I had no clue, either.
In fact, this was honestly my first dead body that I didn’t want to keep hidden in some way.
“Cops?” I asked.
She made a sound in the back of her throat akin to an animal dying, and then cleared it before saying, “I’ll call my dad. He’ll know what to do.”
She hurried ahead of me again, hastily hurrying to her car when she got to the sturdy concrete underneath the house.
She pulled out her phone, shakily scanned her face, and then started to type something on it.
She walked to the door that was directly underneath the house, then typed in a few buttons on the doorknob.
The door lock clicked, and then she was pushing it open and saying, “I think the couch. That okay, do you think?”
I didn’t know, to be honest.
But I took her there anyway.
When I got up not one, but two flights of stairs, I found the closest couch and laid the woman down on it, being careful to make sure she was there securely before I backed away.
Chills raced over my skin at the feel of the ice-cold air conditioner on my rain-dampened t-shirt.
“D-daddy?” I heard from behind me. “Is… she’s gone.”
The girl started to really sob then, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching forward and taking the phone from the woman’s hands.
“Sabrina,” the man on the other end of the line. “Honey, calm down long enough to talk to me. What’s going on?”
“Sir?” I said carefully. “I’m here with your daughter. I found the two of them on the beach.”
There was a short pause and then, “You found them on the beach?”
I then went on to explain a few things, ending with how I’d found the two of them.
“Jesus Christ, I should’ve fuckin’ quit and gone with her,” he grumbled in the end. “I’m going to call someone there that was supposed to help me with hospice care. They’ll be able to help.” He paused. “Would you mind staying until they get Faye?”
So that’s exactly what I did.
It took an hour and a half for the coroner to roll away with Faye’s body.
By the time that I closed the door behind them, the woman on the couch—Sabrina—was staring into space with a look so forlorn that I couldn’t leave her there by herself.
“Go take a shower, honey,” I urged.
She blinked, looking up at me.
“I don’t… I don’t have my clothes,” she admitted.
I looked at her and said, “Go wash the sand off. I’ll bring your clothes up. Are they in your car?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
I showed her to the closest room on the first floor that had a bathroom that I was able to find, then turned the shower on for her, and then all but shoved her inside fully clothed. “I’ll put your bag on the bed. Get dressed. Call me if you need help.”
When I got her shit and left it on the bed, I called her dad back using her phone.
“Sabrina?”
“No, sir,” I said. “This is Price.”
There was a long pause and then, “Is she okay?”
I snorted. “No. No, I don’t think she is. I found her on the beach with her dead best friend’s hand in hers, hanging out in the middle of a fuckin’ hurricane. I would say that she’s about as far away from all right as she can be.”
The man made a sound in his throat. “There’s a whole lot she’s going through. To top it all off, her fiancé of two years broke it off with her two weeks ago after asking something pretty awful of her in the name of love. So not to play this off, but your being there was good. She doesn’t have anyone else she can call except me, and I’m sometimes not enough.”
I had a feeling her dad was more than enough.
At least for most things.
“Sounds like a dickhead,” I admitted. “But I’ll be here at least for tonight… any way you can get someone up here with her?”
The man on the other end of the line sighed.
“Sadly, no.” There was a whole lot of regret in the man’s voice. I’m talking, he sounded like he wanted to strangle himself regret. “I’m one of two doctors right now, that’s not out with the flu. We’re short, like eight nurses, and we have four doctors out on extended leave for reasons unknown. If I could’ve made it up there with her, I would have. And my father is too old to travel. He’s prone to blood clots. And Sabrina… she’s pretty much a loner. Her one friend…”
He didn’t have to finish. Her one friend had just died.
“I’ll take care of her and send her home,” I promised him. “I won’t leave her by herself to wallow. I’ll take care of her like she’s my sister.”
The moment those words were out of my mouth, I wished I could take them back.