Page 27 of Watch Me Burn
“He’s more than twice your age, Jenny.”
“When a man looks like that, age becomes irrelevant real quick.”
“You’ve been hanging around Maren too much.” I point at her, and she just shrugs.
“Come on, open it! I want to see what kind of flowers billionaires send.”
I pull the ribbon loose, my heart pounding with a thrill I can’t deny. Why would Damien do this? The lid comes off easily, revealing tissue paper. I fold it back and—
My stomach drops. The breath leaves my lungs in asharp gasp.
Twelve long-stemmed black dahlias lie arranged in the box, but they’re not beautiful. They’re horrific. Someone hacked each stem apart, severing the flowers at jagged angles. Deep red fluid coats the shredded flowers, thick droplets clinging to the torn leaves, creating a small, dark puddle beneath the carnage. It has a faint metallic scent and looks like blood.
Jenny scrambles out of her chair. “What the hell is that?”
My hands shake as I drop the lid back onto the box.
“I need to call the florist.” I grab my phone, searching for the number on the box.
The woman who answers sounds cheerful until I explain what arrived. Then her tone shifts to horror.
“Oh my goodness, that’s awful. I’m so sorry. We would never send flowers in that condition. Someone must have altered them after they left here.”
“Who bought them?” I pace behind my desk while Jenny watches me with wide eyes.
“Let me check… A man paid cash for a dozen black dahlias this morning. I didn’t take that order, but let me talk to my associate.” She puts me on hold, and Jenny and I exchange glances as I bite my lip. After a minute, she comes back on the line. “He was tall. Wore sunglasses and a baseball cap. I’m sorry, she doesn’t remember much else about him. He paid cash and took them with him, so we don’t have a record of his name.”
My blood runs cold.
“I’m so sorry this happened.”
“No problem. Thank you.” I hang up and turn to Jenny, who’s still staring at the box like it might explode. “Who delivered these to you?”
“Just some guy. Maybe nineteen or twenty? He drove a white van.” She wraps her arms around herself. “Luna, this is really creepy.”
I’m already pulling up the security camera feed on my computer, grateful now to have them, rewinding the footage to fifteen minutes ago. I watch a young man pull up in a white van with no logo or writing and approach the main building carrying the box. When the camera catches his face, I don’t recognize him.
“Have you ever seen him before?”
She leans in to look at the screen. “No. He had really bad acne, but I didn’t pay much attention to him. He just said he had a delivery for Luna Foster and left. Didn’t even make me sign for it.”
I rewind the footage, trying to catch a glimpse of the van’s license plate, but the space where it should be is empty.
“No plates,” I say more to myself than to Jenny.
She moves closer to me. “Luna, who would do something like this?”
I grab my phone again and dial Karen’s number.
“Hi Luna, what’s up?”
“Hi Karen. I need to report something.” I try to keep my voice steady.
“What’s going on?”
“I received a package today. Flowers that have been destroyed and covered in what appears to be blood. Someone who isn’t affiliated with the florist made the delivery, and there’s no way to trace who sent them.”
There’s a pause, and I can hear her shifting in the background. “Hold on a sec. Tim, I’m heading to Luna’s sanctuary. She’s gotten an odd delivery. No, not another dead body. Okay, Luna, were there any threats accompanying the package? A card or a note?”
