Sentencing Sapphire (Sapphire Dubois: Book 3)

Chapter 9

Sapphire held the birthday card as she opened the door to the mansion. Not her mother's mansion, not Charles's mansion, but her mansion.

Weird. She'd never thought of it as home, more like she was a temporary resident; now she owned it. So, when she broke what she thought was her mother's window to get inside the other night, she'd broken her own. Bummer.

After she left DubCorp, she drove home, and parked up the hill of the mansion. She spent hours watching the house, hoping to catch a man who looked like he came straight from the Mad Men set, staking her out. Her father never showed, nor did Jon Hamm.

Sapphire headed for the fridge, passing the usual: paintings, furniture, naked mother riding a fugly stranger on kitchen table, cookie jar.

"Sapphire, you're early!" Her mother yelled in panic. "I said seven o'clock."

Sapphire grabbed a bottle of water and headed for the stairs as she looked down at the birthday card again.

Take a life to save another, it said.

Sapphire hurried to the attic, her sanctuary, to get her things. She wasn't sure how to interpret his note. All she knew was that it involved killing. She had to get to him before new instructions followed.

Sapphire reached up feeling a jolt of adrenaline. Though she hated what her father was putting her through, she couldn't help but feel the old excitement come back to her as she opened the attic flap. She hadn't been in there since sometime before the wedding-that-wasn't, and the thought of being surrounded by her precious things was warming.

She stood, brushed her pants off, then looked up. "What... the... hell?"

The walls were bare, the floor empty. Her wallpaper made up of articles of unsolved cases: gone. Her secondary closet: gone. Her first and favorite "Closed" folder on Thomas Broker: gone. Her old tranquilizer gun, her wigs, her maps: gone, gone, gone.

Sapphire grabbed the roots of her hair, staring at the absence of her life's work. Aston took it, she realized. This was the evidence he was talking about. You mother—

"Daaaarling! Aren't you coming back down?"

Sapphire left the attic, her face warped in horror. Gone. Gone. Gone. She dragged her feet down the stairs, feeling the panic. Without her tools, her supplies, how was she supposed to find her father?

"Daaarling!" Vivienne shouted again.

"What?" Sapphire held her hands out as she walked into the dining room. "What!"

"Our weekly mother-daughter dinner. I didn't expect you so early." Vivienne stood before a catered meal. The fugly man sat a few chairs down, now dressed and armed with a notepad.

"We don't have weekly mother-daughter dinners," Sapphire exclaimed. "We don't have yearly mother-daughter dinners."

"See how she speaks to me," Vivienne told the fugly guy who scratched away at his notepad. "I'm your parent, young lady."

Parent? The closest thing to parents Sapphire had were Julia and Father O'Riley. "What's he still doing here?"

"This is Søren. He wanted to meet you and help. He's a life coach, sort of."

"Really?" Sapphire's mouth puckered. What they'd been doing on the kitchen table looked less like life coaching and more like backwards cowgirl.

"It's so nice to finally meet you, Sapphire," Søren beamed. "Let's have a bite, and chat. What's this story your mother told me about trout?"