Page 37 of Catch Him
Chapter 10
Sinead wokeup with a new purpose the next morning. The plan was in place. She was going to spend these days with David sucking the life out of each and every one of them. When the end came, if the end came soon, she was going to ask for it not to end. She was going to ask for a future.
After all, isn’t that what people who were in love got to have?
She was a good person. She tried to do the right things in life. Didn’t she deserve some happiness? Shouldn’t she at least reach for it? If David had taught her nothing else, he had taught her that.
As the day moved on she got more anxious to see him. Eventually she dressed in her uniform. Sometimes she changed at the station, but this way she could spend every minute with David until she had to go to work.
She took her patrol car and drove out to David’s house. She thought as she looked at the clock that she might be a little early but she doubted he would care. She was going to stubbornly ignore the lead weight that was still sitting in the bottom of her stomach.
It was just nerves. Nerves that somehow their dynamic would be different. Nerves that because he’d been open with this feelings he might start retreating because she hadn’t immediately reciprocated.
She would show him without words. She would show him every day and in every way how she was feeling so he wouldn’t have to question it. She wanted to never make him sad again.
As she turned down his street the first thing she saw were the flashing red lights. Every hair on the back of her neck rose as she quickly ascertained the patrol car was parked in David’s driveway. She pulled her car over and immediately jogged up to the front door.
The first officer she saw was Ted. An older cop, good guy, who she got along with fairly well. He spotted her and gave her a nod of his chin.
“O’Hara, what the hell are you doing here? You’re not on shift yet.”
“What is it?”
“B&E. Owner’s pretty pissed.”
Relief flooded her. David was inside and pissed. Which meant unharmed. “I know him,” she said as she pushed her way inside and then stopped when a dark-haired, handsome man with a decidedly non-British accent was shouting at another one of her fellow officers.
“What in the hell is the point of a security system if it can be turned off by the police? Isn’t it your job to arrest the person when you find they have broken into my house?”
“Sir, please calm down. We’re trying to sort this out.” It was Sergeant Neil, Sinead’s superior, and he was clearly trying to dispel the anger radiating off the man.
“Who are you?” Sinead asked the loud man.
“Officer O’Hara, why are you here? You’re not involved this.”
Sinead looked at her sergeant and blinked mentally, not comprehending how she couldnotbe involved in this. She’d practically lived in this house for the last few weeks. She had stuff here.
“I own this house, who are you?” the strange man said.
“Did David leave?”
“Who the fuck is David?”
It was in that moment alarms sounded in her head. Without saying anything she moved past Sergeant Neil and the angry man back to the bedroom. It was empty, the bed was made.
She started opening the dresser drawers, and the smells that hit her from the clothes there were wrong. Not David’s smell. Instead, a hint of a cologne that was completely foreign to her.
“What in the fuck are you doing? Get out of my shit.”
It was the angry owner. He was behind her in the bedroom shouting, but she couldn’t listen to him. She needed to find David’s stuff. She needed David to come back and tell his friend that he had called the police for no reason. This needed to be some colossal joke. She moved back into the bathroom. At least there she would find her stuff. Her deodorant, her moisturizers.
Except it was gone. All of it. Even the toothbrushes. In fact there was an antiseptic smell that hit her nostrils, stinging them. As if the bathroom had recently been cleaned with bleach.
David was gone. Her stuff was gone. The bathroom had been cleaned. And there was an angry man following her around who claimed to own the house and not know who David was.
“This isn’t happening,” she muttered to herself. “Where’s my toothbrush?”
“Your toothbrush! What the fuck does that mean?” the angry man asked.
