Carmen put the keys in the ignition. Her phone rang. It was a number she didn’t recognize. She waited for a moment, saw the voicemail light up, and was surprised she could retrieve the message so easily.
“Hello, Jenna Vincent. This is Agent Barrett with the Department of Homeland Security. I apologize for the late call, but I need to talk to you to ask you a few questions. At your convenience, could you call me at this number?”
Carmen felt a chill run down her spine. Stared at the number. Turned on her laptop and desperately tried to find any signal where she could do a quick search, but there were no networks showing. She knew she could go back inside her sister’s place, try a legit search, but none of the darknet databases would be available that could instantly tell her whose phone had just called her.
A car approached.
She snapped shut the laptop and scooched down. The bright lights illuminated the inside of her car as the vehicle crawled past. The car lingered at the nearest stop sign before turning a corner and vanishing.
She forced herself to take a breath.
Play it cool.
It could be anyone calling her. She definitely wasn’t going to call back. Peter. It had to be. This was going too far, beyond harassment. But playing it cool meant not being stupid or rash. She would tackle this in the morning and make Peter pay for trying to scare her and her sister.
Dishes sat stacked in the sink. A pot with cold crusted oatmeal remained on the stove.
Carmen walked softly through the kitchen and found her father on the recliner asleep, a thin blanket tucked around him, his oxygen tube around his nose but hanging loose. She found herself waiting for him to take a breath. Finally he let out a raspy exhalation.
A stack of books teetered on a tiny side table and he had a hardback lying page down on his lap.
Carmen used the dust jacket as a marker and closed the book, setting it aside. Then she covered him with a thicker blanket and turned the light off.
The bed in the spare bedroom remained made up. No nurse. She returned to the kitchen to inspect the pill tracker. Her father’s evening meds had been taken. She considered the dishes but instead headed for her bedroom and went to sleep.
Her head felt thick the next morning and it took several bleary moments to realize that the previous night’s events had actually happened. But before she could begin to tackle her to-do list, which included checking on Jenna and finding Peter so she could rip him to shreds for harassing them, she needed coffee and to get her father squared away.
If the night nurse, Stephanie, had flaked out, she would have to be replaced. Too bad. Carmen had liked the woman. She knew her medicine and could be firm with Carmen’s dad.
She found her father on his walker in the kitchen.
He was wearing his green bathrobe and was stirring a pot of oatmeal. His tousled thin gray hair dangled about his dark scalp and wrinkled face. “Good morning, baby.”
She kissed his grizzled cheek. “That pot wasn’t clean.”
“Still isn’t. Wasn’t done with it. Besides, those burnt remnants are flavor crystals.”
“Dad, it’s gross.” But there would be no arguing the point with him. She took a dish from the cupboard and began to prepare a bowl of cold cereal for herself. “So what happened to Stephanie?”
“Fired her.”
“What happened?”
He didn’t look up from his pot. “She was trying to take over when I was fixing supper.”
“She was doing her job.”
“Which I manage to do just fine. I took my meds. I made my potatoes. Don’t need no stranger butting in.”
Carmen set the box of muesli down and forced herself to speak calmly. “She was here to make sure you don’t fall. You know that. You need help going to bed, going bathroom…I can’t do it all by myself. We agreed to have help.”
He kept stirring. “Well, this one didn’t work out.”
She placed her bowl down on the kitchen table, shoving a pile of mail aside. She got the milk and poured it over the cereal before putting the jug back and slamming the refrigerator door. The coffee pot was on but almost empty. She poured the last of it into a cup, not even wanting to look at her father as she maneuvered around him. His oatmeal had turned into a thick steamy paste at the bottom of the pot.
“You’ll burn it.”
She turned the stove off, took the pot and spooned the oatmeal into a second bowl. This she set down next to hers before shoving the pot in amidst the rest of the dishes and filling it with water so it could soak. Her dad hadn’t moved, so she hurried him along and ignored his complaints as she got him seated. Didn’t wait for him as she began to eat her own cereal, which had grown soggy.
A white business card sat on top of one of the mail stacks.
Raymond Barrett, US Department of Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness and Response. The card had a government logo to one side and both an office and mobile phone number.
“Dad, what’s this?”
Her father was just starting on his oatmeal. “Cop came by this morning. Was asking for you.”
“Cop? What cop? I didn’t hear the door.”
“You must have been asleep. Don’t matter none. I didn’t answer any questions and I certainly didn’t let him in.”
She set her spoon down. “What was he asking about?”
“I didn’t query him, baby. He wanted you is all I know and shoved his card through the mail slot when I told him I couldn’t help him.”
She suddenly wasn’t hungry. “What did he look
