The clicking and churning of metal sounded at the front door and Dayton supposed the mechanical melodies belonged to none other than the new roommate. He knew Alex had returned to Phoenix but knew nothing of the young woman who now paid the other half of the rent.
She entered the apartment, all flowing hair and a whirl of jasmine perfume so intense, he smelled it from the sofa.
“I just dropped by to ch—” her speech halted as she spun to face them. A tiny golden flower adorned her right nostril. Her taupe lips bloomed into a smile. “Sorry to barge in like this. I didn’t know you had a guest.”
The thinly veiled panic on Kenna’s face said it all. This was an introduction she did not wish to make.
Quiet bravery prevailed. “This is Liza, my roommate.”
He waited a beat for her to introduce him but she did no such thing and Liza’s polite smile became too much to bear amid the distilled silence.
“So you’re the new roommate.” Rising, he crossed the room and offered his hand to her, which she shook without reservation. “I’m Dayton. Kenna’s boyfriend.”
“Hello boyfriend who I’ve heard absolutely nothing about.” Her brown eyes cut to Kenna before they settled back on him. “I just stopped by to change my shoes. I’ll be out all night so you two lovebirds won’t have to worry about me.”
He swore he felt Kenna’s muted fury radiating to where he stood by the island. No matter how much his version of an introduction had upset her, he was certain that, had he identified himself as ‘Dr. Merino,’ he would’ve been ousted from the apartment right behind Liza. Defying all expectations, she did not yell at him when he rejoined her.
She breathed a soft “thank you.”
Moments later, Liza emerged from the hallway and scarcely offered a mumbled goodbye as she barreled out the door. Dayton grabbed the remote and flipped through the channels. During the shuffle, a hair-raising broadcast played for half a second before it was replaced by another station.
His silent prayer that Kenna had not noticed the horror temporarily plastered on the screen went unanswered.
“Go back.”
He obeyed and fought to keep his cortisol level from spiking as she watched the coverage, engrossed. Sweat beaded along his spine. In his mind, he had done no wrong and yet his body insisted upon his guilt.
Everything within her froze as the blue and red lights flashed behind the reporter on the screen and she parsed out the only words that mattered among the graphics.
Body found.
The bold, ugly phrase. So much despair crammed into its brevity.
She imagined the sorority sisters were watching it too. Kenna felt their collective flash of denial before it pirouetted into rage. She heard their mangled screams and choked sobs as they yelled at the television and yanked on their coats, not bothering to turn it off as they filed through the door en route to storming the crime scene.
It was all too easy to imagine how they must have felt. The thought alone of losing one of her sisters shattered her iced over insides.
She turned the volume up.
“The body found Thursday evening discarded in a downtown dumpster has been identified as Lacey Greene, a 21-year-old undergrad at Ponderosa University who was reported missing late last week. Greene’s body was discovered by an employee of The Rusted Monkey while taking out the garbage.”
Slowly, her head turned to Dayton as a wall of tears rose behind her eyes. She was hollow and capable of nothing else but the silent, accusatory look.
“You think I did this?”
His question was a whisper loaded with words he was afraid to vocalize.
Is it what she thought? Sorting her feelings on the issue seemed to be the least sensible course of action with a potential murderer in her apartment.
“You could’ve helped her, Dayton. You had the means and you sat idly by. And you may not have been the one to kill her, but Lacey’s death is on your hands.”
He pushed to his feet, animosity clouding his expression. “Do you know why I didn’t help her?You. You were fucking with my head, my heart, my everything. I wasn’t passing clear judgment.”
“Don’t blame it on me. That’s ridiculous.” Kenna’s voice had gone so quiet, she hardly recognized it as her own.
Strands of fear and unease crocheted her organs until all she felt was a unified sense of foreboding. Again, she remembered his soul-splitting gaze in St. James on Christmas Eve. The warning from God she had ignored.
“You know what the sad part is? It wouldn’t surprise me that much if you were the one who did this.”