Hold On(156)

Most were home. They’d gotten the news and news like that translated to an instant personal day.

But they got the same from everyone, which was the same as what they’d gotten from her sister.

Wendy was well-liked. She was funny. She was sweet. She was a decent worker (she wouldn’t win awards, but she showed and got the job done).

But she was stupid. Picked the wrong men. Never learned. Kept doing it.

No one liked Cutler. Friends were wary of him. Family detested him.

Even with that, there was a lot of shock. She might’ve picked the wrong men, but however bad they were for her, no one thought she’d end up shot three times because of it. Maybe banged up. Even beat to shit.

Not dead.

This read that whatever the men she picked did—whatever Cutler did—she wasn’t involved.

She went to work. She spent time with her friends. She did not exit her life for her man or to cover up whatever he was wound up in or the fact she was tied up in it too. She didn’t seem to be hiding anything or retreating from life, work, friends, or family.

She just kept getting mixed up with the wrong guys.

Mixed up so much with Cutler, the only thing friends and family did get was her demeanor during the time after their breakup to her death.

She was cut up by it. Told everyone who would listen that he was “the one,” the breakup came out of the blue, to her they’d been happy, and Cutler didn’t give her even a hint of a clue why he ended things.

That’s all they got. Including them coming up empty with the fact that she’d told no one where she was going the night before. No family member, friend, coworker, not a soul. The only person she’d mentioned it to was Marscha when she left, but she gave no detail.

At five fifteen that night when they went back to Cutler’s and found no truck with no response to their knock, they had dick. No witnesses to what went down in the cul-de-sac. No one liking Cutler enough to spend too much time with him to know anything about the other side of his life that he couldn’t show them with Wendy. And Jake coming up with nothing outside Cutler’s prints in the car, which were expected since she’d been living with him.

“Not got a good feelin’ about this,” Mike murmured as he headed them back to the station.

“Nope,” Garrett agreed.

“We got dick,” Mike told him, something they knew.

“I wanna hit that house again later when he might be home,” Garrett replied.

“We can hit her hangouts in the meantime,” Mike said. “I’ll tell Dusty it’s gonna be a late one.”

They hit her hangouts, which were not surprisingly the perfect places to pick up the wrong guy.

This meant that no one said jack outside expressing their shock and sadness at the death of a sweet gal that everyone knew but no one knew who might want to kill her.

She also had not been to any of these hangouts the night before nor did any of the regulars know where she’d gone.

And at a quarter to eight, when they went back to Cutler’s, there was still no truck and no lights on in the house.

“We’ll try tomorrow,” Mike said.

“Right. Gotta get home so Cher can get to work and I can look after Ethan.”

Mike grinned at the windshield. “Domestic bliss already?”

“Don’t know, but you’ll be the second to know when I do.”

Mike chuckled.

They went back to the station, did what they had to do to end their days, and Garrett got to his place just in time for Cher to give him a kiss and rush out to work.

Taking one look at Ethan on his couch, he shrugged off his suit jacket and installed the Xbox.

Ethan went for it with some video game, but he did it jabbering to Garrett about his day. The sound of the TV and Ethan talking made his condo seem a lot less crappy-ass than it always did.

Garrett listened as he went for some food, finding he had more of it in his kitchen than he’d ever had in his life, including the part of his life that he shared with his ex-wife.

He made a sandwich.

And later, he and Ethan polished off one of the three bags of Oreos Cher had stocked, doing this while watching sports talk shows before they both hit the sack—Ethan, because he was a kid and was supposed to go to bed early; Garrett, because he’d been woken up early by a murder and was glad to put the day behind him.

But before he turned out the light, he made one call.

“Was pissed at you. Now pissed that I’m worried about you,” he told Ryker’s voicemail, then ordered, “Call me, Ryker.”

He hung up, hit the lights, and stretched out in bed.

He fell asleep.

Ryker did not call.

* * * * *

He approached the car.

It wasn’t a Fiesta.

It was a blue Equinox.