” He glanced over the three of them. “Family only.”

Molly looked like she was going to object to this, but Zachary shook his head. “That’s fine. You don’t need me in there.”

She clutched at his arm. “Are you going to be here when we come back out?”

“No. I think I’ll head home now. I haven’t had much sleep the last few days. It will be good if I can get some rest.”

She held his arm tighter. “We need to know what happened to Declan,” she pleaded. “You can see that, can’t you?”

He nodded, defeated, unable to answer aloud. Molly let his arm go.

Zachary put his key in the lock and turned it. Nothing happened. There was no resistance or snick as the bolt slid back. He turned the key the opposite way and heard and felt the bolt slide. Then he unlocked it again.

Was it possible that he had been in such a hurry when he rushed from the apartment to the hospital that he had forgotten to lock the door behind him? He stood there for a moment, frozen, listening for any movement. He tried to replay his departure in his mind, but locking the door behind him was so routine he couldn’t remember it.

There was no note on his door this time, nothing that hinted at the presence of an intruder.

He slowly turned the handle and pushed the door open, ears pricked for any sound.

There was a noise. He couldn’t identify it at first. Someone rifling through the contents of his bedroom drawers?

He didn’t have a gun. It had never seemed like a good idea to have a lethal weapon that convenient. Zachary pulled the door shut again, as quietly as possible, and took out his phone.

The police were there in five minutes. No one had left the apartment by the door, and there was no fire escape or way to leave by the window.

“He’s still in there,” Zachary said in a low voice, which he hoped would not carry as easily as a whisper.

“You know who it is?”

“No. I’ve had a few threats lately, but I don’t know who from. I didn’t see.”

“I’d like you to go down the hall.” The policeman gestured the way they had come. “Don’t want you right outside the door. Just wait over there.”

“Okay.”

He retreated and watched the operation as the policemen pushed the door quietly open and looked around before entering.

If Zachary were a TV detective, he would have had two guns, at least, and would have rushed the apartment all by himself, guns blazing. It wouldn’t have mattered whether the apartment was filled with a dozen ninjas with sharp blades, he would somehow be able to overcome them all. Or maybe he’d be the ninja himself and go up against a dozen armed men with his bare hands.

But it wasn’t TV.

He heard the shouts of the police as they confronted the intruder. There were no shots fired. In a few minutes, one of the other policemen came sauntering out of the apartment and down the hall. He had a grin on his face.

“You got him?” Zachary asked. “He wasn’t armed?”

“We got her,” the officer said, smiling wider. “And no, she wasn’t armed.”

Zachary’s stomach flipped. Her? She? It didn’t make any sense.

If Principal Montgomery had been granted bail, then maybe she had gone to his apartment to try to find any evidence he had of her affair and destroy it. But the lock hadn’t been tampered with. He couldn’t think of any other woman who would invade his apartment. Kenzie? Even if she had come by to wish him a Merry Christmas, she couldn’t have let herself in.

There was only one person who might still have a key.

In his bedroom, Bridget was on her feet. If the police had taken her to the ground and handcuffed her, they had released her again after a short discussion.

“Your intruder was in the bathroom,” the policeman said. “Apparently inventorying your medications.”

Zachary looked around the room. His drawers had obviously been opened, no longer all closed flush. A tie was sticking out of one of them. He looked over at the bathroom and saw a garbage bag on the floor. There were still some items on the counter where he had left them the day before, but most had been put back in the cabinet or tossed in the garbage bag. Zachary finally looked back at Bridget, baffled.

“What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

Her face was bright pink. She tried to look cool and casual but was obviously embarrassed by the scene she had caused. “I couldn’t get ahold of you,” she explained. “Your phone was going straight to voicemail like it was turned off.” She shifted uncomfortably, arms crossed in front of her, ears turning a deep scarlet. “I was worried about you.”

Zachary looked at her, at the bathroom, and at his drawers.

“I know it’s a bad time of year for you.” Bridget’s voice faltered. “I called to make sure you were okay. I came over because… I had to make sure you hadn’t done something.” She glanced toward the bathroom. “When I saw everything out on the counter… I was getting rid of it. Before you could…”

He was so stunned by her actions he didn’t know what to do or say. In spite of the way she had screamed at him every time she had seen him, she had reached out to him on Christmas Day, worried about his state of mind. She had abandoned whatever other plans she had for the day to go to his apartment and check on him. To dispose of the pills that might be too much of a temptation for him.

“Do you want to press charges?” one of the cops asked, humor