Four

FOUR

The woman who’d made the emergency call had collapsed at the entrance to another room on Kaaron Brennan’s right. Long, red hand streaks also palmed the door there. Blood lathered the handle, grew fat at the bottom of the knob, dropped to the puddle by the woman’s severed ear.

Ploink.

Ploink.

Ploink.

Brennan wanted to cry. She didn’t, and kept her pain inside.

Stenciled across the ajar door were two words. It must have taken a caring, steady hand to inscribe that lavender printing so well, even going to the effort to put a little heart above the ‘I’. A mother’s touch, if there ever was one.

“Timmy’s room,” Kaaron, who had two kids of her own, read aloud.

Later, there would be time for weeping. That time was not now.