The front door was unlocked. David Carter stood in the doorway of his own apartment, work badge still clipped to his shirt, every muscle in his body pulled tight. The living room light was on. He never left it on. Then he saw her, Elena Vance, his company's CEO, standing in the middle of his living room like she owned it, which, come to think of it, she practically owned everything else.
She looked at him with dark, unreadable eyes and spoke just above a whisper. "You won't be sleeping tonight." Behind her, curled on the couch beneath his daughter's favorite blanket, six-year-old Maya slept without a care in the world. He didn't move for a full three seconds. David Carter had worked the late shift enough times to know that nothing good ever waited for you at home after midnight.
A busted pipe, maybe. A neighbor's smoke alarm. Once a raccoon that had somehow gotten through the kitchen window. But never this. Elena Vance stood in the center of his living room with her blazer wrinkled at the shoulders and her heels still on like she had walked straight out of a boardroom and into the wrong life.
Her hair, usually sculpted into something architectural, had come loose on one side. There was a smudge near her jaw that might have been mascara or exhaustion or both. And on the couch behind her, Maya slept with her mouth slightly open, one arm hanging off the cushion, wrapped in the yellow fleece blanket she'd carried everywhere since she was 3. David stepped inside and closed the door behind him. "How did you get in?"
His voice came out lower than he intended. Elena glanced toward the kitchen counter. "Maya let me in. She was still awake when I knocked. I told her I was a friend of yours from work."
She seemed to register the look on his face and added, "She fell asleep about 40 minutes ago. I read her two chapters of whatever book was on the nightstand." He looked at his daughter, really looked, making sure she was breathing safe, unbothered. She was. Whatever else this night was turning into, Maya was fine.
David set his bag on the floor and turned back to "Elena." "Why are you here?" She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she looked around the apartment the way people do when they're trying not to look like they're looking, the mismatched furniture, the crayon drawing taped to the refrigerator, the stack of Maya's library books on the coffee table. Then she met his eyes and said, "Because I didn't know where else to go."