Her Rebellion (The Rite Trilogy 2)

Does Douglas know about the condo? Because he’s more dangerous than ever now. That’s where my mind goes as I get to the small complex with its white picket fences and families ushering children into minivans to be driven to school. I don’t miss their looks as I push open the gate of Mercedes’s condo and am slightly relieved when I see a light on upstairs.

I have my own key. I had one made, but that, along with the rest of my keys, is in my briefcase. I lift the pot to use the spare she keeps but find the space empty. The key is gone. It’s Mercedes. It has to be. She’d need to use it to enter.

I hear the Rolls screech to a stop once Raul arrives. I try the doorknob expecting to find it locked, but it’s not. I push it open, calling out her name as I charge into the house and immediately stop.

Because the living room and kitchen are destroyed. Furniture overturned, glasses and dishes shattered.

Raul walks inside and mutters a curse.

“Upstairs,” I tell him, and he takes the stairs two at a time.

A breeze blows in from the partially open patio door, and I take a step then another, then call out her name but get no answer.

“Nothing. There’s no one here.”

I walk through the living room, my mind not quite processing. Not wanting to. And there, just outside the patio door, I see her shoe. Just the one. I recognize it from the pair she wore when we went to The Tribunal. It’s beside an overturned pot, the plant that was inside it spilling out.

And caught on a splintered post of the little gate that leads down to the grassy path into the woods is a ripped scrap of her dress blowing in the early morning breeze. I pick up the shoe, my heart thudding against my chest as the gate loudly swings closed, then open again, and I rush down the stairs calling out her name, hurrying into the woods beyond.

Although I know she’s not here. She’s gone. Long gone. And so is whoever took her.

*****