Descent (Black Heart Romance)

Oh my god.

A possibility suddenly clicks in my mind—did someone break into my apartment last night?

I guess that would explain the new door and the security camera in the hall, but it doesn’t seem right the landlord would have handled it all without even telling me.

I pull my phone out to double check that I didn’t miss a voicemail or phone call, some kind of message from my landlord.

I didn’t, but my battery is really low so I need to figure out what’s going on pretty fast.

I adjust Marie’s weight in my arms, then scroll to my landlord’s name in my contacts. I glance at the battery one more time—it’s red, only 7% battery left—so I need to make this quick.

Most of the time when I call Armen about something, I get his voice mail and he gets around to returning my call sometime in the next two to three days. Mercifully, this time he actually answers the phone.

“Hey, Armen. This is Hallie Meadows in 804. I have kind of a weird problem. I just tried to enter my apartment and not only is my key not working, it appears that I have a completely different door than the one I had when I left last night?

“Is this a joke?” he asks impatiently.

My eyes go wide. “A joke? No. No, I’m the one who feels like some kind of joke has been played on me because, in case you missed it the first time, I cannot get into my apartment.”

“Your boyfriend told me you were staying at his place last night so he could fix your door.”

“My boyfriend?”

“Bald guy, big shoulders. I didn’t get his name.”

My stomach pitches. His description fits Hollis, but that’s crazy… isn’t it? “You let a strange man change the lock on my apartment?”

“I didn’t let a strange man do anything, I let your boyfriend do it. And you should be thanking him—whatever you did to that door would have come out of your security deposit if he hadn’t fixed it for you.”

“Whatever I did—” I cut off the indignant urge to point out that the lock on that door was broken when I moved into the place. He’s been saying he would fix it literally since before I signed my lease, but the more pressing issue is that he let a strange man into my apartment while I wasn’t home! “Armen, I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah,” I say, flicking a glance at my door. “And honestly, I’m not very happy that you just let some guy who said he was my boyfriend change my locks without any proof. Did he buy the new doorknob himself? This man probably has a key to my apartment now.”

“Why would some man who isn’t your boyfriend pay all that money to replace the door and the doorframe, plus buy you new locks for your front door? How does that make any sense?”

“There’s a lot going on in my life right now that doesn’t make much sense,” I murmur.

“I don’t have time for this relationship drama of yours,” Armen tells me. “Your boyfriend or not-boyfriend or whatever the hell he is… he left your new keys taped in the front of your mailbox.” Without giving me time to respond, he says, “I gotta go. Bye.”

Huffing with annoyance, I tuck my phone back in my purse and haul Marie downstairs so I can retrieve my door keys. When I come back up, I take a proper look for the first time. My apartment door doesn’t match the rest in the building anymore. The new doorknob is matte black. The old one was a cheap, brassy gold, but the color had faded in most spots. There’s a new deadbolt installed, too. Since everything else was replaced, a new chain lock was installed as well.

I turn around and quickly survey the area before I put Marie down. Nothing inside looks different, but I know someone connected to Calvin was in here now, and I have a strong suspicion he kept a key for himself.

Before I hadn’t wanted to wake him, but now that I’m at home where I should be safe and I know someone has been in my apartment, I want to make sure it was the psycho I know. I can’t imagine a burglary ring being very profitable if they went around replacing doors on every house they wanted to rob first, but I’d still like to know for sure.

As soon as Marie’s food has been dished out and she’s eating, I grab my phone out of my purse and shoot off a text to Calvin. “Did you by chance send a man to my apartment to replace the locks on my front door without my permission?”

I don’t have to wait long for a response. “Sounds like something I might do.” Bubbles appear on the screen, then I get another message. “Did you by chance creep out of my bed like a thief in the night because you didn’t want to cook me breakfast?”