Deep Trauma

Riley stood in the cool darkness trying to lip-read, too afraid to move.

The thought of being caught spying was too disturbing to comprehend. What she was doing came with significant personal risk—and for what? She couldn’t even grasp the substance of the conversation between Holly and Themis, let alone details.

Right now, she didn’t know who to trust or what to think. Perhaps there was a logical explanation for what she was seeing. Sometimes the best thing to do was nothing at all. Maybe she just needed to go home and sleep on it. It had been an awful day, an awful week.

Riley backtracked quietly down the stairs and around the side yard, keeping to the shadows of the cypress trees lining the fence as she headed toward her bike. That was when she saw the soft red glow of his cigarette.

The man was leaning against the open back gate between the darkened alleyway and the bungalow’s detached garage. A slow curl of smoke drifted above him as he raised and drew on his cigarette. Riley was sure he was the same man she’d seen leaning up against the corner of the bungalow yesterday. She remembered now how he had been staring at Sofia until he’d spotted her watching him, and then he’d suddenly disappeared.

Fortunately, he now had his back to her, facing the alleyway.

Riley studied the shape of him, the way his jeans were hitched above his hips, and the glint of his belt buckle in the headlights of an approaching vehicle when he turned toward it. She froze where she stood in the shadows, too afraid to breathe, watching as he dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his boot. The vehicle rolled slowly along the alleyway toward him, the gravel crunching under its wheels as it came to a stop. The man stepped toward it, reached out, and opened the passenger door before hopping up into the vehicle.

It was a large black pickup truck with raised bumpers and big wheels.

Riley would have recognized it anywhere by the skull emblem on the back window.